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Go Home The Mob As Museum Piece

TIMOTHY NOAH FEBRUARY 14, 2012

The Mob As Museum Piece

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

Wow, the Mob really is dead. For years we’ve heard that the decline of omertà, the disappearance of mom-and-pop retail, and the erosion of socially cohesive Italian-American neighborhoods were killing off the Mafia. It was the upside to the evisceration of community structures documented in books like Bowling Alone. My favorite illustration was the hilarious scene in the “Johnny Cakes” episode of The Sopranos in which Burt Gervasi and Pasquale “Patsy” Parisi try to shake down a Starbuck’s. More pitying than fearful, the barista explains: “I can’t authorize anything like that. It’d have to go through corporate in Seattle.... The numbers don’t add up, I’ll be gone and somebody else’ll be here.” As the thwarted thugs walk away, Patsy observes sadly, “It’s over for the little guy.”

The latest indicator of the Mob’s decline is celebrating its grand opening today in Las Vegas. It’s called The Mob Museum, and it’s as certain a sign that the Mob is over as the advent of Washington’s Newseum was a sign that the news industry was going the way of the dodo. Some of us remember a time when merely saying the word “Mob” out loud anyplace within the state of Nevada created an unacceptably high risk of severe bodily harm. No more. The museum features an exhibit on the Kefauver hearings (held in the very building where the museum is housed); a timeline tracing the rise of the various Mafia “families” around the world; and—be still my heart—blood-spattered bricks (well, bricks, anyway) from the Chicago garage at 2122 N. Clark Street (dismantled in 1967—an outrage to historic preservation second only to New York City’s demolition four years earlier of McKim, Mead, and White’s Pennsylvania Station), where Al Capone tied up a few loose ends on St. Valentine’s Day, 1929. The museum is the fulfillment of a longstanding dream of board member Oscar B. Goodman, a onetime Las Vegas mayor and mob lawyer. Sadly, the online store is not yet up and running, so the little woman will have to settle this year for candy or flowers. 

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Do let us know what a horse's head is going for these days, and whatever overnight shipping arrangements the museum offers.

- Tristan

February 14, 2012 at 3:53pm

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This is great news. For years I have been hugely encouraged by the unraveling of omerta. Even on Sicily, the Mob is not what it once was. I recall when I came of age in the 1970's, reading a piece by Bill Buckley, whom I corresponded with a bit, writing that the existence of the Mafia enraged him. It enraged me, too. , Bowling Alone has been much overrated. The excellent Richard Florida is far more convincing than is Robert Putnam on social interactions. In this, he is at one with Frank Fukuyama, who has written that even as old forms of trust erode, new ones are forming and taking all of the time. As long as I have the floor, I should like to commend to TNR readers Mr. Fukuyama's superb study, The Origins Of Political Order: From Prehuman Times To The French Revolution, which I read last year. Particularly good are his sections on state formation in China. I wrote Mr. Fukuyama that I hugely enjoyed his book, and he wrote a very nice note back to me. Don't pay attention to John Gray's pesky review of the book. Gray is a former starry-eyed Thatcherite who lurched to the port side and is now a left Soylent Greenite. As long as I am flogging books, I wish to mention a 583-page anthropological work that I read across three days, from last Saturday to this Monday - Culture in Practice: Selected Essays, by the noted anthropologist, Marshall David Sahlins. Sahlins is way to the left of me; he has quite an affinity for Marx, and the weakest parts of his splendid book are where he reifies the concept of capitalism, which is sort of like a North Star to him. Also, when he is the most structuralist and semiotic is when he is the least persuasive. But read his account of the ghastly Rewa-Bau war in Fiji, which commenced over a pig and was touched off on January 11, 1843. It is highly riveting. Sahlins is eloquent, too, in his shredding of postmodernism. And he has a great grasp of cultural complexities that get flattened out by the triumphalists in the West and by the academics who see only Oceanic cultures (and others, as well) as victims of Western imperialism. Buy Culture in Practice and enjoy.

- liberalref

February 14, 2012 at 4:04pm

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There's always a "mob." It's just not always Italian. Sometimes it is Jewish. Sometimes it is Columbian. Sometimes it is Jamaican. Sometimes it is Mexican. Sometimes it is Iranian. Sometimes it is German. Sometimes it is Russian. Sometimes it is Burmese. Sometimes it is Japanese. Sometimes it is downright diverse. The Martian mob will get their day in the sun, as will the Alpha Centauri mob.

- skahn

February 14, 2012 at 4:05pm

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Don Corleone was right about what the drug trade would do to his business, although for reasons he may not have understood. It wasn't that the The Don lost the pocket full of judges (I assume they are still willing participants), but rather a different type of criminal, one without ties to the community, that came to dominate the drug trade. Whereas the Mafia family had a presence in the community, the drug trafficker does not. Ask anybody in law enforcement how difficult it is to find the drug trafficker, who seems to live in an automobile rather than a house, whereas the Mafia member was easy to find - he and his family lived in the house down the street. I know because the head of the Florida-Cuba Mafia (he is Hyman Roth in Godfather II) lived down the street. It's the drug trade that ended the Mafia. Or as The Don said, "It's true I have a lot of friends in politics, but they wouldn't be so friendly if they knew my business was drugs instead of gambling which they consider a harmless vice. But drugs, that's a dirty business."

- rayward

February 14, 2012 at 4:16pm

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Wow! Leaving my comments out, so far these are some of the best comments on a TNR article I've seen in a while. There must be some profound meaning that talking about the Mafia would bring out the best in the TNR readership. It can't be that The New Republic is (gasp!) funded by the Mafia, as a kind of way to wash illegal money?! There is a precedent. Anybody besides me remember Encounter Magazine, which was funded by the Central Intelligence Agency? Without criminals and spies, perhaps half of the intelligentsia press of the world would disappear. Let's see, is the Atlantic secretly funded by the Japanese Mob, and the Economist by Professor Moriarty and the London Underground? And everyone is being so polite and respectful, also. Perhaps all the other comment posters in this thread know that if they post a rude or insulting comment, some TNR intern is going to breaka the knee caps.

- skahn

February 14, 2012 at 6:31pm

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My favorite observation of the decline of the "mob" was Jim Jarmusch's movie 'Ghost Dog' in which the decline of the mob family is wryly pointed out when the Chinese restaurant owner threatens to kick them out of their Social Club for being behind on rent. The mobsters' decline is further sketched out by the late 80s land yachts they drive and the polyester clothes they sport. And this clip where they talk about the nicknames rappers have without the slightest bit of irony at their own nicknames. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6dMTwURRns

- singlspeed

February 14, 2012 at 6:32pm

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Of course if Noah would like to visit some American cities where the fine feathered peacocks of the 'Eye-talian' mafia still maintain a presence in the neighborhood I suggest he go for a stroll through the neighborhoods of Philadelphia's 'Little Italy' and of course New Orleans still has some mob ties still active in the liquor distribution markets it's just that they're a bit more legitimate these days. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43204856/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/philly-mob-once-written-has-bounced-back/#.Tzr03IpWpBQ They don't build cement shoes like they used to!

- singlspeed

February 14, 2012 at 6:57pm

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they had an episode on this on CSI (featuring the mob museum and that Mayor) not too long ago, I thought it was a spoof and not based on a real place. For those nostalgic, come down to Mexico, the mobs are doing very well thank you very much.

- blackton

February 14, 2012 at 7:00pm

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Thanks for the heads up Tim. I'm going to Vegas at the end of the month. Will check this out, as well as looking into Tristan's question about procuring and shipping severed horse heads.

- dubyadoubte

February 15, 2012 at 8:59am

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McKim, Mead and White...*sigh*

- jpell64

February 15, 2012 at 11:14pm

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