What's in a name?

Phillipe and Jorge can only suspect that Raymond L.S. "Why don’t they leave that poor man alone?" Patriarca, the notorious former head of organized crime in New England, must be spinning in his grave like a lathe right now. (And why do they call it organized? Do they have a roll call every morning? Line up by height to go out to eat?)

P&J are referring, of course, to the recent arrest on racketeering charges of three reputed mobsters in Massachusetts. No, getting busted wasn’t the cause for shame. Rather, it was their nicknames: Frederick "The Neighbor" Simone, Vincent "Dee Dee" Gioacchini, and Francis "The White-Haired Guy" White. "The White-Haired Guy"? Why isn’t his nickname "The Guy with Rather Outdated Brown Shoes"? His real one is pretty tough and terrifying, and it should certainly put fear into the hearts of his enemies. And "Dee Dee"? Are Mafiosi taking fake names from old-school punk rockers like the Ramones now? He could at least have been known as Vincent "Sid Vicious" Gioacchini. And finally, "The Neighbor"? Where does that come from? Is this guy known for borrowing a cup of sugar from his friends on occasion, or offering to look after people’s houses and bring in the mail while they’re away?

We are certain that Raymond would not put up with this were he alive. Especially since, during his reign we had people with more exciting monikers, like "The Moron" and "Baby Shanks" plying their illicit trades. Nobody even knows what Baby Shanks means, which was scary enough, and certainly it was light years more menacing than "The White-Haired Guy." (We know that references to "Baby Shanks" were later changed to "Baby Shacks," which is equally cryptic.) Anyway, what has the mob come to?

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

US Senator Jack Reed has become a very respected voice in the debate about Iraq, due in large part to his West Point degree and time spent as an Army paratrooper. So it wasn’t surprising to see him make a trip to Iraq, hard on the heels of President Photo-op’s Thanksgiving visit with the troops at Baghdad International Airport.

But we do have to question Little Big Man’s choice of a traveling companion, the queen of the makeover, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other than a screechy voice, Ms. Billary brings little to the back-and-forth over Iraq other than blatant pandering and self-serving comments, and we’re surprised that Jack spent time trailing in her wake. His comments about the United Nations’ future role in a country that we have no business being in nonetheless made national news. (Not unlike Governor Don Carcieri’s remarks the week before at the GOP guvs’ convention, where he constructively criticized Dubya the Dumb for failing to sell the American public on our efforts to engage these wily sons of the desert.)

If you’re scoring at home, Rummy Rumsfeld, the Defense Department’s raving septuagenarian warmonger and egomaniac, is claiming that 2800 US soldiers have been wounded since the Iraq invasion began. On November 28, however, the Orlando Sentinel reported on how the folks at the Pentagon say that nearly 10,000 US troops — the equivalent of almost one Army division — have been killed, wounded, injured, or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began. Bring ’em home . . . alive and in one piece, please. We’ll truly give thanks for that.

ROUNDTREE, ROUND TWO

Your superior correspondents were interested to see an article in the November 13 issue of the Providence American, Vo Dilun’s most prominent African-American publication, on the plight of Christine Roundtree, longtime executive director of the capital city’s Human Relations Commission. P&J have previously weighed in on this largely beneath-the-radar bit of intrigue in Providence politics.

We recently noted that Ms. Roundtree has been tied up in red tape bullshit for the past few months. This has left her operating in an office in one of the most public spaces in City Hall — a totally inappropriate spot for a city agency where people go to discuss alleged acts of discrimination. At every turn, petty bureaucrats have stymied Ms. Roundtree and her office from being able to operate more effectively.

The Providence Human Relations Commission has regularly been denied such basic amenities as office supplies and parking spaces for its few employees. The city government has basically frozen them out. We suggest that excuses are being sought to eliminate Roundtree, who has a long history as a strong and unwavering advocate for minorities and the poor in Providence. Her critics are working hard to portray her as a "loose cannon."

On November 6, City Councilman John Igliozzi called for Roundtree to be fired. Since Alan Sepe and Igliozzi have been primary in the "get Roundtree" circle, we wonder what the deal is. It seems there are some concerns about whether a couple of schools in Silver Lake (home turf for Sepe and Igliozzi) are located on toxic waste dumps. This is being examined in the state courts, but Roundtree has seen enough evidence to suggest that there are problems at these sites. She has been pushing for action, apparently angering Sepe and Igliozzi. Igliozzi has seemingly made his peace with Mayor Cicilline (Igliozzi’s brother, David, was an opponent in last year’s Democratic mayoral primary), and we suspect that Sepe has, too (or why else would a guy who lied to the FBI during the Plunder Dome investigation still be holding a high-level city job?).

So, the way we see it is this: Roundtree, who didn’t ally herself with anyone in last year’s primary, is expendable. Sepe and Igliozzi want her out, because she’s causing trouble for them. They’ve allied themselves with Little Chi Chi and expect him to sit on his hands as they seek her exit because of Roundtree’s advocacy for poor Silver Lake residents who are possibly being exposed to environmental hazards. C’mon, David "Little Chi Chi" Cicilline, champion of our minority communities. Don’t let the political insiders who have sucked up to you destroy the reputation and good work of a top-notch public servant.

SHORT SHRIFT

In general, Bob "Lock Jaw" Whitcomb has done a damned fine job as editor of the BeloJo’s editorial pages. He’s kept them lively and with a good degree of diversity of opinion (if a bit slanted to the right, but, hey, you’re working for those Dallas assholes, so it’s to be expected). We do, of course, have to wonder why Bob is so enamored of Ayn Rand disciples, but we dug her fascist crap back in high school, so maybe he still has a soft spot for laissez-faire horseshit. It’s sooooo fucking romantic.

Anyway, we do have to wonder how Bill Patenaude’s op-ed on The DaVinci Code, in the Other Paper of Monday, December 1, passed Urinal muster. Mr. Patenaude, who describes himself as "a freelance writer who teaches 10th graders preparing for confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church" at a couple of West Bay parishes, is all worked up about a book of fiction. Certainly The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown, has been very successful, appearing on hardcover best-seller lists for months. But Patenaude’s complaint seems to be that readers might mistake this for non-fiction or history.

Most interesting was Mr. Patenaude’s reference to the Gnostic gospels, describing them as, "Writings that were well known to the church at the time that it canonized the books of the Bible. In fact, the Gnostic writings were repeatedly studied and rejected as true revelations because [briefly] the Christ they portrayed was nothing like the Christ of the faith of the people."

Has Mr. Patenaude actually read The Gnostic Gospels, the definitive work by eminent biblical scholar Elaine Pagels? Is Mr. Patenaude conversant in Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, and Latin, as is Ms. Pagels? Does he even know what the book is about?

Look, we can buy Brown’s point that The DaVinci Code has probably influenced some folks, particularly those ignorant of scholarly biblical writings, into buying some anti-Catholic conspiracy theory, but that happens all the time these days in Moron Consumer World. The real deal with the Gnostic stuff isn’t that it "portrayed [a] Christ nothing like the Christ of the faith of the people," but that it opened up a lot stuff (women as equal celebrants and a non-professional priesthood, for instance) that couldn’t be controlled in an institution built to last centuries. Check out The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, one of the most profound books about Christianity written in this century. And Bill Patenaude? Go back to school.

TIME FOR THE KELVAR HOODS

Aware that inquiring minds want to know, king of PR Mr. Preston sent us the following story from November 25:

Participant at KKK initiation wounded after shots fired into sky

JOHNSON CITY, Tennessee (AP) — A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head, critically injuring him, authorities said.

Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, was charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment in the Saturday night incident that wounded Jeffrey S. Murr, 24.

About 10 people, including two children, had gathered for the ceremony. The man who was being initiated was blindfolded, tied with a noose to a tree, and shot with paintball guns as Freeman fired a pistol in the air to provide the sound of real gunfire, Sheriff Fred Phillips said.

A bullet struck Murr on the top of the head and exited at the bottom of his skull, authorities said.

Freeman fled the ceremony but was arrested near his home, authorities said. He was released on $7500 bail.

Years ago, during the Vietnam War, P&J heard about an act of similar common sense (what goes up . . . ). During a rare solar eclipse, Cambodian soldiers, fearing that a dragon was eating the sun, proceeded to empty their automatic weapons skyward, only to have more than a dozen of their friends killed when the bullets returned to earth. Still, this US episode looks like a prime contender for the Darwin Awards, an annual celebration of awesome stupidity.

Send stupid nominations and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com