STUGATZ

You’re so dumb that you think Dom Perignon is a Mafia boss.

What’s so funny about this? This joke uses a lot of media images, including commercials and popular TV shows. The Sopranos was a long running series on US television. US culture and the mass media have always loved the Italian mob, known as the Mafia. News media have covered the exploits of gangsters, very heavily, from the time of Al Capone and the Chicago mob during the Great Depression and Prohibition years, when alcohol was illegal in the US, down through the years to gang wars and mob assassinations, right up to today’s stories of the Russian mob and other gangster groups. There has been no end to fictional crime stories and bosses either, from The Untouchables, to the Godfather movies and books, to the Sopranos, the televsion series depicting the life and times of a fictitious mafia don from New Jersey, named Tony Soprano. Tony was played masterfully by actor James Gandolfini who died several years ago, but his image l