Gestures

When I was a kid, I’m ashamed to recall that anyone of Italian decent who wanted to run for political office had to Anglo-size their name, just to get a chance of getting elected. If you’re name ended in a vowel,with the exception of Costello, your political career was doomed. Boston was more or less like Chicago and other major cities; it was run by the Irish.

Fast forward forty years and now you see many of the local elected officials with names ending in vowels – many of the O’s are at the end of a name instead of at the beginning (Menino, Consalvo, Scappicchio, DeMasi, Travaglini, etc.). We even have a couple of Supreme Court Justices whose parentage is of Italian lineage (Scalia, Alito).

I will venture to say that most if not all of these people were exposed to the Italian culture from the day they were born. They were taught first and foremost to get an education and to respect the country that helped many of their grandparents get out of poverty and secondly they were taught to maintain the Italian customs and traditions.

There are many customs and traditions and they vary according to where in Italy your ancestors came from. One thing that is common throughout is the art of communication. There is verbal (shut up, stop, I love you, etc.) and then there is the nonverbal type (a roll of the eyes, a bite of the knuckles, a clasp of the hands, etc.). When you watch two Italians conversing and they combine the verbal and non verbal it’s like watching a conductor leading a symphonic orchestra as they play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Italians have nothing to hide. Watch two men or women converse from a distance and you will get a fairly good idea of what they’re talking about just from the gestures. Some gestures are universal to many languages but some are known only if you’ve been exposed to them previously.

One of the things that has recently been put under a great big spotlight is a form of non verbal communication; the hand gesture. While on the topic of hand gestures, wasn’t Jackie Mason (a Jewish comedian) barred from a TV show years ago for using what was interpreted to be an offensive hand gesture?

The hand gesture that has got everybody in a tizzy is one where all the fingers of the hand are put under your chin and then with chin raised the fingers are flicked forward to the other person (see illustration). In Italian this is used in lieu of the words, me ne frego, I don’t give a damn. This would have been apropos non verbal communication in the film Casablanca (another word with a vowel, ah!) when Bogart says, “Frankly Charlotte, I don’t give a damn!”

I’m glad that the media has been paying so much attention to something Italian but please don’t try to interpret things that you don’t understand. One columnist by the name of Egan has been putting her Irish spin on it. Forgive me, but maybe your name used to be oregano, and you dropped a few letters in order to get a job at an Irish paper.

Why do you use the Sopranos as your source of information? Next time go to a professor of Italian languages or ask anyone from your husband’s side of the family for an explanation. I realize you’re trying to help your newspaper stay afloat – but "give us the facts maam" as Sergeant Friday would say.

Something’s wrong when a newspaper devotes the front page to a hand gesture in light of all the serious problems and issues that confront us each day. GET SERIOUS and leave the jokes to the comedians. I don’t think you’ve sobered up yet from your St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

This gesture is now being sent in response to your article - me ne frego. If you still think it's offensive, so be it.