It was late when Zach arrived back at the mall from the newspaper office. The entrance was blocked by a restraining order, partially shredded. Zach and Tom walked on, past the two Human Rights Commissioners the government had stationed to prevent further Hate Speech against the Corleone family, and the good name of Italian-Americans everywhere. The door was opened by another Human Rights Commissioner. wearing an outsized coat and vest over a big belly. Zach thought the Commissioner sure was fat, then banished that thought, as a form of body-shaming. As the over-sized Commissioner held the door, Zach reflected:

Body-shaming is ubiquitous and abhorrent; it happens everywhere, to pretty much everyone, at one time or another. It is especially levied against women, who are shamed for being skinny, for being tall, for being short, for having large breasts, for having small breasts, for having tattoos, for not having tattoos, for body hair, for dressing as they will, for being sexy, for being prudish, for being smart, for having interests outside STEM. Women are shamed at some point for being pretty much anything while also being female, including for being ugly (and failing to serve a purpose as a beauty object) and for being pretty (which must mean they are vapid or dumb). Zach shuddered that he had fallen into the trap of fat-shaming. The vest was no doubt padded with writs, for the protection of the Corleone family and others against harassment and hate speech, but even if it wasn't, the Human Rights Commissioner had a right to dignity, and to revel in his own body.

Inside, Sonny, Clemenza, and Tessio were waiting. Sonny came to Zach, and took the young student-columnist's head into his hands, saying kiddingly, "Beautiful, beautiful, that police captain sure knocked you up real good."

It was Tom who spoke first, over the stunned objections of Clemenza and Tessio: "Sonny, 'knocked up' is an outdated phrase used by anti-woman bigots and mansplainers to describe pregnancy. It implies, to right-thinking people, an element of physical violence, and if I may say so, using that term is a monstrous form of Hate Speech. It denigrates women, and it denigrates choice, the choice that each woman has to decide for herself whether to terminate an unwanted fetus."

"Sorry Tom," Sonny muttered. "It won't happen again." Zach and Tom walked into the room, and closed the door.

"Jesus Christ, Zach, the old man's barely talking," said Clemenza.

Tessio spoke up, "Pete, has it occurred to you that Zach might not be a Catholic, that Zach might not be a Christian, that Zach might be an Atheist, or a Muslim, or a Jew? When you invoke that name, you're excluding people of faiths outside Christianity (which I might add is responsible for 2,000 years of genocide and repression), and people of no faith. You're talking Hate Speech, and if weren't for the law of omerta, I'd turn you in right now."

Sonny added, "Sal, you're right, but I should add that referring to the Don as 'the Old Man' is ageist. It connotes senility, and at the same time grants him an authority he doesn't necessarily deserve. We can do better than this. It's a form of Hate Speech, and it should be against the law, if it isn't already."

All five men remained silent, for a few minutes, reflecting on their crimes.

Finally, Zach broke the silence. "What have we heard about the Turk?"

"JESUS CHRIST!" the other four interjected, then hung their heads in shame.

"Mister Sollozzo is holed up with that police captain," Tom said at last. "He's untouchable with that kind of protection. What you have to understand is that no one has ever attacked a New York police captain. All of the five families, and the Human Rights Commission, would turn against us."

"You get me a gun, and I'll kill him," said Zach. "And I won't do it out of any racial or religious animus. I'll do it out of respect for my father."

Sonny hugged Zach, violently, smiled, and said "Tom, this is speech, and this man's taking it very personal. It ain't like the war. You gotta get up on top of them until you see the whites of their eyes and then BADA-BING! All over your nice Ivy League suit!"

Clemenza sighed, "Sonny, I wish you hadn't said that. The Bada-Bing is a strip club in a racist melodrama that denigrates Italian-Americans as gangsters, sexists, and thugs. The media have promoted this stereotype through a plethora of mafia movies. It's fair to say that a disproportionate number of Italian-Americans have been portrayed as hoodlums by Hollywood. Though not to the same extent as people of color, marginalized European-Americans, such as Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Serb-Americans, and Ukrainian-Americans, are generally reduced by screenwriters to a caricature of what Anglo-Americans deem them to be. Tragically, this marginalization at the hands of White society leads these maligned peoples into prejudicial conduct against women and people of color, the true victims of Hate Speech. If we're ever to move forward, the sort of speech in which you just engaged needs to be outlawed."

"So there's no hope for us?" Zach asked.

"I guess not. We should turn ourselves in to the Human Rights Commissioners," Tessio agreed.

And so ended the Five Families War of 1946.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White