Howard Stern remembers his regular, often drunk, guest:
I loved having Henry on the show and I loved hearing his mob stories, but Henry was a despicable guy. I mean, he’s killed people… He took the short cut in life… There was no substance to the guy. He was a pathological liar…. He was always trying these businesses out… One time he came in and had paintings he was selling… Then he had a spaghetti sauce business… He was just out of his f***ing mind… I remember I said to him: ‘You think you’re going to Hell?’… and he was convinced he would not go to Hell.
***
They sure drink a lot in the Mafia, not suprisingly.
(Can you imagine an AA meeting full of made guys…? “My name is Jimmy Two-Times and you know, whatever …”)
“Mob stories” themselves can be addictive, and that’s not healthy (to put it mildly.)
The Mafia deserves some “credit” for creating (via accident and design) this universally seductive mythology/narrative that cancels out the unpleasantness or at least reduces it to something entertaining and almost humorous.
(It’s a tactic the Left uses too, interestingly enough…)
Mob stories thrill listeners and viewers like few other narratives.
They help the mob wield power without even having to be in the vicinity.
And in a world in which alpha males are almost extinct, well…
