Capozzola still speaks out against "Uncle Tomassos" like Joe Pesci, Paul Sorvino, and Sopranos creator David Chase. "I love my country, but I sure don't love Hollywood," he says. His hope is that there might someday be an organization that weeds out anti-Italian slurs as assertively as the Anti-Defamation League obliterates anti-Semitism.
Hate for Sale
Anti-discrimination efforts do not occur in a vacuum. Even hypochondriacs get sick, and the anti-discrimination lobby exists in part because real discrimination exists. If the ADL's picture of an anti-Semitic Arab lobby is vivid, that's because pro-Arab sentiments frequently do slide into hoary anti-Jewish tropes, a fact the more honest Arab advocates, such as the ADC's Ibish, acknowledge.
To the surprise (if not disappointment) of Arab-American advocates, the post-9/11 backlash against Arabs and Muslims was more scattered and restrained than ubiquitous talk about internment camps and midnight roundups had led us to expect. But it would take a true Pollyanna to dismiss the troubles of Muslims in America when citizen and non-citizen alike are being deprived of such fancy Western niceties as the right to legal counsel.
Moreover, hate crime is often real crime. American Hindus Against Defamation is part of a political awakening that followed the murder of 30-year-old Navroze Mody by the Jersey City "Dotbusters" gang; agitation from the Indian community clearly helped push that case to a successful prosecution. (On the other hand, prominent civil rights advocate Helen Zia formed American Citizens for Justice after the murder at a strip club of 27-year-old Vincent Chin in 1982 -- a crime now widely described as a racially motivated killing, though the circumstances are murkier than advocates admit.)
But does a crime become worse because it's a hate crime? Are Americans too dumb to recognize bigotry unless a professional identifies it? Do anti-discrimination organizations actually make any difference?
Anti-discrimination groups are untroubled by such airy-fairy questions. Virtually all support broader federal hate crime laws. Ted Grippo's lawsuit against The Sopranos is amusing but not uncommon. Even the Celtic Tiger ADL, which seems at first like a Swiftian hoax, is dead serious about expansive hate crime laws.
"We would like to see local legislation or guidelines enacted to prevent negative stereotyping in the local media and at officially sanctioned events or by anyone in receipt of public contracts," says CTADL spokesman O'Herlihy. "If 24 Hour Fitness can draw the wrath of the oversized persons lobby...then I don't see why those that are offended by the negative stereotyping of their culture shouldn't be given serious thought too."
Nonlegislative strong-arming is even more common. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith pressures Internet service providers that don't police bulletin boards and libraries that display objectionable books. It once attempted to ban a textbook that "[leaned] over backward to provide a flattering portrait of Islamic civilization."
Laird Wilcox, a civil rights activist who fell out with ADL while researching fringe groups, devotes more than a quarter of The Watchdogs to ADL abuses. Among other things, he claims a documentary he worked on in the 1980s was faked by ADL staffers posing, with fake names and mustaches, as white supremacists.
The ADL's public record is daunting enough. In 1993 the group was fined for employing an off-duty San Francisco police officer to spy on other civil rights groups. Last year the ADL was fined nearly $10 million for defaming a Colorado couple with baseless charges of anti-Semitism. The organization defends its copyright on the word anti-defamation, taking action against groups such as the Anarchists Anti-Defamation League and Russell Means' American Indian Anti-Defamation Council.
Other civil rights groups, Wilcox contends, might behave similarly with a $40 million budget. "They're not hesitant to suppress free speech when they don't agree with it," he says, "but on the whole they're no worse and probably better than the ADL."
A League of Their Own
The endearing thing about Bill Donohue is that he genuinely seems to enjoy hurting people. The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights peppers his press releases with blistering jabs at luminaries who stumble into anti-Catholic offense: "LARA FLYNN BOYLE ADMITS TO HER STUPIDITY...HEATHER GRAHAM'S SEXUAL HANG-UPS...Yo, Sly, ever think about getting out of the ring once and for all?" (The last is a reference to Sylvester Stallone's canceled series Father Lefty.)
Donohue specializes in invidious comparisons of the "If they said the same thing about blacks/Jews..." type. Some samples:
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