Amidst all the hysteria surrounding “The Sopranos” and the popular show’s alleged anti-Italian bias, a calm, rational assessment of all the facts — tangible, social and political — are necessarily required in order for fair-minded people to make a judgement before this entire episode spirals into complete madness.
It is quite true that there is a double standard (or, in fact, several different standards) when it comes to the portrayal of ethnic and racial groups in popular culture.  These differing portrayals have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual reality of life in America, and everything to do with political correctness and the disinclination to offend radical ethnic and racial interest groups.  For example, on television and in the movies, blacks are invariably portrayed to an inordinate extent as computer geniuses, heroic doctors, and generally benevolent, moral and sober. 

There are, of course, many blacks who fit these descriptions.  But if Hollywood were to be concerned with a totally accurate reflection of reality, most street criminals would be black (citing FBI statistics in proportion to their percentage in the overall population) and most heroic doctors and computer geniuses white. 
This is not to say that Hollywood ought to be bound by reality, but these facts must be taken into account when the racial sirens start complaining.  And even with this consistently unrealistic favorable portrayal, blacks radicals complain about their screen images.

Now, it is also quite true that some groups are treated in a slipshod manner by comparison.  Anti-Christian bias is definitely prevalent, especially if one defines “bias” as treatment that would not be given to another group.  Uproars attached to blasphemous works of “art” depicting unflattering and outrageous images of Jesus and his mother arose not only because of the extreme nature of the paintings, but even more so because Christians know damn well that such disrespect would never have been leveled at Moslem or Jewish icons.  Anti-Christian bias is indeed, as one writer put it, “the last proper bigotry.” 
But unlike the artwork (which was underwritten with tax dollars) and, to a lesser extent, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which insulted a particular icon, “The Sopranos” simply does not fall into the same category.  So-called “Italian spokesmen” (whatever that means) complain that “The Sopranos” portrays Italians as brutal criminals with vulgar mouths; as simpletons and, most offensively, as mobsters - playing right into the stereotype.  

In fact, what the show does is portray these particular fictitious Italians that way, not Italians in general.  What are the producers to do?  For goodness sake, you couldn’t get a good mob show off the ground if you tried to portray them as a simply swell bunch.  The fact that the players are Italian-Americans is simply rooted in fact.  Historically in America (although it is now changing) most mobsters have been Italians, even though most Italians have not been mobsters.  FBI crime figures have been stubbornly consistent in this regard — less than one-tenth of one percent of Italian-Americans have been associated with organized crime.  The new Italian crusaders should point this out if it makes them feel better, and as often as possible if it serves as a kind of therapy for them.

What has become clear is that the self-appointed Italian spokesmen are not in step with Italians in general, who view themselves primarily as Americans, and who generally enjoy “The Sopranos” because it is a finely acted, entertaining piece of fiction. What is also becoming clear is that Italian sirens risk coming off like the radical blacks and Hispanics, who spend most of their lives with massive chips on their shoulders, searching for, flailing at, and whining about every perceived slight. 

Plainly, Italian-Americans are among the most conservative groups in the United States. The new Italian sirens reek of a very embarrassing paranoia that borders on hysterics.
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Italian-Americans would do well to address genuine problems that affect them, like anti-white affirmative action, set asides and quotas, all of which keep Italians from jobs and positions they deserve.  Third world immigration is killing white neighborhoods.  Moreover, Italians face the same obstacles that all whites encounter in America — a leftist media double standard that highlights white crime and downplays non-white brutality.  These, of course, are the issues that genuinely hurt Italians.  But some politicians simply have too much time on their hands, or are too preoccupied with what appears on cable television to address them.

The explosion of multicultural madness in the 1990's, coupled with political correctness as the new and bizarre orthodoxy on the American scene, has buttressed racial paranoia to the point of hysteria.  Calls to conform all aspects of American culture to the brave new world of thought control have manifested themselves in some of the most insane causes imaginable.  One of the chic demands made by the PC police has been leveled at sports franchises to change the names of their teams and mascots, which offend the sensibilities of radical Indian activists.

As a result, the famed basketball team of St. John's University changed its name from the Redmen in 1994 to the Red Storm.  Another Big East basketball team, Syracuse, changed its name 20 years earlier from the Indians to the Orangemen, after the fruit, of all things.  But this doesn't appear to be an issue that is dying. 

Suzan Shown Harjo is probably the leading "Native American" activist dedicated to the wasteful endeavor of cracking down on Indian sports names.  The most offensive name, in her view, is "Redskin," the moniker of Washington's storied NFL franchise.  She refers to the term as the "r-word."  According to Harjo, more than 1,000 sports teams in America -- representing schools at all levels -- have cast aside their Indian names since 1970.  But she's hardly through with her crusade.  The major professional sports franchises are the fish she still wants to fry. Eventually, she got her wish. The Redskins are now the Commanders. Baseball’s Cleveland Indians are now the Guardians.

Harjo once appeared on Fox network debating the issue with constitutional attorney Ann Coulter.  Harjo spouted the usual bromides that Indian names were "offensive," demeaning and cast "Native Americans" as somehow subhuman.  Other ethnic groups, she maintained, are not made into mascots.  Coulter countered that in a national poll, a majority of Indians supported the concept of using Indian names for sports teams, as a matter of honor and prestige.  While Harjo disputed the poll findings, she remarked to Coulter, "How would you like it if they called a sports team, 'The Blondes'"?  Coulter, not missing a beat, replied, "That would be so cool!"

So what are the facts on sports teams and their names and mascots?  In the four major sports -- football, baseball, basketball and hockey -- which total 124 teams in all -- there are now only four teams which go by Indian names.  They are the Chicago Black Hawks (hockey), the Golden State Warriors (basketball), the Atlanta Braves (baseball), and the Kansas City Chiefs (football).

In what is undoubtedly startling news to the new Thought Police and racial avengers, there are as many as 23 teams which bear names symbolizing Caucasians, Europeans and their descendants.  While not all are explicitly racial or ethnic, even those signifying certain occupations are unquestionably pertaining to white people.  (And these 23 teams do not count the "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame, a college football team.)
The Vancouver Canucks and Montreal Canadiens (hockey) are both representative of French Canadians.  The Boston Celtics (basketball) clearly represent a historic people of Europe, more specifically of the United Kingdom.  The Minnesota Vikings (football) represent the Nordic or Scandinavian peoples, and the Viking mascot is a white man with a big beard and sword. Vikings were often seen as raiders or invaders of sorts, so the team not only represents a white group, but a group often engaged in international criminality.  In the case of the Pittsburgh Pirates (baseball) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (football), whites are overtly represented as criminals, yet everyone accepts this all in good fun, looking instead at the masculine and rugged qualities of these groups, which is why teams were named after them in the first place.  The Oakland Raiders (football) fall into the same category, with a Caucasian marauder as the team's symbol.  The team has always been known for its physical style of play and its silver and black uniform colors.

Other famous teams also overtly represent Caucasian peoples.  The New York Knickerbockers (basketball) received their moniker in tribute to Dutch settlers of New York State.  While Cowboys could technically be of any race, the Dallas football team was clearly modeled on the traditional white cowpoke.  The New England Patriots (football) were based on the white American patriots of Boston, and even the fabled New York Yankees derived their name from northern Caucasians, more specifically white Union soldiers, with the term "Yankee" usually one of derision.

Less overtly racial but still based on white men are the New York Rangers (hockey), Texas Rangers (baseball), Ottawa Senators (hockey), Los Angeles Kings (hockey), Sacramento Kings (basketball), Cleveland Cavaliers (basketball), Kansas City Royals (baseball), Seattle Mariners (baseball), San Francisco 49ers (football), Pittsburgh Steelers (football), and even the beloved New York Mets -- short for Metropolitans, signifying white New Yorkers of a different era.
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While the multicultural fanatics are on a roll, why not consider teams that may be construed to be making a mockery of religion, specifically Catholics?  The New Orleans Saints (football), Los Angeles Angels (baseball), San Diego Padres (baseball), and New Jersey Devils (hockey) all fit this particular bill.
Ironically, sitting on the sidelines throughout this debate are the blacks, who finally have a legitimate gripe: they are not represented by any American sports teams, despite comprising most of the players!

Eurocentrists, mainstream conservatives and virtually all Americans with any semblance of common sense and fairness are all aware of the blatant double standard in America when it comes to race.  Specifically, media double standards on race are practically second nature.  Over the years, a number of organizations such as Accuracy in Media have sprouted in order to monitor and expose liberal bias.  Likewise, conservative broadcasters and pundits are constantly bellowing about media bias, and even former liberals like David Horowitz have written effectively about the racial transgressions of major media.
What makes Bernard Goldberg’s book, Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite, particularly astounding is not so much his revelations (though they are extremely interesting and important), but the unique perspective from which he comes -- who he is, where he worked, and his own personal ideology.

Bernard Goldberg worked as an on-air correspondent and producer for CBS News for nearly thirty years.  He has won seven Emmy Awards. His reputation in the business is impeccable.  Most significantly, to this day Goldberg describes himself as a liberal. He has never voted for a Republican for president. He is a supporter of gay rights. He sympathizes with feminism. He glories in the “civil rights” movement of the 1960’s and states he was “moved” by the speeches of Martin Luther King.  And he supports affirmative action, although he makes it clear that his support is only for the original concept – outreach to minorities, not discrimination against whites and racial quotas.

Goldberg actually restores some hope that there can be a liberal in a powerful and influential position who stills possesses a sense of honesty and fair play; a person who can betray open-mindedness, and who is willing to risk his career to point out the obvious.

Goldberg’s journey to writing Arrogance actually began with an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 1996, detailing liberal media bias.  Before the column hit, Goldberg phoned CBS colleague (and the most powerful man at the network) legendary news anchor Dan Rather to give him a heads up about what was about to appear in the morning paper.  As Goldberg worried about Rather’s reaction to the criticism, Rather assured him, “Bernie, you were my friend yesterday, you’re my friend today, and you’ll be my friend tomorrow.”  The article then came out and Rather has not spoken to him since.

Following the earthquake that ensued in the offices of big media after the column hit, Goldberg followed up with his 2002 bestseller, Bias, which exposed in much more detail the behind-the-scenes workings of major media outlets and how they distort the news.  While Bias touched on race, it was actually Goldberg’s sequel, Arrogance, that deals with race in a most profound and detailed manner.
“There are few forces on earth more powerful than white liberal guilt,” Goldberg writes. “It has no known limits. In the heart and minds of plain old regular liberals, it’s bad enough. But in the hands of journalists, white liberal guilt becomes a very dangerous force indeed.”

Goldberg asserts that, deep down, many of his colleagues suspect they’ve got it wrong about race, but cannot bring themselves to come clean. He explains why: “By hanging on to the old party line for dear life – and conveniently to see anyone with contrary views as ‘racially insensitive’ Neanderthals if not out-and-out racists – they get to continue to do what too many liberals enjoy doing best: bask in their own moral superiority.”

He points out that the very nature of bias can be detected in whether or not editors and journalists regard something as newsworthy.  He writes, “The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), an organization that represents every major paper in the country, is downright obsessed with diversity and affirmative action, concepts the editors apparently don’t regard as even mildly controversial.” 

In other words, since all journalists engage in groupthink, it never occurs to them that there can be two sides to the issue. Affirmative action is not merely good, it is normal, and anyone who disagrees is on the fringe. But Goldberg points out that this love of diversity does not extend to diversity of ideas or viewpoints, but is only skin deep.

“How in the world,” he asks, “can a journalist report fairly on affirmative action and racial preferences after the organization for which that journalist works has already taken sides? And not merely taken sides, but declared only one position good and fair and moral? How can he or she even pretend to represent honestly the views of those millions and millions of decent Americans who do not think affirmative action is an open-and-shut moral case; who believe, to the contrary and with equal passion, that affirmative action is nothing more than a nicer way of saying ‘reverse discrimination’?”
Goldberg tells a story about a major controversy caused by the statements of Texas Law School Professor Lino Graglia, who essentially stated that the reason minorities did not do as well as whites in school was not because of racism but due to the fact that black and Hispanic families place a low priority on education.

As Goldberg tells it, a “mini-World War III” erupted on the campus and the CBS program Public Eye decided to do a story on it with Goldberg as the reporter.  “After it aired, a top producer on the program – white and very liberal – came up to me, shaking his head in disbelief over what he considered the incredibly backward things the professor had to say. ‘Can you believe this guy?’ he asked. The question was meant to be rhetorical – there was not a scintilla of doubt in his mind that I, like everyone else in the wide world of big-time journalism, shared his contempt for the professor.”
But Goldberg replied, “I could,” leaving the producer to walk away astonished, with a “shit-eating grin.”
Goldberg then concludes, “I had covered too many stories for CBS News in what we used to call ‘the ghetto,’ where that encouragement just didn’t exist, where kids were left to fend for themselves after school, where there wasn’t a book in the house. Of course, this was true in a lot of white households, too. Unfortunately, it was disproportionately true with minorities.”

In another instance, as a reporter for the CBS Evening News, Goldberg was setting up a story on a group of juvenile house thieves who were terrorizing a nice neighborhood in Orlando, Florida.  Before heading off to Orlando, his white liberal female producer asked him, “Are the juvenile delinquents black or white?”
“I don’t know,” Goldberg replied. “I didn’t bother to ask. Is that important?”
She replied, “They need to be white.”

It was clear to Goldberg that the piece would never air if the hoodlums weren’t white, so he called his contacts in Orlando and was told they were indeed white and the story was happily reported.
But people have no idea, Goldberg says, of how routinely the media deliberately fail to reveal the race of criminals because most criminals are black.  Even the race of “a rapist – who is still at large – for fear of offending blacks (in and out of the newsroom)” due to the fear of “feeding into racial stereotypes.”
“Never mind,” Goldberg writes, “that telling their readers everything they can about the suspect, including his race, might actually help find the monster preying on women. That’s not important enough, apparently – not in the hands of ‘deferential’ liberal newspeople.”

On the touchy matter of hate crimes (the most common ones, where blacks victimize whites), Goldberg again points out that media practice “good racial manners” and “bend over backwards to make the assault look like nothing more than a misunderstanding between the races.”
Goldberg relates the story of August 2002 when the Philadelphia Daily News ran a front-page story on fifteen suspects wanted for murder, complete with mug shots, all of whom were non-white.  “Before you could say, ‘Racist,’ the phones at the paper were ringing off the hook. The callers were angry, not because they claimed the story was false, but because of the impression it might leave.”

He then goes on to lament that, sure enough, rather than defend its story as accurate, the paper apologized. In what Goldberg described as “a classically mealy-mouthed mea culpa to readers”, the paper’s managing editor wrote, “The front-page photos from last Thursday sent the message to some readers that only black men commit murder… In addition, the stories didn’t address a key question: Why are there no white suspects on the loose? That was also a mistake.”

In response to this nonsense, a Philadelphia police official pointed out that white murderers were already locked up and blacks weren’t because of the lack of cooperation with police in the black community, a distrust that makes blacks let murderers roam amongst them rather than help the police catch them.
Goldberg writes, “If distrust of cops in the black community is really so pervasive that it outweighs even concerns about safety and security, that in itself would make a terrific story. What is the police response to that kind of distrust? To what extent is it legitimately the result of law-abiding black citizens’ deeply felt sense that cops hassle anyone who’s black, and how much of it is a product of decades of divisive antiwhite and anticop rhetoric put forth by black activists?
“Think it’ll ever be written?” Goldberg asks. “Don’t hold your breath.”

White journalists are just as cowardly when dealing with radical black journalists. One black reporter for the Los Angeles Times wrote in his memoir of a white female colleague that he wanted to “grab her by the throat and shake her like a rag doll” for a story suggestion he didn’t like. Another black at the Washington Post bragged publicly of how, as a youth, he found “fucking up white boys made us feel real good inside…” and “… take one of those white boys where I work and bang his head against a wall or stomp part of him in the ground…”

Goldberg asks, “Can anyone even begin to imagine a white reporter writing such words about a black colleague and living, professionally speaking, to tell about it?”
In the summer of 2002, child abductions seemed to be rampant and every parent’s worst nightmare was making news on a regular basis. In Philadelphia, a black child named Erica Pratt was kidnapped, thrown in the basement of an empty house, and tied up with duct tape.  Courageously, she chewed through the tape, kicked open the basement door, and escaped through a window, screaming until she was rescued.

This was a fantastic story, and since news organization had been pressured and criticized by black groups for seeming to focus on only white child abductees, the Erica Pratt case was the perfect opportunity for the media to make right.
Details, however, soon emerged that this was not a typical kidnapping like the others. Erica Pratt’s family was deeply involved in a drug ring and some family members had already been murdered. There was clearly a drug angle and the abductors were people involved with the family. It seems that moneys were owed and the kidnapping was in retaliation.  Erica Pratt’s family obviously was dysfunctional and criminal.
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The police knew this and it was subsequently reported by Philadelphia newspapers.  But, Goldberg writes, the major networks refused to report on that part of the story.  “I had a whole catalog of examples where politically correct senior producers put concerns about race above their concerns about telling the truth. They were always worried about showing too many black criminals in jail even when the prison was loaded with black criminals. They were worried about showing a few black men looting stores after a hurricane, even though the looting was happening on a Caribbean island where just about everybody, including the cops who arrested them, was black. And now, with Erica Pratt, it was looking like they were going PC again.”

Goldberg only found out the truth about the Pratt case when he watched the O’Reilly Factor on Fox. For an article he wanted to write on the subject, Goldberg then called Jim Axelrod of CBS News, the reporter who had done the Pratt story, and asked why the drug angle was omitted. Axelrod would not comment. Goldberg e-mailed John Yang, the reporter for ABC News, asking the same question. Yang replied, “Before committing to do this, I‘d like to know what angle you’re pursuing.” When Goldberg informed him, Yang never replied.

Arrogance is an extremely valuable book, as any effort would be that would garner as much attention as this effort has.  Although he focuses on virtually all ideological media transgressions – feminism, the homeless, the military – it is on race that Goldberg has shown the most courage and insight. The shots that Goldberg takes at major news honchos has made him persona non grata in many powerful circles, but there is also a quiet circle of gratitude and support for him within the world of media. May he continue to expose the fecklessness and dishonesty of the American press.