Lawsuit Four: Italians vs. The Sopranos Reason for Lawsuit: Dumbasses Seeking: Don't Ask, Seriously. Above: An Italian-American in its natural habitat. An anti-defamation group of Italian-Americans recently went to court to get the Sopranos taken off the air. Their television analysts claim that it it stereotypes Italians as gangsters, and they insist that some if not most of Italian-Americans are not actually members of organized crime families. And while we must commend them on their ability to spot the difference between actors on TV and real life people, we should remind them that that wasn't one of the unsolvable mysteries of the universe and that even non-Italian-Americans knew that too. They claim that the problem with the Sopranos is that it makes it look like most members of the Italian mafia are of Italian descent. In the show's defense, this was a decision made after test audiences said that having the Italian mafia being made up of Jamaican French Canadians was totally fucked up. Here's a hard fact of reality hitting you in the face: There may come a day when a jar of intergalactic peanut butter makes all of our television programs magically come to life. And then, yes, every single Italian person would be a hard-nosed mob enforcer. But by the same logic, every single millionaire playboy would be Batman. So it would all even out in the end, and maybe even be better once you consider how we'd also have Flipper. When you've been stereotyped, it just means that every stranger makes a fool of themselves when they meet you. For example, I ask every black person I meet if they have a thirty inch penis. It really hurts their feelings, especially the women, but after they finish taking it out, flinging it around, and pulling a fully-loaded truck up the street with it, stereotypes are done affecting their life. No one is really going to to walk up to an Italian and say, "Oh, you're with those spaghettio guys... what do you call them, Italian? Hey, could you kill my friend Frank? Thanks, I'll be over here." If they do, then you're obviously telling retarded people how Italian you are. Why are you doing that, you fucking weirdo? I, like the Italians in question, own a television. And although I may not have solved the mystery of which is it and which is the real non-TV world, I did learn from a popular commercial for pasta sauce that "Italians love life, [they] love love... ah, but most of all... they love PASTA." Certainly with this kind of positive campaign running just a few channels away from the Sopranos, even our very very stupid minds should come out of it with a healthy view of Italian-Americans. Yes, they're criminals and racketeers, but full of passion, ready to fall in love, and completely covered in creamy delicious pasta. A Press Your Luck contestant holds up a picture of children she's planning on eating. "Graahhrr!" she announces. Then she loses her money to some damn pogo stick thing. BAM! This is what I'm talking about, dynamite the money! Pchu!!! The fact that this case got to the point where it actually made it into a court room means we'll probably see more of them. Case in point, I finally filed my People vs. Wammy lawsuit demanding that Game Show Network reruns of Press Your Luck remove from them all the crappy Wammy cartoons. That's the show where they sit in front of a giant screen of epileptically flashing lights and chatter, "No Wammy, no Wammy, big bucks... STOP!" Then, if we're lucky, a cartoon Wammy comes out and steals all their money. And sometimes they're so cool, like a Wammy on a unicycle tied to a speeding bulldozer will fall onto the contestant's money and then get eaten by a vulture. And you're like, "Take the money, incredible Wammy show! That's totally worth $20,000 in cash, trips, and gaming tables!" But sometimes the Wammy cartoon is just like a boat that drives by and your money disappears. Oooh, that's so great, Press Your Luck. What does a passing boat have to do with losing all your money? Practically nothing! The lawsuit I've filed will put an end to that kind of shit, demanding that all the stupid Wammy shows be digitally altered to fit within specifications of radness that a qualified committee will determine. And also I get sixty two million dollars. Case Preditions: Most Americans probably want the lawsuit to get the Sopranos taken off their televisions. We hate it when our shows hypnotize us into hating groups of people. If we would have had lobbyists like these brave Italian-Americans back when Mr. Ed was on the air, we might not have wasted so many lives thinking that horses talked. Whether the lawsuit goes through or not, we may never know what affect the Sopranos has had on our ability to love our brothers. But thanks to this lawsuit, we can say one thing for sure: at least one anti-defamation league of Italian Americans is totally fucking stupid and thinks we're stupider. The case will probably get plea bargained down to forcing HBO to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the show saying, "These people are not trapped in a box. They are moving pictures of people playing make-believe. They did not write this message. I did. Hi, I'm Mike. I work in the editing room here at HBO. But here's my point: Many real-life people are not murderers. Hey, a raisin! There's a raisin in here!"

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