Scaramucci revives old Italian stereotypes

Jonathan Turley’s column, “A

Scaramucci-watchers guide to Italian speech,” delightfully places Anthony Scaramucci’s language in the context of the verbal exchanges that often take place among Italian family members. Scaramucci’s recent use of scurrilous language and a tasteless, physically challenging contortion to debase his rivals in the White House have, I believe, a wider, non-political effect that he and Turley may not have anticipated.

His surname and self-references to his Italian ancestry, combined with his offensive language and vulgar imagery, have resurrected the time-worn stereotype that Italians are thuggish and coarse, and feel comfortable with the language of the underworld.

Late-night comic Stephen Colbert’s opening on his show consisted entirely of Colbert impersonating Scaramucci as an Italian mobster with the accent, crude language and violent gestures. Bravura meets overkill. Just as Italians are wiping off the sludge of Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey, we find a White House communications director burnishing the stereotype, inviting people to typecast Italians as uncouth, ill-mannered boors.

By the way, “the fish stinks from the head down” is not, as Scaramucci dubbed it, an Italian proverb. It is of Turkish origin. John F. Sena Columbus, Ohio

The Trump administration has been under attack by the most rabid, partisan civil servants and press ever assembled. White House leakers are ignored by the partisan Department of Justice, as the mainstram news media encourage discord. Mike Smith

Scaramucci was playing to an audience of one: President Trump. He knew that he would be exhibiting traits Trump would like. The problem is that neither he, nor anyone in the administration, seems to understand that they work for and represent the American people. Trump must have been delighted until Scaramucci started getting more attention. David Hogg