Letters to the Editor
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Appreciating the artistry behind the creation of Richard and Heathcliff isn't the same as 'loving' them
or minding that they fall. I'm not convinced that Chase wants us to love Tony, btw. Compassion and understanding aren't the same as love. It does teach us something about the world, and entertain us, to show us how gangsters are born and made, but, for this viewer anyway, understanding doesn't compel allegience, just a more informed horror.
On another matter, as Christopher pointed out, Tony isn't a working class guy, he's a rich fuck who will do anything to anyone in order to stay a rich fuck. In that way, his values are exactly those of the people whom George Bush lied us into Iraq to protect. He might affect 'regular guy' mannerisms, but he makes his living as a parasite on regular people. Come to think of it, his affectation of regular guy mannerisms reminds me of a certain pampered someone....
I really am a little baffled here. Mr. Kamiya has made some of the most persuasively argued criticisms of the road taken by the Bush administration to appear in Salon. So why all the Tony-love? (Yes,of course I read the whole article. Still don't buy the argument. I would have thought that he'd read The Sopranos as a mirror of the moral tangle we find ourselves in, not a liberation from it.)