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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3405665" data-attributes="member: 4937">Mickey Cohen was with the Los Vegas mob under Bugsy Seigel.  Jack Dragna led operations in Los Angeles during the period in question.  When I say that organized crime was king, I meant it.  The combination of the Jewish, Irish, and (most famously) Italian mafia controlled most any criminal activity that was profitable anywhere in the US.It's mostly invented.  This will border on the political, but I have to explain a little quirk of American character at the moment to explain.  In the post racist environment, racism is such a venal sin and its opposite such a virtue, that if you want to suggest that anything or anyone is 'good' in some fashion you have to praise it for opposing racism, in thereby in the process racism gets invented where it didn't really have much influence.  In this case, its largely invented that the 'I Love Lucy' show was extremely contriversal because Lucy was married to a Cuban (Desi Arnez).  I'm sure it bothered someone somewhere, but it must not have bothered many people or at least none with TV's.  Similarly, I've heard it said that Lucy's character - which is in many ways a sterotyped air-headed female - was somehow stereotype shattering because she wasn't demure and modest or something - this I think just so as to have something good to say about Lucille Ball as if she needed something invented.  Again, this is why you have to go back to the newspapers of the time and not trust the retroactive myth built around the show.</blockquote>

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