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Monday, June 30, 2008

Goldy on the Seattle Times on the Washington Democrats on Dino Rossi

posted by on June 30 at 11:18 AM

Required reading

The solemn defenders of public civility at the Seattle Times editorial board spank the WA Dems today, arguing that “Ethnic slurs have no place in political advertising in our state.”

I don’t really disagree, and had the Dems called Dino Rossi a wop or a dago or a greaseball or a guinea or a spaghetti nigger, well, that would have been offensive, and clearly out of bounds. But they didn’t. They merely soundtracked a web video with the theme song to The Sopranos—a critically acclaimed TV show—because the tune was catchy, energetic and a well-paced fit to the accompanying footage… and I can only assume, because they wanted to highlight the fact that the political thugs at the BIAW are about as close as we come to mobsters in this state, at least in attitude, short of the actual Colacurcio crime family and their consiglieri (and proud Italian Club of Seattle member) Albert Rosellini.

Oops! Did I cross a line there by suggesting that former Gov. Rosellini has known mob connections? Does that constitute an ethnic slur, despite the supporting evidence, simply because Rosellini is Italian? (Apparently yes, judging from the way our local media gingerly dances around Rosellini’s connections to the Colacurcios and their mob activities out of fear of offending Italian-Americans… or, perhaps, getting whacked.)

Indeed, the very same day the Dems released their video, Rossi gave a stump speech in which he directly compared Gov. Gregoire’s policies to that of Tony Soprano, by name, and yet the Times didn’t find that slur “sleazy” because, I guess, Gregoire is of Irish descent. So by the Times’ standards, it is acceptable public discourse to groundlessly accuse Rossi of being a whiskey swilling drunk, but not Gregoire, whereas mob related epithets are okay when launched at our Irish-American governor, but not Rossi…

Read the rest here.

RSS icon Comments

1

If anyone spends more than three minutes reading the comments about Obama from just about any right-wing site, you would think that the only reason Obama is popular is because blacks are voting for him, or "white guilt".... Not to mention the continuous attempts to try and paint him as a communist or muslim.

How they can take the latest Rossi ad and whine in faux-angst about racism is WAY beyond hypocritical.

Posted by James | June 30, 2008 11:29 AM
2

I'm Italian and I didn't think this ad was the least offensive. But I still think the theme song from "Jaws" was more appropo.

Posted by Vince | June 30, 2008 12:31 PM
3

I spend most of my teen years in the most Italian city in Canada, and lived in the Italian neighborhood in the Vancouver area of BC (Commercial, piasano!) - anyone who was offended by that true ad is a wuss.

And probably thinks pasta is all that's Italian.

Posted by Will in Seattle | June 30, 2008 2:30 PM
4

Goldy is being an idiot with this. Of course it's offensive. And stupid. And counter-productive.

Posted by kk | June 30, 2008 3:36 PM

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