RE: RE: RE: Clamato is FINISHED!
Date: Thu Sep 11 [4:07 PM]
Posted By: Chet Smith, President, Italian-American League of America (csmith@ialoa.org)
Dear Mr. Belsito,
I am writing to express my outrage at the appalling turn your recent Clamato advertising campaign has taken. We here at the IALOA have made great strides in recent years to overcome the negative stereotypes proliferated by the media about Italian-Americans. It's only in the last decade that we've been able to overcome Carlo Collodi's tidal wave of bad PR and convince the world that we're not all liars who are made out of wood.
And then you come along, Mr. Belsito, and with one fell swoop, you undo decades of hard work, reinforcing the typical, overblown stereotype, romanticized in the films of Scorsese and Coppola, that all Italian-Americans are one-armed midget lawyers for seafood-based beverage companies. Speaking as one Italian-American to another, Mr. Belsito, you should be ashamed of yourself.
My organization and I expect a formal apology for this insulting and defamatory ad campaign. After all, we wouldn't want something to, ah...happen, now would we, Mr. Belsito? You know there's an awful lot of big, sharp, moving parts in a Clamato factory...it would be a shame if say, an accident were to happen...capiche?
Sincerely,
Chet Smith
President, Italian-American League of America
In Reply To: RE: RE: Clamato is FINISHED!
(Tad Pendleton III)
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