July 29, 2006
Film/Book Review: Martyred by the Mob
What Giovanni Falcone died for, and why.
>Excellent Cadavers
The story of Falcone's fight against the Mezzogiorno's elaborate cultus of intimidation and murder is not well-known here in America, a country otherwise obsessed with the Mafia. But then again, what does bada bing have to do with Falcone, a public servant who wanted to make the world safe for all the sexless virtues the gangster lives to imperil?
In its grifting, the mafia largely left the petite bourgeoisie alone; and left alone, the petite bourgeoisie developed a normal sense of national allegiance. To the idea of an Italian state strong enough to counteract a culture of lawlessness, and to the civic trust that must undergird any such state, Falcone gave his life. As Leonardo Messina, a former Mafiosi, testified before the Italian Parliament, "People in Sicily are beginning to believe in the state because now even the son of the street sweeper or a shoemaker may go to university and no longer wants to be the subject of the mafia." An American audience will likely be surprised at how frequently "the state" is invoked by Stille's subjects as an ideal, and at how cruelly it is mocked for being so obviously compromised in reality. At the funeral for her husband, one of Falcone's slain bodyguards, Rosario Schifani, stands at the microphone, a priest at her side, propping her up. To the most powerful men in Italy she keens: "My Vito Schifani … the state, the state … why are the Mafiosi still inside the state?
The story of gangsterism in Palermo is the story of a people forced indoors by fear. The story of gangsterism in America is the story of a people lured indoors by television.
...the gangster lies seductively athwart our dream and waking states. Fact or fantasy, or both, he re-personalizes life, returning to a rationalist world all the comforts of tribal paternalism and face-to-face negotiation. What a lovely holiday, this state of nature. But the principle of honor is terminally weak, and the circle of trust always shrinking, from tribe to neighborhood to family to individual, until distrust is pervasive, and civil society breaks down.
To wake us from this half-dream; to force us to recognize the gangster for what he is, a backslide away from full human maturity: this, I would argue, is what Giovanni Falcone, martyr to civic decency, died for.
article By Stephen Metcalf | Slate
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~Greed is good.
In Chicago up until the 1990's there were still a few criminal court judges who could assure accused murderers, with the right price and/or bona fides, verdicts of not guilty.
At the time the local newspapers were much more interested in the wholesale bribery in the traffic courts.