The Woke Mob!

Yay, I finally found the template for the inane modern right wing assault on so-called wokeness — the fatuous transgender locker-room and bathroom fury, communists taking over our cities, forced indoctrination of anti-racism beliefs, oppressive snowflake oversensitivity, demonic DEI, and so forth.

It’s all contained in the hilarious Russian propaganda video above, attempting to discourage Russians from emigrating to the United States. You might remember it — it went briefly viral in 2022. It’s even funnier now than it was then, because it’s basically become a full catalogue of Republican talking points, in two minutes.

So, there’s that.

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I would like to share something I have recently discovered. It is a photograph of a real person who looks more like a mobster from central casting than any movie mobster ever, and I am including Bogie

… and Cagney

… and Edward G. Robinson

… and Pacino

And Gandolfini.

Okay, but get this, see? My guy was REALLY a mobster. His name was Giovanni Ignazio Dioguardi, known to his Cosa Nostra cronies as Johnny Dio. Here he is:

Pretty good, right?

But the best part is yet to come. Johnny Dio was a racketeer and extortionist in the 1950s, most infamous for having ordered the acid-blinding of crusading anti-crime newspaper columnist Victor Riesel. Not a guy to cross.

The fact is, the photo above — the one most frequently found on the Internet — is tragically cropped to show only his head, and thus misses the context completely. The context was this:

The photo was taken as Dio was leaving after testifying before a Senate select committee hearing in which he taken taken the Fifth Amendment 150 times. He was in a sour mood, sour even for Johnny Dio. He was trying to sneak out to avoid the media, but a United Press photographer, Stanley Tretick, spotted him and moved in for a shot. This displeased Mr. Dio, who kicked Mr. Tretick in the ass. As he was doing this, he was snarling “You sons of bitches! I got a family!”

Here is the full picture. It was taken, needless to say, by a different photographer.

Johnny Dio spent his last years in prison, due to having been convicted of a gazillion crimes. In his cellblock were other Mafiosi, including John Gotti and Henry Hill, the informant famously portrayed by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.

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