They Can't Handle the Truth

The most recent shocking example came on May 15, 2010, when the Chicago Tribune wrote a lengthy obituary on the late Outfit hitman Harry Aleman. The protocol was fairly typical, as it always is when criminals have Italian surnames: Aleman’s picture was shown (one from the 1970s, of course, to make him look more vicious), and his lengthy obit was moved from the back of the paper to the front. But what distinguished this particular piece was the reporter’s lead description of Aleman as being “half-Italian.” Which begs two questions: What was his other half, and what does being “half-Italian” have to do with his being a sociopath?

The latter answer we know: Hollywood has long conditioned viewers to accept Italian surnames as intrinsically evil or corrupt. But the answer to the first question went unanswered because Aleman’s father was of another, more well-respected ethnicity (Hispanic). To be specific, Aleman’s father was a Mexican American drug dealer whose daily beatings are what drove his son, by his own admission, toward a life of crime—-a harsh fact left out of the story so as not to offend sensitive readers.

Bill Dal Cerro, President