#affiliation: Corleone

[hamletthedane]

the best fandom wiki character card change my mind

[citylighten]

My Pietro and Sal gameplay have both been interesting and led to me having so many different headcanons. I’ve always struggled playing Fallout 4 because my main gripe is that I can’t recreate ANY oc want due to them having a set backstory and dialogue that reinforces certain plot things, but Pietro has a pretty good Sole Survivor AU. He's canon divergent though. More undercut!

-Pietro Impellizzeri was an notorious and powerful gangster Pre-War. He’s similar to Vito Corleone of The Godfather in the sense that he immigrated to America as a child and rose to the top of his community’s underworld.

-He had crossed paths with the human Nick Valentine on numerous occasions over ‘missing people’ as well as a ‘dirty money trail,’ but Pietro always knew how to throw the detective off. They were neither enemies nor friends, just merely people who kept a tense eye on one another.

-As a Boss, in terms of his conduct, Pietro was a composed, fair man but he was also known to be ruthless when the situation called for it. Outside of public events, he was seldom seen. If his men saw him it meant something bad was going to happen. Despite having such affluence and respect, Pietro's over-indulgence in the finest things (liquor, media, women) kept him blind to the things going wrong in his personal life.

-Pietro was married to Jasmine, who was a pinup model before marrying him. Their marriage was based on sex, possession and material interests. Ultimately, Pietro was a largely inattentive husband due to the demanding nature of keeping things afloat in his criminal empire.

-As a nuclear war approached, Jasmine began a series of affairs with men. Some powerful, some were Pietro’s enemies. Her wrongdoings ranged from supplying large sums of money to her lovers, to telling inside secrets. There came a moment, days before the bomb dropped, when Pietro (at his limit) considered murdering his wife. However, this did not come to be as the bombs fell over America.

-Needless to say, when Kellogg shoots Jasmine, Pietro feels guilt. Yes, he was plotting to murder her, but he knew that line of thinking wasn’t right. He doesn’t come into the Wasteland in the pursuit of being a better, kinder man, instead his decent actions come largely from the need to survive and understand the world he’s in.

Whereas Sal comes out Vault 111 ready to murder and massacre anyone in Eve’s name, Pietro’s mentality is: “I need to understand what civilization is like now. I need to know who is in charge of things.” Especially because since Pietro has been at the top for so long, it’s been years since he was doing dirty work for himself, let alone personally killing others on a continuous basis.

-When Pietro meets Nick Valentine there’s tension. But, they recognize they need each other to find Shaun, however there isn’t full trust between the men. Gradually, as the two spend more time together, Nick believes that Pietro can become a good man in this new world and often pushes the idea that Pietro is kind. Pietro does not believe himself to be kind, because he’s not burying the man he used to be before the bombs fell.

-There are times when Nick and Pietro split and his companions become MacCready, who reminds him of a lackey he would’ve used Pre-War, and Preston, who is yet another character who believes there’s an inner goodness in him. As a result of Preston and Nick - plus an envy for the mayor of Diamond City, Pietro decides to invest time in building the Minutemen and building settlements to lead. Despite possessing aspirations to lead, Pietro is shifting morally. Often, Nick helps him on Minutemen quests which strengthens their relationship.

-While helping settlements, Pietro meets Rosaria at Covenant. The woman is a secretary for Jacob Orden, the town’s mayor. Even when Pietro seems like he could be trouble for the settlement, she helps him learn more about the Amelia Stockton case with her insider information. After that, she leaves Covenant to affiliate herself with the Minutemen, which allows Pietro to see her more often. Time with Rosaria [who enjoys farming] has Pietro nostalgic about Sicily and as a consequence, he grows to enjoy things about nature as well as treasure the present he gets to spend with her.

-And that’s all for now because I haven’t completed his run yet 😘

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

would you believe i didn’t actually know that ann marie thomson was scum of the earth max clifford’s apprentice?? and i didn’t know that griffiths & magee were fired from BMG before attempting to start an english wing of a U.S. agency that went under.. and then simon brought them on to create modest management for txf.

i can’t find any info on why they were fired (besides it happening in 2001), but they’re clearly still unhappy about it based on griffiths calling rolf schmidt-holtz a “fucking idiot” during their acceptance speech at the MITs. in 2019… nearly twenty years later. lmao. ⬇️

https://www.musicweek.com/management/read/the-manager-is-the-only-person-dealing-in-every-aspect-of-an-artist-s-life-modest-founders-are-a-hit-at-the-mits/077973

* griffiths also called him a “fucking idiot” in 2016 (extra interesting is the working for tommy - evil abuser that made it his personal mission to ruin mariah carey’s life & career - mottola part) ⬇️

https://m.hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=303800&title=RICHARD-GRIFFITHS:-MODESTY-WITH-A-HINT-OF-IRONY

i was wondering, while i’m connecting all these dots in my head, if you had any idea why they were fired?

This is a web indeed!!

I also did not know that Griffith and Magee not only worked for BMG, but also that Griffith once hired Simon Cowell when Griffith was President of BMG Europe. I also learned that Rob Stringer (Chairman of Sony Music) once was nicknamed “Fredo” because compared to his older brother Howard (ex CEO of Sony Corp., now nonexecutive director of the BBC), Rob was likened to the weakest Corleone brother 🤐.

(These people are brutal to each other.)

I assume that Griffith was fired for poor financial performance. Up until that time, he had worked in several companies affiliated with Sony, Capitol, and BMG. The firing really terminated his career with labels and he called CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz “a fucking idiot” on more than one occasion.

I find what he said about One Direction in 2016 really interesting. So as of November 2016, Griffiths expected albums from Harry, Liam, and Niall, but not Louis.

How does managing Niall differ from managing 1D?

Less cars for a start! Obviously, the guys were very young when we started so that was always a major consideration. Niall is now a young man with six years-plus experience at the coalface of the business, having had phenomenal success, so the approach is different. With 1D, for example, the writing was condensed and recording was mainly done in hotel rooms whilst on tour. Niall is writing and recoding [sic] at his own pace, which he is loving, and the results are a testament to his growth and emergence as a world-class solo artist.

Do you think 1D will ever reunite?

Not in the foreseeable future. They are all out there enjoying being themselves. I’m sure Harry and Liam will make records and have great success. Louis has some interesting projects he’s developing. But never say never to a reunion.

Thanks for the interesting reads! Very illuminating, considering all the connections with the guys from One Direction.

[feastonkings]

spencer charnas / he/him ——— no way is that GODRIC CHERNYKH .. they’re a 35-year-old HUMAN notoriously known for being DEPRESSED & OMINOUS but there are some people who have seen them being SUCCESSFUL & IMAGINATIVE. if you ask me, they remind me a lot of always having a camera on hand, bullet points on a napkin, unsent text messages, five-o-clock shadow, and hand rolled cigarettes, but that could just be because they’re considered the DREAMER around town. just keep an eye on them & see if their true colors shine through..

GENERAL.

full name: godric filipp chernykh nicknames: god, ric, g classification: human gender / pronouns: cis man, he/him age / birthday: 35, november 14th orientations: heteroflexible, heteroromantic occupation: film director & writer location: upper district status: heartbroken family: gavrill chernykh (father, deceased), svetlana chernykh (mother, deceased), giorgi chernkyh (brother, deceased), godric chernkyh (twin), pandora (brother's widow) strengths: succesful, imaginative, empathetic, pensive, philosophical weaknesses: depressed, ominous, morose, obsessive, withdrawn character inspo: eric draven (the crow), edward cullen (twilight), will graham (hannibal), holden ford (mindhunter), vanya hargreeves (the umbrella academy), michael corleone (godfather), marianne sheridan (normal people), tyrion lannister (game of thrones)

BIOGRAPHY.

tw: murder, suicide, blood, graphic violence, abuse

unrelenting passion, it’s the kind of thing that flows hot in your veins and reaches all the way down into your core. when you want someone so bad, need them, it’s hard to breathe air that doesn’t have their taste lingering on your tongue. that kind of passion is rare, indeed, but it can be incredibly dangerous if it isn’t shared. gavrill chernkyh felt this the moment he set eyes on svetlana mirkin.

when someone is that infatuated with a person, it’s hard to deny them. it felt so good to be wanted, to be needed, she was just another girl trying to survive poverty after all. svetlana fell into the beauty of the thing, wrapped up in lust and the heat of the moment. next thing they knew, they were pregnant, having a shotgun wedding, and at each other’s throats.

first came giorgi, and things were good for a while. gavrill was working his way higher up in the crime syndicate his family aligned with. then five years later when things reached their peak, gage and godric came crashing into the world. it was then that their relationship started its downward spiral.

fights started getting physical, passion transformed into something much more poisonous. still, svetlana stayed through the highs and lows until she started to notice giorgi following in his father's footsteps. she wasn't going to have it any longer, she fled to texas with the help of her sister that already resided there and took all three boys with her.

that didn’t stop gavill's passion though, it took him awhile but he found them. and oh, was he angry. out for blood, and that’s exactly what he got. svetlana was torn to pieces in the end. she fought back against him, but she was no match for his skillset. the red cloud lifted from gavill's eyes and he saw what he did, the massive pool of blood, the object of his desire in pieces, his two young boys staring at him in shock. right there he shot himself.

the twins sat in that massacre for nearly two whole days, covered in the mixture of dna that ran through their veins. it was when giorgi came home that authorities were called. despite their crime affiliation, there was no avoiding the involvement of the law.

all three boys went to live with their aunt until giorgi could legally take over the twins' care. the trauma of the situation settling different with the two youngest boys.

unlike his twin, the gruesome departure of his parents affected him greatly. he would find no comfort from his aunt who often couldn't look at the boys due to their uncanny feature similarities to their father. obviously his brothers weren't much help in that, though to giorgi's credit, he tried to offer some. it was him who told his aunt to put the twins in grief counseling.

this was where him and his brothers started to drift apart. while godric had a healthy hate for law enforcement, he wasn't a criminal. he didn't want to make career out of breaking the law. no, he found his passion in telling stories.

he worked hard in school and went on to college, all while distancing himself from his brothers, especially gage. that didn't mean he cut them out completely, but he tread carefully. besides, his twin offered a lot of muse for his work.

out of college he didn't waste a second getting to work and turning pain into masterpieces. though he wrote and directed other things, he made a name for himself in the horror genre. godric brought fresh and innovative ideas to the screen.

eventually he got a steady job with kismet studios that allowed him the freedom to work on all his projects with an extra stipulation of some corporate work now and then. he even met someone that after a long string of failed relationships, seemed to match him in ways no one else had been able to

everything seemed to be going well until he decided to try and make it permanent. godric proposed and that was the end. she never answered him and soon disappeared altogether, leaving him bewildered and heartbroken.

after that, he threw himself into his work and stopped going out like he used to. it has definitely taken a toll on his art, which others have noticed. it got darker and in some ways, much more somber.

he's working on improving that and constantly striving to make the next best thing. he hasn't seen his ex, at that point he figured she'd moved somewhere else and got on with her life. something he needed to do as well.

HEADCANONS.

knows several languages: norwegian, swedish, russian, german, dutch, polish, and hungarian.

can play the piano, violin, and cello - though cello is the instrument he's played the longest.

often basis characters and plotlines on his twin and older brother's stories, he doesn't want to know if they are true or not and this is his way of coping with it.

more coming soon....

[crmincls]

⸻ enver gjokaj, 48, cis man, he/him ; ] welcome to the bastion, MATTEO BIANCHI. we’ve had a problem with our system, please help me readjust your files. it says here you are FORTY EIGHT and have been around london for 30 YEARS, correct? yes, i’ve read an article about you - they said you can be LOYAL and RUTHLESS, is that true? no matter, i’m sure your position as a CONSIGLIERE FOR THE ANTONINI FAMILY will conceal all of that. all done now. i hope to be seeing more of your BROKEN BOTTES OF EXPENSIVE CHAMPAGNE / A WINE CELLAR OF HIDDEN WEAPONS / YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AND TALES UNTOLD in the future. enjoy your stay, and remember the rules. / / tom hagen, vito corleone, meyer lansky. [ ⸻ honey ;

𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬

full name . matteo salvatore bianchi

nickname(s) . matt

age . 48

sexuality . heterosexual

place of birth . florence, italy

occupation . consigliere for the antonini family

height . 6'2"

tattoos . several scars and tattoos littered across his body.

piercings . none

pinterest . here

𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬

( tw: tbh a lot )

a  generations  long  friendship  between  the  bianchi  family  and  the  antoninis  paved  the  path  for  matteo  to  end  up  where  he  is  today.  born  in  italy,  he  saw  more  than  any  kid  should  have.  many  ask  why  he's  only  48  and  in  his  position,  but  they  aren't  truly  ready  for  the  truth.  matteo  has  seen  and  participated  in  plenty  of  horrors  in  his  day,  he's  earned  this  position  with  blood,  sweat,  and  tears.

he  came  to  london  for  the  first  time  30  years  ago,  thrown  in  as  a  capo  for  the  antonini  family.  it  was  no  surprise  when  the  boy  climbed  his  way  up  quickly,  his  value  and  skill  set  him  apart  from  the  rest.  he's  truly  a  hardened  man  by  what  he's  seen  and  done,  it's  no  surprise  he  focused  more  on  work  than  a  white  wedding  and  2.5  children.  curious  about  his  tale?  it's  spelled  out  on  his  body  in  ink  and  scars.

very  intelligent  with  experience  to  back  it.  he  doesn't  speak  unless  he's  fully  behind  his  words  and  he's  very  careful  with  when  he  does.    very  much  a  no  bullshit  kind  of  dude.

weapons  savvy,  usually  has  at  least  one  gun  on  him  in  an  obvious  spot  and  one  in  a  not  so  obvious.  tbh  more  of  a  collector  at  this  point,  he  has  a  lot  in  his  home  and  is  very  pleased  with  himself  over  it.

bourbon  collector,  turned  the  wine  cellar  in  his  home  into  half  wine,  half  boubron.

has  the  stupidest  pictures  of  young  frankie  and  will  show  them  to  anyone  who  asks,  within  the  family  that  is.

i  don’t  feel  like  writing  things  out  bc  i  hate  dancing  around  triggers  but  just  assume  man  is  deadly  at  all  times  +  100%  takes  no  shit.  he’s  earned  respect  in  several  ways  and  none  of  them  are  pretty.

all  his  grey  hairs  are  named  after  the  antonini  children.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

on main :

on  and  off  again  fling  :  it  never  lasts  because  he’s  just  not  the  commitment  type.  whether  she  ends  it  or  he  ends  it  is  always  up  in  the  air  but  either  way  they  always  end  up  back  in  one  another’s  beds.

childhood  friends  :  from  italy  and  moved  to  the  uk  or  they  met  as  young  adults/teens  when  he  moved  to  the  uk  or  visited  as  a  kid.  they  would  most  likely  be  loyal  to  the  antonini  family,  but  we  can  def  work  other  affiliations  out.

go  to  'guy'  :  gender  doesn’t  matter,  but  basically  this  is  the  person  that  he  goes  to  when  he  needs  his  dirty  work  done  bc  while  matty  boy  will  do  it,  he  is  also  a  v  busy  human.

possibly  open  to  him  having  a  kid  or  two,  but  i  don’t  want  his  plot  to  rival  lucien’s.  he’s  not  as  much  of  a  hoe  and  while  he’s  a  commitment-phobe,  he  doesn’t  sleep  around  with  just  anyone.

〈 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐎 𝐁𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐈 / 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 〉,〈 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭 / 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 〉

〈 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐎 𝐁𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐈 / 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 〉,〈 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭 / 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚙𝚘 〉

〈 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐎 𝐁𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐈 / 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 〉,〈 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭 / 𝚒𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚎 〉

〈 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐎 𝐁𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐈 / 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 〉,〈 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭 / 𝚍𝚎𝚟 〉

[howtofightwrite]

Q&A: The Difficulties for Organized Crime Going Legit

How realistic is the Godfather trope of turning a mob family legitimate? I don’t mean “bad people becoming good,” I mean “taking a criminal empire and turning it into a purely corporate, political, or otherwise ‘aboveboard’ one.” Less about switching sides, more about leveling up.

To be honest, The Godfather isn’t realistic, it’s opera. This, also, isn’t what’s going on in the film. Now, as a brief aside, I’ve never read Mario Puzo’s novel, my only exposure to these characters was through Francis Coppola’s adaptations.

Regarding the character of Michael Corleone (Al Pachino), he stayed out of the family business growing up and appeared legitimate. Vito hoped his son would go into politics, providing influence to his family. While the character is more complex than this, keeping specific individuals associated with organized crime enterprises legitimate in order to infiltrate society in places they otherwise wouldn’t be able to is a real strategy. It’s not that the family is legitimate, it’s that certain members have no visible, criminal affiliations, and can operate covertly.

If it seems implausible that a member of a major Mafia family could get elected to office, I’d remind you of William Bulger, brother of Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger was the infamous leader of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. No connection between William and his brother’s criminal enterprise was ever proven, but William was responsible for installing John Connelly into the FBI (via a personal letter written to J. Edgar Hoover.) Connelly would go on to be Whitey’s tamed fed, who kept him appraised of any investigation into his activities, and allowed Whitey to avoid arrest and prosecution for decades. (There’s way more to this than I’m getting into. The Bureau’s Boston field office had some serious corruption problems in the 60s.)

So, it does make sense for a character like Michael to have a deniable background, where he appears to be a legitimate member of society, while still being affiliated with the family. Ironically, the films are an inverse of the normal redemption arc, as Michael makes decisions which irrevocably tie him into the family, which he could have escaped.

The purpose for an entire family to, “go legitimate,” is more about the illusion rather than the reality. For a investigator, it’s much harder to prove a crime occurred when it’s hidden behind legitimate financial activity. Front businesses (particularly ones that deal with cash) are ideal, as they can also be used to launder illicit funds.

I’d argue that it is actually necessary for an illicit organization to have multiple legitimate fronts. It gives the organization a way to pay its members with funds that have already been laundered. It allows the organization to own or rent property (because, “rented by the local mob,” would raise eyebrows), in many cases it’s a critical step to further corruption (such as shipping skimming, though the New York gas tax fraud comes to mind.)

There is a lot of money to be made in illicit enterprise, and organized crime is adept at identifying exploitable situations. They identify points in the economy where there’s a lot of money moving around without much attention or oversight. Then, they use force (or the threat of same) to “muscle” their way in, and that is why they can never go legit.

Under normal circumstances, modern states exercise, and jealously guard monopolies on violence. A significant chunk of modern laws either build into, or articulate this idea. You, as an individual, do not have the authority to inflict violence on others, in exchange you’re protected (at least in theory) from having violence inflicted upon you. (At least, by non-state actors, with the caveat that said, “protection,” is often only deterrence, and any actual state response will likely to be after the fact, or posthumous.)

The problem is that organized crime aspires to become the state. Now, granted, very few criminal enterprises actually want the headache of becoming a nation in their own right. They’d be content with a simple patron/client system, which actually comes pretty close to how most organized crime operates. It is aspiring to be a small, feudalistic, government, operating autonomously under the nose of the legitimate state.

One of the authorities that organized crime (almost universally) seeks to usurp is the use and regulation of violence. Violence is used as a coercive tool, much like in many oppressive regimes, and is used as a form of, “foreign policy,” when interacting with other criminal organizations.

That last paragraph is why an organization can never, truly, go legit. It has a history of using violence as one of its methods of foreign policy. If it didn’t, it would have been obliterated by its competitors. This remains true, even if the organization never openly engaged in violence, and merely used the threat of same.

If one criminal enterprise disarms, it will be consumed by its competitors. In fact, this is a serious risk when there’s any weakness (including a regime change) within an organization. Aggressive competitors will look at that organization, it’s resources, and it’s inability to effectively protect them, as an opportunity.

There is an internal issue with using violence as a control mechanism. If your organization only keeps people in line at gun point, you’re going to have problems the moment you take that threat off the table. A criminal organization swearing off violence, would proceed to (figuratively) eat itself alive in shockingly short order. When the organization abdicated it’s monopoly on violence, that authority spilled down to the individual members, and it can’t (realistically) be returned to the legitimate state. (Worth noting, that a criminal organization who simply “refuses to use violence,” has abdicated control over it.)

Once your organization claims the authority to inflict violence, it is incredibly difficult to safely divest yourself of that.

So long as you maintain authority over violence, you cannot go legitimate. It’s illegal, and you can’t abdicate that authority without being murdered. (Either by your competitors, or your own people.)

-Starke

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Q&A: The Difficulties for Organized Crime Going Legit was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[gardenofkore]

Onomastic studies suggest that where there was socio-religious assimilation of the wider Muslim population, this had tended to occur with their Arabic-speaking neighbours – often indigenous Christians of the Greek rite, who usually bore either Greek, or religiously neutral Arabic names. Abundant evidence for personal names comes from administrative lists of men which survive from the 1090s onwards. Those compiled for the Monreale concession were particularly extensive, providing a snapshot of the population in western Sicily in the late 1170s and 80s.

The difficulty of discerning between Muslims, Muslim converts and Arab-Christians is itself an edifying illustration of the socio-religious, cultural and linguistic mélange in many parts of the island. For example, we might be forgiven for assuming that Muḥammad al-Jannān (‘the gardener’) and Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī (‘the silk weaver’) were Muslims. They were not. Rather, they were listed among the Christians of Corleone, but whether they were converts or whether they were products of fuzzy frontier logic and long-term acculturation in rural areas is impossible to say. At Corleone, deep in western Sicily, the presence of Norman lords who had held land there since the conquest, together with the Latin nunnery of Santa Maria Maddalena, may have served to attract or foster a Christian community which accounted for almost one-fifth of the total population registered on estates in the province. Here, ‘Greek’ Christians with Arabic, Greek, or Arabicised versions of Greek names, were common. Indeed, they even sported two pig farmers – perhaps the result of an empowered minority using dietary regulation to assert frontier intolerance towards their old, Muslim neighbours while flaunting their own religious identity without fear of retribution.

Scattered in documents throughout the twelfth century are telltale instances of naming changes indicative of social flux. In some rare, important examples, families conceded to lords can be traced across two, or even three generations and show a shift in the use of Arabic first names to Greek first names during the Norman period. This may either be interpreted as a sign of religious conversion (from Muslim to Greek Christian), or as a shift in identity within a single faith community (away from Arab-Christian and toward Greek Christian). It is also noticeable that the route of transmission for some modern Sicilian surnames of Arabic origin was through the medium of Greek. The indicators for socioreligious, cultural and linguistic change thus offer evidence for the tattered margins of the Muslim population and their absorption into the Sicilian ‘Greek’ community by degrees of assimilation. In this sliding reconfiguration of affiliations, some Muslims reinvented their identity as Arabic-speaking Christians, while Arabic-speaking – or Arabic- and Greek-speaking – Christians reverted more openly towards their Greek origins. Ultimately, this memory and identity would gently fade as the Greek Christians became ‘Latinised’ in both speech and in their attendance at Latin-rite churches. For the Sicilian Greeks, this was a very protracted process, and the Greek rite survived in Calabria into the sixteenth century, as did Italo-Greek dialects which died out only in the 1960s after 2,500 years of use in the region. These complex transitions varied according to time and place and for which the scant surviving evidence is open to interpretation. Nor were personal name changes always a rectilinear progression, as another family of Christians from Corleone show. In this case, the father of a household was called Nikiphoros (Greek: ‘bearer of victory’), the son of a certain Majūna. However, their sons were called by Arabic names: Abū Ghālib (literally, ‘father of victory’) and Khilfa. Here, the generational naming transition was from Greek to Arabic, not vice-versa. The near-equivalent meanings suggest they were toying with the languages and provide a vital shred of evidence for the survival of Arabic–Greek bilingualism among Christians settled on the predominantly Muslim estates of western Sicily.

In both Falcandus and the marginal note of Romuald, it was claimed that the palace eunuchs outwardly looked like Christians. However, such adoption of identical garb for Muslim and Christian men outside the palaces may have been exceptional. During the anti-Muslim riots of 1161–2, Falcandus commented that some Palermitan Muslims, ‘by secretly slipping away in flight, or assuming the guise (habitum) of Christians, escaped to the safer Saracen towns in the southern part of Sicily’. Here, the implication is that there was a visual difference between Arab-Muslims and Arab-Christians, but it was one which could be easily masked. The late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century illustrations of Peter of Eboli, which include a depiction of the (male) Muslim population of Palermo, also suggest that Muslims looked different, but the images are so deliberately stylised that they demand a degree of figurative interpretation.

In contrast, the young Palermitan Christian women whom Ibn Jubayr saw entering George of Antioch’s church were indistinguishable from Muslim women. He added that 

they are eloquent speakers of Arabic and cover themselves with veils. They go out at this aforesaid festival [at Christmas 1184] clothed in gold silk, covered in shining wraps, colourful veils and with light, gilded sandals. They appear at their churches bearing all the finery of Muslim women in their attire, henna and perfume.

The conundrum here is whether the young women were sartorially indistinct from Muslims because they represented a conservative social force and, as indigenous ‘Greek’ Christians, they were still thoroughly Arabised (socially and culturally) and Arabicised (linguistically)? Or were they first generation converts who had yet to assimilate into the mores of the ‘Latin’ Christian community which they found quite alien?

If Ibn Ḥawqal’s tenth-century description of rural family structures was correct: namely, that the men were Muslim and the women Christian, then it is possible that family units were unusually susceptible to socio-religious splits along gender lines. In this respect, Ibn Jubayr expressed specific concerns about the dissolution of families through apostasy when disputes arose within them. One wonders how much of the Sicilian Muslim community had dissipated unnoticed as the men (some of whom may have been converts to Islam in the first place) gradually adopted the ways of their mothers, daughters, wives and sisters. However, that there is no solution to unravelling this area of the social and cultural history of the island, is in itself proof of the complexity and ill-defined relationships between Sicilian Arab-Christians, ‘Greeks’ and local Muslims.

The question of dress code is important since it indicates a degree of separation between culture, fashion and the arts on one level, and political power on another, such that it was possible for Christians to emulate luxurious ‘Oriental’ styles even though Muslims were obviously marginalised as a politico-religious underclass.

Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy, pp. 225-227

[gregarnott]

𝐿𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑦 𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑎

Before playing the role of Luca Brasi (first photograph) in the 1972 classic, “The Godfather” Leonardo Passafaro aka Lenny Montana upheld a successful career as a professional wrestler (ring names: Len Crosby, Chief Chewaki, The Zebra Kid) as well as working as an associate/enforcer in the Colombo Family, one of New York’s “Five Families.” When “The Godfather” movie was being produced there was an uproar from the Italian-American Civil Rights League, headed by Montana’s boss and Colombo Family patriarch, Joseph Colombo, however after some major adjustments to the script the film was allowed to go ahead with an exception, Joe Colombo had a number of his enforcers and affiliates on the set at all times to oversee things; one of those happened to be Lenny Montana. Director, Francis Ford Coppola saw Lenny as a perfect fit for Don Vito Corleone’s head enforcer and casted him straight away. Montana’s awkwardness and inexperience contributed to the authenticity of the role and caught the eye of many in the film industry which ultimately allowed him to mould an acting career and star in a variation of future productions such as, “Matilda” (1978) and “Magnum P.I” (1982).

[inflagranteinnuendo]

Thoughts on what each of the boys would be like on your wedding day? (Personally, I feel like Barba's the kind of guy who tears up just a tiny bit when you walk down the aisle because you look so amazing lol)

dearly beloved we are gathered here today to unite these two people in hoooooooly matrimony here we go are you ready for some HARDCORE FLUFF????

EDIT: sorry it’s taking such a long time!!! this turned out to be long af it’s like a 3-in-1 because apparently i have a lot of feels about weddings and the boys

MICHAEL

his family being (irrefutably) law enforcement royalty, you had planned a formal, traditional affair that was way more lavish than the wedding you used to dream about when you were 5 years old and shipped yourself with Disney royalty

the night before, you went to bed in separate hotels and you missed him so much it felt like you had a gaping hole in your chest

when you went to lie down on your back, you find a literal green pea poking you in the side

you call him, giggling because that’s so mike and he laughs at you

he tells you that he can’t wait to marry the Prinsessen paa Ærten

you’re so touched by his thoughtful silliness that you half-laugh half-sob

cue Even Stronger Feelings of Yearning™ 

your friends and his friends conspire to keep you from seeing each other during the prep, but it doesn’t stop you from calling each other and updating each other (”is your hair ready yet?”-“you make it sound like i’m baking it in the oven”)

when the music finally cues you to appear at the end of the aisle and he sees you for the first time, he can’t help but smile giddily, his warm, warm eyes dancing with love

you just want to rush up to him into his arms and kiss him but wow is that the governor of the state of new york 

you both are visibly impatient the more the minister drones on (traditional weddings, amirite?)

mike gets a little choked up during his vows and that sets your waterworks off and he squeezes your hands until you trust your voice not to break to speak your vows

“you may kiss the bride” 

FINALLY!!!!!!!!! you both reach for each other at the same time and flip the bird at traditions by enthusiastically making out in front of 300 pompous high ranking peeps

RAFAEL

Both of you were relatively high profile people because of his political affiliations and recent press coverage of his cases so you were a bit (a lot) of a power couple

As such despite the fact that you both kinda wanted an intimate affair with family and friends, you ended up having your wedding in freaking midtown at St Patrick’s 

the evening before the big day, you come home from some last minute errands 

the apartment is quiet and you call your fiancé tiredly

he comes out of the kitchen with a glass of wine and hands it to you with a lingering kiss

“i thought you were supposed to be at Lucia’s tonight?”

“yes but i wasn’t exactly going to just leave you when you’re this stressed”

and you kind of melt because this is the man you are going to call your husband in less than 24h and you still can’t get over how he’s so unbearably kind 

he leans his forehead against yours and you both breathe together quietly

“i know this got blown out of proportions but it’s just about you and me.”

you end up falling asleep on the couch together

when you wake up he’s already left and there’s a note on the coffee table telling you to relax and take it easy, he’s going to take care of the last minute crap

‘you just have to show up -preferably not in pyjamas but i’ll accept it if you concede that morning crisps are far superior to lucky charms’

and maybe he was actually expecting you to show up in his old harvard crimson shirt with the half-torn collar, because the second he sees you on the opposite end of the aisle his eyes widen

the closer you came, the glossier his eyes got

you get lost in each other’s adoring gazes and completely tune out the rest of the world

he confidently delivers his vows, his clear voice ringing in the cathedral like a good ADA but he struggles to hold himself still when you say yours

he dives for your lips the second the minister gives the cue and only Lucia’s teary laugh from the front bench draws him away to grin at her bashfully

SONNY

You and Sonny have agreed very early on when you were still dating that weddings were a family affair and he laughed himself to death when you tried to out-Don Corleone him 

In the days leading to your wedding you both squeeze as much pre-marital sex in as you physically could because Sonny playfully laments after each round that “this is it. this is the best pre-marital sex i’ll ever get” and you smack him each time before proving him wrong

The night before the big day, you were kept separate by your respective families but you’re both so excited and giddy that you can’t stop calling each other and at some point you let slip that you had a little surprise for him for your honeymoon

“Bella, c’mon, give me a hint?”

“well, well, well, detective Carisi, is this how you conduct investigations? You beg the suspect nicely for the location of the murder weapon?”

“oh now you’re a suspect in a homicide?” he crows at you, his voice tinny through the cheap hotel phone. “is this how it’s gonna be, Mrs. Smith?”

“you tell me, Mr. Smith.”

He chuckles a bit and softens. “i’m so glad i’m marrying you.”

you curl up under the down comforter and get teary at his words. “even if i don’t give up where i hid the knife?” you sass back half-heartedly in an attempt to lighten the mood. “because on the advice of counsel, i decline to answer pursuant to my fifth amendment rights”

you hear him huff “let’s just hope you don’t say that when the minister asks you if you’ll take me as your husband” he says with laughter in his voice

“I can’t wait to be your wife, my Sonny” you sigh dreamily. 

“Imagine how good our first round of post-marital sex would be…”

you both crack up

and when you’re suddenly nerve wracked as Pachelbel serenades your way down the aisle you remember his words and almost burst out laughing

Sonny looks kind of half-stunned, half-breathless at your approach but he grins when he sees you trying to hold back an unlady-like guffaw

so when you reach him, all you can think of is how funny ‘post-marital sex’ sounds and imagine Sonny saying it in Don Corleone’s voice

your mirth was contagious and before long Sonny couldn’t keep enough of a straight face during his vows and makes a freudian slip

everyone laughs and you suddenly realize that this moment was a perfect reflection of how you imagine your life with your sunshine: full of laughter, lightness, and love

you don’t even wait before the minister tells you to kiss, Sonny dips you dramatically and kisses the living daylights out of you

Et voilà whew that was a marathon of weddings ;)

(img credit x)

[bestdjkit]

Fabled Denver Nightclub Beta Shut Down for Violating Social Distancing Guidelines

Arrivederci, Beta.

Fabled Lower Downtown Denver venue Beta Nightclub has been shut down indefinitelyfollowing reports of repeated violations of the city's Safer-At-Home order, which was instated due to the impact of COVID-19.

The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment pulled the plug on the nightclub following an event on June 20th, 2020 in which the venue was reportedly packed with people, who did not wear face coverings and partied with no semblance of social distancing.

Video obtained by local FOX affiliate KDVR-TV seems to corroborate those claims.

According to the news station, DDPHE had already issued a citation to Beta on June 16th for violating the Safer-At-Home order by operating as a bar. Following the slap on the wrist, the City of Denver received eleven complaints from the public that Beta was open for business.

"We did everything we could, you know, to comply," said Valentes Corleons, Beta Nightclub's owner. "There are some customers not willing to keep their masks on or comply with social distancing and now we are suffering. We got shut down."

Corleons told KDVR that his venue declined entry to 700 patrons on the night of June 20th to maintain a capacity of 100 in addition to performing temperature checks at the door. He also stated that the club provided masks to those who showed up without one. "Every time somebody tried to dance, tried to get up, we asked them, 'Please, this is the rule. Please comply'," Corleons added. "You know, we did our best."

It's important to note that the City of Denver informed Corleons that he can appeal the order to close his venue. More information on that to come.

from Best DJ Kit https://edm.com/news/beta-nightclub-shut-down

[lostinafictionaluniverse]

Let's talk about one surprise introduction that did happen toward the end of the episode: Hot Dog! I know Hot Dog's casting was a huge point of contention for you and Cole Sprouse.

Aguirre-Sacasa: Listen, that was all Cole. He really wanted Hot Dog. He really wanted a sheepdog to play Hot Dog. He was really passionate about that. It was very hard to find a sheepdog in Vancouver who could deliver all of the nuance that Hot Dog required. It all happened at the last second. Basically, when we got the dog, I said to Cole, "We're going to try and make this work, but if this dog comes in and he can't deliver as Hot Dog, we're just going to do the scene without Hot Dog." And he was like, "That dog better deliver." And the dog did great! You'll be seeing more of Hot Dog in Season 2 for sure.

Cole must be a real stickler when it comes to the Archie canon.

Aguirre-Sacasa: In a way, Cole is even more of a purist than I am, especially when it comes to Jughead and the Jughead mythology. For me, I was like, "I don't know if the Serpents are going to have a sheepdog. He's more like a junkyard dog. TV adaptations reinvent stuff all the time." And Cole was like, "Fine. But you're not reinventing Hot Dog." He had a really good point. Cole is an artist. He's very passionate, and I'm glad Hot Dog is a sheepdog and that he's now in our universe.

Jughead kinda became a Southside Serpent in this episode. There's this great moment when he's putting on his Serpents jacket, and Betty is giving him this look like, "Who are you right now?" How is this going to affect their relationship in Season 2?

Aguirre-Sacasa: That moment in particular certainly provides a lot of fodder and tension for them. We really think of that moment as the end of The Godfather when Diane Keaton is looking at Al Pacino, Michael Corleone, being surrounded by the Mafia family and she's on the outside looking at him. That's what we think of when we look at them. That's also a mythic moment in the Bughead mythology.

Betty spends a lot of this episode defending the Serpents, but in that moment you see that maybe she's not as cool with Jughead's affiliation with them as she thought she was.

Aguirre-Sacasa: Between Jughead going to a new high school, Jughead moving to a new part of town, and Jughead following in his father's footsteps, I think any one of those things Betty could maybe shrug off. But all of them? And knowing that Jughead has always felt like an outsider in her circle? I'd be worried, too.

It couldn't just end with them saying "I love you," could it? There had to be drama.

Aguirre-Sacasa: This is Riverdale. There's never a happy ending [laughs].

Finally, I'm curious about Jughead's narration. He's going to continue narrating Season 2, right?

Aguirre-Sacasa: Yes.

How far into the future is Jughead narrating this story?

Aguirre-Sacasa: It's a little bit of dramatic license, sort of like the stage manager in Our Town. He's our Rod Serling. He exists out of normal conventional time. He could be doing it from many different time periods. We tried to really be specific about that for the first couple episodes, and then it was like, "You know what, guys? Just go with it."

(X)

[digmagazineblr]

Megroc Single Right Now affiliated with Teamhunc Management. They rendered help with a few projects. Dj Magicmike-Spud Producer Corleone (at Atlanta, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bypy6PwAnma/?igshid=wybs2toq5f6a

[azspot]

Personally, I had always thought Junior was the Sonny Corleone of the family, hot-headed and impulsive, aligning himself with alt-right characters and using Twitter as his preferred method of beating down those who made him angry. During the campaign there was a lot of gossip about his youthful problems with alcohol and his difficult relationship with his father. He was a troubled young man who grew up to become an aggressive and nasty political operator during his father’s campaign. I wrote about his ugly affiliations and racist proclivities last September, expressing my concern that the thuggish firstborn was planning a political career of his own. The good news is that it looks as if we won’t have to worry about that. The New York Times has published a series of reports over the weekend and on Monday revealing that in June of 2016, Donald Jr. had invited his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and the Trump campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort, to a meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who promised to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton. The reason people are calling him Fredo in this case is that the Trump scion has clumsily explained what happened by repeatedly changing his story and basically implicating himself in possible collusion.

Hullabaloo

[princeofny]

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees – Book Review

It would be a stretch to compare Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees to a piece by Leni Riefenstahl mirroring content usually produced and presented on the Yankees’ state-sanctioned propaganda ministry, the YES Network. Were that the case, it would have been penned by Jack Curry, had twice the ingratiating obnoxiousness and a quarter of the skill.

Still, within the first 20 pages, the direction of the narrative was clear as the authors – Bob Klapisch and Paul Solortaroff – dumped on, in order, Derek Jeter, Joe Girardi and Joe Torre. Ranging from a Yankees icon to a Hall of Fame manager to a key role player and World Series winning manager, they had fallen out of favor in the Bronx for a variety of sins and were cast out to the purgatory not limited to estrangement, but to open hostility.

This is no coincidence as it occurs simultaneously to avoiding foreshadowing (or foreplay) or any other writerly (or sex-based) techniques and going straight into the borderline pornographic worship of Brian Cashman. Reading between the thinly veiled lines, Cashman could also be referred to as “The Man Who Could Do No Wrong.”

Part of the book’s disappointment and failure is not the story itself, but of the expectations that preceded the news that it was being written in the first place. For those who read baseball tell-alls like Ball Four, The Bronx Zoo and others, a yearlong case study followed by an autopsy regardless of the outcome holds tremendous allure. Unfortunately, the writers retreat to the safety of the current trend of “baseball business” books, most of which pale in comparison to the initial and admittedly interesting while incredibly flawed and misunderstood Moneyball. Post-Moneyball, The Extra 2% was the next and last of the immersing stories that had yet to be told. After that came the love letters to the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Chicago Cubs and Theo Epstein, the Houston Astros and Jeff Luhnow, and a few others, all of which were agenda-based, misleading and largely dull.

It’s tiresome not just because the stories have basically been told, albeit in different forms with a different cast of characters, but because the stories are so repetitive and devoid of criticism. This goes beyond the caveated individual mistakes that turned into learning experiences with substantial blame doled out on others since the main characters certainly couldn’t have been at fault as that would have sabotaged the entire goal of the story: to create a hero even if there wasn’t one.

The book doesn’t enter the realm of The Yankee Years by Torre and Tom Verducci where Torre aired his gripes, executed his vendettas and cemented his self-created and media-promoted visage of a combination Vito Corleone and the Pope, but Cashman and Torre’s perception of what occurred during that time and, by extension, how that impacted his replacement Girardi, are key parts of Inside the Empire.

The baseball business book model might be what publishers are looking for and what editors steer the narrative towards, but for those who want an insider’s perspective, it simply no longer works. We want meat, not cotton candy.

Perhaps Klapisch was scarred by what was, on the surface, a legitimate attempt at a tell-all with The Worst Team Money Could Buy about the disastrous 1992 New York Mets. The book itself was also a disappointment for those who hoped for a day-by-day diary of spending spree, a cast of compelling characters and a promising season that quickly devolved into a nightmare, but it was far better than this patched together mess, a book that tries to appeal to the Yankee fan and retain access while taking care not to offend anyone who is still closely affiliated with the club.

As much as Klapisch says those Mets players labeling him as someone who can’t be trusted did not affect him one way or the other; that he was not intimidated when Bobby Bonilla physically threatened him, for someone like him, who is and has for a long time been under the impression that he was not just a journalist who covers the team, but a peer who sees himself as a player, this is a scar that could have been reopened had he been completely honest about the 2018 Yankees and not diluted the tale so as not to “betray” anyone in whose confidence he was taken.

And therein lies the problem. The authors traded access for the lavishing of praise upon the characters who remained in the Yankee family.

Aaron Judge? Awesome player and human who everyone loves.

Didi Gregorius? Emerging leader whose good humor and affability masks an intense competitor.

CC Sabathia? The Yankees’ version of Yoda.

Aaron Boone? Wonderful guy whose even keeled demeanor was a marked departure from Girardi’s twitchy tightness.

It goes on and on.

At its end, there is an open question of Cashman’s blueprint of power above all else, ignoring situational hitting and strikeouts, wondering whether he would eventually look at the Red Sox and Astros and admit that perhaps adaptation needed to extend beyond the restructuring of the organization and adherence to cold numbers, accepting that the analysts didn’t know everything and there was nuance to the tactics by using the strategic single rather than every swing being for the fences.

The one remaining Yankee who did get criticized was Giancarlo Stanton, but even that was limited to a hand-wringing, halfhearted musing of his positives and negatives.

Gary Sanchez – the player who deserves to be slaughtered for his inattention, lack of fundamentals and bottom line laziness – is largely spared from a deserved lashing.

Boone is protected from criticism for inexplicable reasons that one can only surmise of him being a nice guy who is so completely devoid of any responsibility apart from following orders and providing monotonous platitudes that the team could have won 100 games if they stationed a mannequin in a uniform at the corner of the dugout and used a series of wires for him to perform “managerial functions.”

It all reverts to Cashman and his vision; his goal; his intent when masterfully taking charge of the organization and nudging Hal Steinbrenner into the direction he wanted.

The excuses are mind-numbing and fall into precisely what the late Boss, George Steinbrenner, would not have tolerated not because he was an unhinged, raving lunatic (he was), but because he would have been right not to want to hear that Sanchez's lackadaisical behavior was because he was injured; that Boone's absence of fire was a positive; that Stanton repeatedly striking out was part of the $300 million package. Nor would he have quietly acquiesced to the other explanations as to what went wrong as a team that won 100 games was discarded like irrelevant debris by its most hated rivals.

Cashman tried to assuage the concerns of fans and media members who were slowly coming to grips with the reality that this was no longer the Yankees of The Boss by proclaiming the organization a “fully operational Death Star,” implying that the so-called Evil Empire had gotten its payroll under control, rebuilt the farm system sans the Boss’s constant interference and template of preferring to trade young players for proven veterans while spending on exorbitant free agents, and was again prepared to combine tactical decisions with price being no object to return the Yankees to baseball’s pantheon not with a sole championship to break their decade-long drought, but with a team that was set to be the next dynasty.

In truth, it was unabashed hyperbole. Without Darth Vader, there is no Death Star. And The Boss was the organizational Darth Vader and proud of it. Instead, the Yankees’ ultimate weapon is more something out of Mel Brooks with Cashman as Rick Moranis’s “Dark Helmet,” someone who looks unimposing in person, sounds unimposing in practice, and is a technocrat who seized power piecemeal with an admittedly admirable Machiavellian efficiency and has decided to use that power to be like every other supposedly forward-thinking organization in sports and hope for a chance at a championship rather than winning the championship itself. The constant statements about accountability are nonexistent under this regime because no one is getting fired if they fail; players are unafraid of checking their names on social medial for a missive from the deranged Boss; and a Little League credo of “just try as hard as you can” is deemed sufficient.

And that’s not the Yankees that George Steinbrenner built.

The book could have been an exposé of what would otherwise have been a failed season for the Yankees, but was instead a borderline celebration of what they have become with the architects credited for its own sake. Had they ignored the fallout of telling truths that would have angered the organization, the book could have been excellent. Instead, it’s another generic tale about the baseball business, the kind we’ve seen too much of already to be memorable.

[rjzimmerman]

My words in this post are broader than what the New York Times did in hiring Bret Stephens, who left the Wall Street Journal. I’m arguing for the idea that we are better off listening than yelling.

I’m posting this, because I disagree with the notion that any nationally-respected media has to tow a consistent ideological theme. The editorial position of the New York Times and its journalism are most definitely antagonistic toward climate change denial and clearly supportive of most environmental and climate actions. However, people forget that once in a while, more frequently than not, the New York Times will publish op-ed pieces by people who don’t adhere to the strict green dogma. Once they published an article by a person affiliated with a Koch Brothers organization arguing against expansion of our public lands. Did I agree with it? Nope. Did I do something about the underlying concept (expanding public lands) to make such more viable? Yep, because I now understood better the source of the objections from a rational perspective: better to spend money on fixing than growing, but I found ways to do both simultaneously, and advocated such to decision-makers.

In addition, Bret Stephens is a brilliant writer. I rarely agree with him, but his positions are usually thoughtful. Most importantly, to me, Bret Stephens is a more-or-less traditional conservative who is loudly and strongly anti-trump, and has been since the beginning. That part I thoroughly enjoy.

Is he a climate change denier? Not really. He pokes fun at the extreme advocacy of green organizations and their leaders for pushing their own dogma at the expense of progress. Compromise to many of them is unthinkable, and guess what, here we are.......with very little in the post-President Obama era. In fact, in many interviews, he has strongly asserted that he is not a denier, and is a strong proponent of science and the scientific approach. Again, he challenges the strategy and tactics and noise of green organizations, not necessarily their long-term objectives. This, from the Huffington Post:

In a statement to the Huffington Post (link), Stephens described himself as a “climate agnostic.”

“Is the earth warming?” he asked. “That’s what the weight of scientific evidence indicates. Is it at least partially, and probably largely, a result of man-made carbon emissions? Again, that seems to be the case. Am I ‘anti-science’? Hell, no.”

“I say ‘seems’ because the history of science is replete with consensus positions that have evolved ― or crumbled ― under the weight of additional scientific evidence,” he continued. “Our radically changing understanding of cancer and of the ways of curing it is a salient example of what I mean.”

Stephens has gripes with environmental advocates, describing the “near-religious fervor with which the climate-advocacy community seeks to win converts and castigate heretics as morally abominable people.”

Plus, and this is important. I read the Wall Street Journal almost daily. I appreciate its journalism, and I also am a masochist when it comes to my blood pressure. I will read its editorial pages, sometimes the writings of Bret Stephens, and sometimes get pissed. Why? As Marlon Brando, playing Vito Corleone in Godfather Part II (1974), said:

My father taught me many things here — he taught me in this room. He taught me — keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

If you ignore what the other guys are saying, how can you effectively promote your own position? Not possible. How can a democracy function without understanding all sides to an argument? It can’t. Witness what’s happening today in the Senate and the House of Representatives as evidence.

[narcisbolgor-blog]

Trump Aides Freaking Out Over Don Jr.’s Russia Email: The ‘Sum Of All Fears’

President Donald Trumps son, his former campaign chairman, and his son-in-law were all told that the opposition research they were soliciting on campaign rival Hillary Clinton was coming from the Russian government, according to bombshell revelations made Tuesday morning.

In an email to Donald Trump Jr., a friend offered to connect the presidents eldest son to a Russian government attorney who could relay very high level and sensitive information as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

I love it, Trump Jr. responded in writing. He forwarded the email to campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and one of his closest advisers.

The revelation of these emails immediately sent shockwaves through the White House.

This is sum of all fears stuff. Its what weve all been dreading, said one White House official who is now exploring the possibility of retaining an attorney, a step described as purely precautionary.

The email chain, which Trump Jr. posted to Twitter on Tuesday ahead of a New York Times report detailing its contents, is the most concrete evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government agents to tip the election. It also severely complicates months of vehement White House denials that Trump or his associates ever contacted individuals affiliated with the Russian governmentlet alone worked with them to damage Clintons candidacy. The president and his aides have routinely written off media reports to that effect as fake news and attempts by Obama-era bureaucrats to tar the president through potentially illegal leaks to the press.

Trump Jr. himself called the allegations of collusion disgusting and so phony.

The Daily Beast contacted multiple senior White House staffers on Tuesday to solicit defenses of Trump Jr., even anonymously. Each individual immediately referred questions to Juniors legal and public-relations team, emphasizing that the presidents son is not a federal employee. According to a New York Times report published Monday, Kushners representatives referred all requests for comments back to an earlier statement, and stated that Kushner, Juniors brother-in-law, is officially deferring questions on what happened in that meeting to Trump Jr. himself.

In a statement, Trump Jr. insisted that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the attorney with whom he, Manafort, and Kushner subsequently met, was not a Russian government official.

That is not in dispute. But the friendRob Goldstone, an entertainment publicistwho put Veselnitskaya in touch with Trump Jr. described the information Veselnitskaya was offering as originating from the crown prosecutor of Russia. (Such a position does not exist; though Goldstone claimed on Tuesday that crown prosecutor was referring to Veselnitskaya.)

Fredo Trump

The series of revelations surrounding Trump Jr.s communications with Russian officials have damaged his standing within the presidents political inner circle. As The Daily Beast reported on Sunday, opinion of Trumps eldest son among some of Trumps senior aides, both past and present, is vanishingly low. Since the campaign, a popular, behind-his-back nickname for Trump Jr. among these advisers has been Fredo, referring to Fredo Corleone, the insecure and weak failure of a son in The Godfather series who ends up causing major damage to the family.

Over the past week, one senior White House official and a former top Trump campaign aide both independently and bluntly described the presidents son as an idiot one who played a role in the campaign and Trumps political rise simply because he shares the same DNA, the official noted.

Trump Jr. also now finds himself in trouble on Capitol Hill where numerous Senators were insisting that he come testify about his email exchanges.

When I saw that, it just occurred to me that if I were in a similar situation and that request was made, I wouldve called law enforcement, because I think it does cross a line of a foreign government trying to influence our election, said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was pretty explicit. It was pretty direct.

No One Wants To Defend The Guy

White House and former campaign officials who were reached by The Daily Beast spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to vent about President Trumps first-born son. Trump, Jr. did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story and the White House communications office and the presidents outside legal team did not respond either. Manaforts spokesman Jason Maloni would only tell The Daily Beast that the former campaign chairman had nothing to add as of Tuesday noontime.

Another senior official who appears to have nothing to add for the moment is the president himself who has, in the past, repeatedly stressed that allegations of his collusion with Russian actors were fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.

On Monday morning, after much of this news had already broken, @realDonaldTrump made sure to tweet about his daughter Ivanka, Clintons daughter Chelsea, James Comey, and even some Fox & Friends clips. As of noon on Tuesday, he had yet to tweet out a single defense of his eldest son.

The presidents legal team hasnt been keen to defend the first son either. After initial reports on the meeting with Veselnitskaya, Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trumps outside counsel, replied: "The President was not aware of and did not attend the meeting."

After it was revealed that Trump Jr. was soliciting Clinton oppo from a Kremlin-tied lawyer, Corallo simply copy-and-pasted and blasted out the exact same statement.

But finally, on Tuesday afternoon during the White House press briefing, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a conspicuously brief, dispassionate statement from the president on his sons situation: My son is a high quality person and I applaud his transparency.

Andrew Desiderio contributed reporting.

Updated 2:50 p.m. to include statement from President Trump.

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