First
order of business on the Good Ship Cosmic Bobo is to review a book I just read
by Deirdre Marie Capone, titled: Uncle
Al Capone - The Untold Story From Inside His Family.
The
book is fascinating in a few aspects, predictable in a "not bad"
sense, agreeable in many ways, and chock full of pictures, which is always a
plus, especially when reading the Kindle Edition... which often screws you out
of pix. An aside is Bugliosi's book on
JFK. Thousands of pages, but no images in the Kindle Version.
During
the reading the pictures were sparse, breaking no ground. At the end is a
treasure chest of pictures, though some are not well focused. You still see
images you've never seen before. I was extremely pleased, unlike the Chicago
Press book with their glass negative images. They couldn't even get the
direction right, i.e. the famous shot of Al and Sonny at the ballpark with
Sonny and Big Al's scar on the wrong sides. Unforgivable for a press edition. I
digress.
Some
of the reviews trash this book as having been a trumped up memory in an age
where there is no one left to argue about it. That's garbage. I think Ms Capone
waited until she offended a few less family members by coming out. Self
Serving? What book isn't?
Some
brought up that Ms Capone had an unbelievable (literally) memory, yet I can
remember back to my second year, maybe earlier, as I remember being in a crib,
too. I probably looked like Jimmy Cagney raking my baby cup across the bars.
For the sake of argument, let's say that her memory is not as tight and sure as
she writes. She spent enough time with her family, them going over old stories
and memories over and over until it was pretty well in her head. My mother told
me something I did that I could not recall, but if I were to write about it, I
would write as if from memory.
One
reviewer vehemently wrote that NO gangster would tell anything to anyone about
anything they did. I can't swear how close Ms Capone was to her grandfather
Ralph, but he lived well into her adulthood and could very easily have told her
"how things were."
Oh,
snap! All the people Big Al was responsible for killing. Here we go with my
take on government... I mean organized crime... I mean government -- SAME
THING!
Big
Al killed people. So have all of our presidents, the worst being Honest Abe.
Big Al committed other crimes. So does our government every day every one of
those 530 odd congressman, executives, and justices go to work. The very least
by robbing us by not doing their jobs. The very most by sanctioning laws to
suit themselves. Bastards one and all.
They
took liquor away from us. Big Al gave it back. They make prostitution illegal,
meaning I can pay two people fifty thousand dollars to have sex on film, but I
can't buy it for myself for a few hundred. I'm not defending prostitution, but
it is our criminal government that makes it profitable for criminals.
You
must remember that when Al Capone came to Chicago
we were less than two decades past Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid getting
killed or escaping. I am not really fond of people being killed, but it was a
different era, the main difference being that while "The Outfit" was
coming into its own; so were law enforcement. Let's not forget that asshole in
a dress, J. Edgar Hoover: The guy who had people shot in the back, shot the
wrong criminals, and made Ma Barker out to be Elizabeth Bathory, when there is
not one iota, not squat, not an ort of evidence to show that she did anything
at all wrong, save some less than savory breakfasts, says Al Creepy Karpis,
whose word I believe over anything JEH and our wonderful crime lords in
Washington say.
So
we had a mob, the old style, like the Six Families Tongs in San Francisco. There weren't as many renegade
actions (random gang crapola) like we have now that our "legitimate"
government has grown into it's own. I have a much better chance of being taken
down by our government or the cracks in the system they caused than I would
have in Al Capone's Chicago.
So,
Deirdre Capone paints her family to be a tad rosier than they might be. She is
offsetting decades of one-sidedness that have been put out there. Maybe there's
a good reason people still show a whispering respect in Chicago when Big Al is brought up.
My
only issue is that Ms Capone mentions somewhere towards the start of her book
that there is someone claiming to be Al's Grandson. This person would like Al
exhumed for DNA. That is not necessary if a known blood relation will
volunteer. I cannot imagine everyone in the family NOT wanting to know if they
have a cousin.
Take
no shame in the name Capone. Different times. Different standards. Perhaps (I
should say absolutely) we would have less crime now if "The Outfit"
ran the country.
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