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You are here: Home / Hard Times

Hard Times

by John Cole|  April 30, 20106:52 pm| 28 Comments

This post is in: Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment

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I guess the NY Times has finally run out of gangster bankster sob stories and now is profiling the financial woes of actual gangsters:

This is Joe DeFede, a retired New York gangster who oversaw the rackets in the city’s garment district in the 1990s, a perch that provided him with a Cadillac, a driver, three horses stabled at Aqueduct and a home entertainment system columned in the style of ancient Greece. Like many mobsters, he walked through life with dignity and pride and, usually, with several thousand dollars in his pocket.

These days, though, he walks with a faltering step of age and with the weight of financial worry. After a five-year prison stint, legal fees and the crushing costs of creating a new identity — he entered but then left the witness protection program — the boss is almost broke. He and his second wife, Nancy, live on an annual income they said was not much more than $30,000: Social Security, a modest annuity and her pension from 20 years of working in a bank.

“That’s the fear we got,” said Mr. DeFede, 76, a slight man with a bookmaker’s grin who is known as Little Joe. “We try to keep our payments up” — for the car, the house, a recent hip replacement — “but sometimes we can’t hack it.”

Or as Mrs. DeFede, 74, explained, “We’re just scraping by.”

Who will speak for Joe DeFede’s out there?

James Pethokoukis? Rick Santelli?

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Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    mr. whipple

    April 30, 2010 at 6:54 pm

    Oy.

  2. 2.

    Zifnab

    April 30, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    It’s like they can’t freak’n help themselves.

  3. 3.

    Chuck Butcher

    April 30, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    The difference between the two being prison sentences and actually pretty broke.

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    April 30, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    John Cole:

    I guess the NY Times has finally run out of gangster bankster sob stories and now is profiling the financial woes of actual gangsters

    That seems unnecessarily harsh. It’s quite possible, and more likely, that The New York Times simply can no longer differentiate between the two.

    I know I can’t.

    .

  5. 5.

    Chuck Butcher

    April 30, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    Am I seeing Jesse Cornett thanks to my ISP? Or are the rest of you seeing him? I know Jesse and like him, though there’s 350 miles and substantial population differences between us.

  6. 6.

    Jrod

    April 30, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    @Chuck Butcher: Yup. This story is actually somewhat interesting, whereas tales of investment bankers scraping by with only one European vacation and having to sell one of their five houses in just infuriating.

    Former gangster forced to spend out his days barely keeping food on his plate? Sounds like justice is served.

  7. 7.

    beltane

    April 30, 2010 at 6:59 pm

    The NY media in general has always had a soft spot for the local mafiosi. Usually, though, it’s the Post or the Daily News that glamorize the gangsters, not the NYT.

    I have to admit, the colonnaded home entertainment system sounds kind of cool. And I bet this guy used to put up the best Christmas lights around.

  8. 8.

    IndyLib

    April 30, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    @Chuck Butcher:

    I think it’s your ISP, I just ordered pizza and the next ad I see is a Pizza Hut one, and I keep seeing STOP OBAMACARE in Wisconsin ads that are paid for by the one of the wingnuts here running for the R nomination for Governor.

  9. 9.

    Chuck Butcher

    April 30, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    Here’s an interesting thought, construction contractors rank right behind used car salesmen in disrespect. Where do you suppose all that money places GS banksters?

  10. 10.

    Americanadian

    April 30, 2010 at 7:02 pm

    @JGabriel: Clearly the conventional mobsters are actually suffering the consequences of their actions.

  11. 11.

    Alex

    April 30, 2010 at 7:08 pm

    My first thought was that this could almost work as a satire of all the “poor bankstas” crap. I guess satire and reality just can’t stop dry humping each other.

  12. 12.

    beltane

    April 30, 2010 at 7:19 pm

    @Americanadian: John Gotti died in prison. Lloyd Blankfein will not die in prison. He will be very rich and very free for the remainder of his days.

  13. 13.

    mcd410x

    April 30, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    “are comin’, just like the flu …”

  14. 14.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    April 30, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    He gets government housing for five years and still can’t make it. What a loser!

  15. 15.

    Michael

    April 30, 2010 at 7:24 pm

    @beltane:

    John Gotti died in prison. Lloyd Blankfein will not die in prison.

    John Gotti was a much better person than Lloyd Blankfein.

  16. 16.

    sukabi

    April 30, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    It’s the first rule of writing: Report on what you know.

    It should be obvious why these stories are prominent….these are the only folks they know and are comfortable with… criminals, whether Wall Streeters or mobsters, they run in the same circles, go to the same parties and share the same secrets.

    On another note, the best “clean-up” of the current mess won’t be through investigations or trials, it will be a bunch of “deaths by natural causes” as the mob bosses find out the amount of money they’ve been defrauded out of through “deals” the Bankers have advised them to participate in.

  17. 17.

    drew42

    April 30, 2010 at 7:39 pm

    This is a real pet peeve of mine — anybody who portrays members of organized crime as even remotely sympathetic people.

    I think the fact that most people regard them with awe, fear (or even worse, repsect and admiration) is doing more damage to our society than any other political/social issue.

    I’ve actually hung out in the same social circles with a couple of them for a few years. They were (and this is not hyperbole) the two most disgusting people I have ever known, in terms of personality, phyisical appearance, and intelligence. They were functionally retarded. By this I don’t mean they were mentally handicapped, but that they spent their entire lives never having to learn a damn thing about anything. For a while, I just thought they were fucking with me, they were so stupid. And it’s impossible to describe how awful they were as human beings, without sounding cartoonish. But they had money!

    The popularity of The Sopranos bothered me to no end. I’ve heard fans say it didn’t glamorize them, but any show that portrays these guys as anything other than lumps of shit poisoning society gives them too much credit.

  18. 18.

    MinneapolisPipe

    April 30, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    Perhaps President McCain can give a shout-out to Joe the Gangster.

  19. 19.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    April 30, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    Meh, put ’em in a nursing home and let him skim off the weekly bingo game in the activity room.

  20. 20.

    Chris

    April 30, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    (shrug)

    First they had to kiss Sarah Palin’s ass to get conservative wackos to buy copies of the paper to keep the industry alive.

    Then they had to suck up to the banksters to get them to buy copies of the paper to keep the industry alive.

    If they’re counting on retired gangsters to prop up the print-news model, they’re even closer to being more totally fucked than I could have possibly imagined.

    And I’ve got a pretty sour imagination.

  21. 21.

    frosty

    April 30, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    @drew42:
    This.

    I never watched the Sopranos for the same reason. I’ve never watched “Kill Bill”. I like John Cusack, but “Grosse Point Blank”, a sympathetic movie about a hit man? Ecchh.

  22. 22.

    Svensker

    April 30, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    @Michael:

    John Gotti was a much better person than Lloyd Blankfein.

    No, he wasn’t. Gotti was a pig. I knew a bunch of his people when I lived in Hoboken, NJ, and they were all pigs. Really. Scum of the earth.

    That’s like saying Pol Pot was a better person than Hitler.

  23. 23.

    Svensker

    April 30, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    @drew42:

    What you said.

    Scum of the earth. With no redeeming qualities.

    I hate fucking Sopranos.

  24. 24.

    Nutella

    April 30, 2010 at 8:42 pm

    What’s this country coming to when a gangster can no longer ‘walk with dignity and pride’? Sniff… Where’s my handkerchief?

  25. 25.

    Svensker

    April 30, 2010 at 8:44 pm

    Here’s Mavis singing “Hard Times Come Again No More“

  26. 26.

    low-tech cyclist

    April 30, 2010 at 9:32 pm

    If times get too tough for Joe DeFede, he could always apply for participation in the traditional Mafia retirement program involving cement overshoes and a body of water. The Mob knows how to take care of their own.

  27. 27.

    The Moar You Know

    April 30, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    Fuck me.

    What a sorry-assed commentary on our society that these people actually feel no shame in telling a reporter that they are having a hard time making ends meet. In most societies, they’d have been long dead in a hail of well-earned gunfire.

    Shit in the gutter, this murdering asshole and his wife are. And so is the reporter who wrote this crap story, as if we should care what happens to a man who made his living being a predator on those less powerful and less fortunate than him.

    I hope the reporter, the mobster and his mob wife all die of hemorrhoids.

  28. 28.

    LanceThruster

    May 1, 2010 at 2:27 am

    I’m sure Joe could roust up a few contacts from the old gang for a paperless loan with “easy” terms (easy if you have the $$$ and the vig).

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