An analysis I can’t refuse

Sarah’s son Robert (who wrote a great post on Post Modernism) has done such a marvelous job with the Blogfather T-shirt design that I just ordered one.

(Hey what’s with that Valentine’s Day rose? Coincidence?)

Quite incidentally (and quite fascinatingly, from a historical perspective),when I first read about the design, it was in Glenn’s post last night about a mobster who started a blog:

THE BLOGFATHER? All hail the ‘Blog-Father’: Waiting for trial in 6 murders, ‘Tommy Shots’ takes to Web.

After which Glenn quipped,

Sorry, dude, but there’s only one BlogFather.

Damned right about that. But what really blew me away was that the linked piece mentioned a guy I remembered from long, long ago. I’m no spring chicken and it blew me away to learn the guy — one Sonny Franzese — is still alive:

Gioeli [the man improperly called “the Blogfather”] whines that he has been depicted as a “monster” to sell newspapers but, under the heading “About me,” he boasts, “See me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear.”

He rants about jail conditions – hard mattresses and the lack of toenail clippers – and shoddy medical treatment, the government and the media.

Forty-six followers are listed on the blog including a “Fr. Peter,” who appears to be a priest. Gioeli even puts a call-out to snitches for information about witnesses and FBI agents.

Gioeli came to the defense of 94-year-old Colombo underboss John (Sonny) Franzese after the oldfella was hit with an eight-year prison sentence for shaking down strip joints.

“It is heartbreaking and disturbing to see my government kick an old man when he is down,” Gioeli wrote.

Recently, he attacked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – who last week declined to seek the death penalty against Gioeli for Dols’ murder – and the anti-racketeering RICO statute.

“Great entertainment for everyone except the Italian Americans who can’t break the hold of this stereotype and are paying with their lives,” he wrote.

Stereotypes are one thing, and Holder is in no position to judge anyone. Still, I am not at all impressed by the attempt to impart to Gioeli (a Johnny-come-lately blogger if ever there was one) the title of “Blogfather” — and I cannot imagine a more supreme act of lese majeste.

An act of disrespect.

To Glenn Reynolds, who in the Blogosphere is, simply, a man of respect!

Nevertheless, there’s no denying an amazing fact: that Sonny Franzese (who has a Wiki page) is out there in the real world drawing eight years in prison for shaking down strip joints — AT AGE NINETY FOUR!

Say what you will, but wouldn’t most of us like to have such vim and vigor? 

Franzese rang a bell because as a kid, I read about how he beat a rap when he was accused of (and acquitted of) killing Ernie “The Hawk” Rupolo. Rupolo himself was quite a piece of work, who not only had to be killed several times over, but had spent most of his life working as a hit man with only one eye and a .45 caliber bullet lodged in his head:

An autopsy carried out by Medical Examiner Milton Helpern, revealed that Ernie had gone down hard. He had been shot in the head and upper chest four times, and stabbed another eighteen. Digging in among the macerated and putrid flesh, the doctor found five misshapen slugs: four .38’s and one, a  45. The big one had in fact been inside Ernie’s head for at least forty years, since the day he had got into an argument with another young tough, who had settled their dispute by clocking him with a .45 automatic. Somehow, Ernie survived that one, although he lost his right eye, and for the rest of his life had to go around with a patch stuck over the empty socket.

Check out the pictures. If you enjoy reading true life mob stories, read the whole tale of Ernie the Hawk.

Not that this has much to do with Glenn, but there is a certain commonality which might have implications for life extension.

If you think about it, how many guys run around working a stressful occupation for 40 years with only one eye and a bullet in their head?

And how many are shaking down strip joints and serving time in the joint at 94?

But if you think that sounds fantastic, ask yourself how many law professors who also write gazillions of blog posts — with hundreds of millions of hits* — were  well-connected enough to have been proteges of Benito Mussolini [allegedly, of course] back before most of us were born?

Sure, the facts might be based on hearsay, but as we all know, none of these guys will admit their true connections anyway.

It’s enough to make me think long and hard about this life extension stuff.

* The number of hits must be stressed. There is only one BlogFather who can make such a claim!

UPDATE: The mystery of the Mussolini-Reynolds connection deepens. Readers may remember this photo showing the BlogFather — way back in his early days with Il Duce:

Well, a later photo has turned up, which I have decided to share only out of a grim sense of public duty. Probably taken in the final stages of the regime, it shows a rather glum-looking pair, obviously contemplating defeat together:

Mussolini was killed, but eerily, Glenn has hardly aged at all since those dark days.

He reemerged, as The BlogFather!

Why is such amazing life extension technology only available to a select few?

UPDATE: Thanks to a fiendish form of blog censorship known by the euphemism of “Instalanche,” the BlogFather has sent so many of his minions to this blog that it has been overloaded, thus preventing the dark facts from his past from being fully known!

I will endeavor to assure that the evidence will not be destroyed, and that the truth will prevail!

By the way, these photos are not crude PhotoShops! Not only have they been thoroughly vetted, and subject to rigorous content-verification, but Glenn himself has verified their accuracy by admitting that his minions have failed to destroy them! 

And note carefully the comfy chairs!

(Another recurrent theme in the endlessly-extended life of this dark titan of technology.)