Alito Whacks Sopranos' Themes

US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito isn't going to fuhgeddabout all the negative stereotypes concerning Italian-Americans spread by shows like The Sopranos. "You have a trifecta—gangsters, Italian-Americans, New Jersey—wedded in the popular American imagination" and overshadowing the true stories, the New Jersey native complained yesterday to an audience at Rutgers University.

Alito said the real story of Italian-Americans highlighted the "true nature" of the US "as a nation of immigrants." The conservative judge reflected on how his own father and grandmother came from Italy, arriving close to where he later served as a federal judge. "The contrast of what I was doing there and what they looked like disembarking to prominent Philadelphians is very striking to me," he said. (More Samuel A. Alito stories.)