Commentary: Linking Italian Americans to the mob in news stories needs to stop

There's a saying: "You are what you eat." If that's true, then everyone around here is Italian. It's the meal of choice at home and dining out, and no one turns it down - not even, I suspect, members of the Chicago news media. I've seen plenty of them in Italian restaurants. But a few of these journalists still serve up twisted stories by impugning a person with an Italian surname with inferences they must be in the Outfit.

It's an overcooked dish that should be sent back.

Like me, many Chicagoland residents have Italian surnames or are "IBM" - Italian by marriage, like my wonderful wife. I've lived with her here for almost half a century, and in that time, I've sadly watched some members of the Chicago news media stigmatize Italian Americans as Outfit members or mafia operatives whenever it serves to embellish a story.

The Outfit still sells - pathetically. It's time that it stop. Or as I like to say: Basta. Enough.

When there's an indictment or a report of a crime and the accused has an Italian surname, certain members of the Chicago news media appear to believe they can invoke the Outfit. The facts stop being the story; the ethnicity of the accused becomes the focus. A name with a vowel at the end, paired with an insinuation of Outfit ties, becomes the headline. It's an acceptable segue.

Tying an Italian surname to the Outfit has become a tattered badge of honor in the antiquated newsroom of certain outlets with truth thrown to the curb.

Never mind that the government has rightly decimated the Outfit by aggressive prosecution. Good riddance. But some reporters seem compelled to resurrect its ghost to justify to fewer and fewer peers their bootstrapped existence. For those reporters, the goal isn't the story or the indictment - it's to manufacture scorn without letting the facts interfere. It's journalistic desperation to recycle insinuation dressed up as fact, built on a stigma that's unwarranted and untrue.

And it's left to the person it's aimed at to disprove the association - after a bell has been rung that cannot be unrung.

I blame that on us. Decade after decade, Chicagoans with Italian surnames have hidden instead of objected. We've let slander or libel stand for substantiation. We've been meek when we should have been strong against those in the media who sell this fare.

Basta. Call them out when they defame us. I have, I am now, and I will again and again until it stops.

I blame it, too, on every IBM and every Italian-food lover who hasn't stopped to ask why the people who invented their favorite meal are still treated as suspects on the local nightly news.

Italy is one of the world's top travel destinations - its beauty, climate, history and culture draw the entire world to its shores. For centuries, the proudest thing you could say was "civis Romanus sum": "I am a Roman citizen."

America is about to turn 250 years old as a republic. Rome did it first and for nearly twice as long. Then, a thousand years after Rome fell to barbarians, Italy brightly lit the paths of the Renaissance for others to follow. No nationality in the history of Western civilization has more to be proud of. None.

So to every Italian American, every IBM, indeed everyone in Chicagoland who loves Italian food, put down your fork and lift up your head and your voice. Stop accepting some members of the Chicago news media serving us warmed-over "Outfit" stigmatization as news.

Enough.

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Gary Grasso is mayor of Burr Ridge, Illinois, an Italian American and an attorney who has lived in Burr Ridge with his wife, Janet, for all 48 years of their married life.

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