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TV's Real Mafia Princess?
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Bravo
Well, that’s not entirely true. Robert Buccino of the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, who in 46 years in law enforcement has charged more than 450 made members of La Cosa Nostra, says he knew Tiny Manzo. “He was well-known in the Paterson area,” he tells me, “and his association with organized crime was well-known.”
“As far as his family goes, his sons and daughters, there’s no allegations about them that we know of,” he adds. “But the father certainly was a player in the scene with organized crime.”
The gregarious Manzo was well-liked, says Buccino. His only legal entanglement, according to a New York Times article from 1974, seems to be a grand jury investigation over “possible collusion in the awarding of demolition contracts” during what would be an unsuccessful bid to become mayor of Paterson. He ran as a law-and-order candidate who advocated public hangings.
Whatever Tiny was up to in the demolition business, it was the Brownstone House banquet hall, which he bought later in the 1970s, that would become his legacy. “It’s very nice,” says Buccino. “They do a lot of law-enforcement retirements.” Still run successfully by his sons Al (married to Caroline) and Tommy (married to Caroline’s sister and co-star, Dina), the baronial premises were even used as a location on The Sopranos.
To hear Caroline tell it, that’s as close as the two clans some to intersecting. She says she is enjoying being a freshly minted reality-TV star, but admits that some of the Internet chatter about her family has been difficult. “The blogs have been a challenge for me. I am the type of person that ‘needs to know’” what people are saying, she says. “However, I have stopped reading them for the most part, if for no other reason than the fact of the blogs having the ability to literally consume your life if you let them.”
Much like the Gambino family. Allegedly.
Ben Widdicombe writes on contemporary culture for outlets as diverse as The New York Times and Star magazine, and is a weekly commentator on the Fox network and CNN's Headline News.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
who gives a dirty rats ass about it......you do realize nuclear war may well be upon us....right?
That's why we watch, logicwhore--escapism. And you soon find you get involved in these peoples' lives and actually care about them and their families. Caroline is a fantastic character and great fun to watch.
I enjoy watching because I love getting a peak inside the beautiful homes. I am not jealous of rich people. I am actually glad that people live that way - and now I get to see it on T.V. I've been to the Brownstone and it is beautiful, too. Their roasted potatoes were out of this world! Yes, that is what I liked the most.
. She says she is enjoying being a freshly minted reality-TV star, but admits that some of the Internet chatter about her family has been difficult. "The blogs have been a challenge for me. I am the type of person that 'needs to know'" what people are saying, she says.
Then why the hell would you go on a reality show?
They must have known this would have come up.
Ugh, hate this show.....
Thank you.
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