A LETTER I WROTE TO THE A&E TELEVISION NETWORK


ABOUT GROWING UP GOTTI
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I can?t help but feel the show ? Growing Up Gotti ? is an enormous error in judgment on the part of your television network and the show?s sponsors. I am so incensed that I feel compelled to organize a boycott of the sponsor?s products and your network in general. This is a shame as A&E has been a mainstay in my life for many years. Below is a copy of an email that I have been sending to various media outlets and personalities around the country :

Hi Folks

I don't know if you are aware of the A&E show that aired a couple nights ago entitled " Growing Up Gotti ". Myself and a number of other people are outraged at the premise of this show. Forget the fact it is so called " reality TV ", most thinking people have come to terms with the drivel now clogging up the nation's ( if not the world's ) airwaves. This particular show has a more insidious quality. Everything, including it's raison d'etre are a direct result of the proceeds of crime. It is not too much of a stretch to say that every part of this show is soaked with the blood of innocent and maybe not so innocent people. Victoria Gotti may have a career in her own right but she is a mafia princess and always will be. Sure the money that represents her current wealth and opulent lifestyle is long since laundered but try telling that to the survivors of her father's victims.

John Gotti should be disdained for what he represented, not idolized. There is a disconnect in logic with the hard working American dream and the legendary idolization of those who would take it away using fear and intimidation. All of this is fresh in my mind because of a book I have just completed about a run in with this type of scum a dozen years ago. They tried to take our businesses away from us by force. We fought them off with guns and ball bats. It wasn't pretty nor did it contain any of the elements of glamour that the contemporary sterilization of these types of criminal actions receives in entertainment vehicles such as TV and movies. Bones were broken, bullets flew, people died and lives were destroyed, that's the reality. Not some mafia princess flitting around in an opulent lifestyle supplied by the laundered proceeds of these activities.

I can't help but think that shows like this perpetrate an enormous societal injustice. A glamorous depiction of a lifestyle with the accompanying celebrity completely born of crime. Give your heads a shake people. Boycott the show and the advertiser's products. It is the only power we have to correct this enormous error of judgment. Some of us haven't forgotten that John Gotti killed people.

To that end I am trying to organize a boycott and petition.

NOW WHAT IS THIS IN AID OF?

Well, you see I just wrote a book. It chronicles the other side of mob life. The perspective of being on the receiving end of the actions of these parasites. Based on a true story I was right in the middle of a conflict with these scum. When I hear people use terms like "mob aristocracy" or "Mafia royalty" I cringe. This is the next step of the sterilization of the criminal way of life. The glamorization of the insidious. My book Entitled: SON OF THE TOWN CLOWN is due for Fall 2004 release.