Seeking inspiration, I turned to Terry Gross and Fresh Air. She doesn't seem to have a problem with her voice hitting millions five days a week. Nor does she have any problem getting information from people. Anyway, while searching the archives, I came across a 2000 interview with David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos.
In this interview, Gross asked Chase about his response to Italian-American organizations that have protested against the show's perpetuation of the depiction of Italian Americans as Mafiosi. Chase responded (after describing his inability to disassociate the idea of Italian anti-defamation from Joe Colombo):
But I don't know what is with these people why they never stop and say to themselves, just possibly let this thought into your head: What am I missing here? What is it that so many of my fellow Americans see here? And see in a very deep, seemingly profound and endless way. Is it possible that I am overlooking something that a lot of even my fellow Italian Americans like? And for whatever reason, and I don't understand this, the Italian-American gangster story has become a national myth. And why people persist in these kind of parochial concerns in the face of that, I sometimes want to ask them, 'Are you an Italian American or are you an American?' Because this is an American story.
So, is Chase right? Is the Mafia image American or Italian? Every Italian American "defending" their neighborhood, from Chicago's Little Hell in the 1940s to Bensonhurst in 1989, has claimed something along the lines, "We're just doing what all Americans do." Yet, the press has depicted them, not as average Americans, but as Italians acting in the image 
of the Mafia. If Chase is right, maybe both are correct: For Italian Americans, acting in the Mafia image is simply acting American.
In this light, Al "Kid Blast" Gallo's defense of "we only done what any red-blooded American boys would do" sounds a bit more credible.
