Run Down By The G-Men

Heroes for young boys in the 1950s were Marines, Davey Crockett, and the Three Stooges. The latter led us to the Young Rascals and the Bowery Boys on Saturday morning TV. Our parents despised the three shows as trash, but young boys across America envied these juvenile delinquents for their lively adventures in the city. None of us knew that the original Bowery Boys were a notorious anti-Irish gang from Manhattan's deadly Five Points. Hollywood had resurrected the black-hearted pimps and murderers of Bill the Butcher as fun-loving thugs of the Great Depression.

In the 1938 gangster film ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES the Bowery Boys admire the killer Rocky Sullivan played by James Cagney. He goes soft at the sight of the electric chair in order to save his disciples from following to a bad ending, but we weren't fooled by Cagney's going yellow. PUBLIC ENEMY was a triumph for the actor and Tom Powers was infamous for the line 'you dirty rat', even though Cagney never said the line in that movie or any other.

It didn't really matter to us, because we understood that to rat on someone was the greatest sin this side of adultery and we were too young to break that Commandment.

Fink, stool pigeon, pilferer, stoolie, and snitch were only a few of the epithets tagged on betrayers of trust by boys under the age of 12. Holding your sand in the face of authority was considered an honor. Anyone breaking their bond was doomed to the hell of Judas, so when Whitey Bulger was captured by the FBI in Santa Monica this past week my friends emailed me their condolences.

While I had admired the South Boston gangster for his ability to stay in front of the law for 14 years, I disapproved of his terrorizing his own. He never had the courage to bang out the big hitters on Beacon Hill or Dover or any other rich suburb of Boston. He took it out on his own and if anyone stepped on his toes, they were shot down like dogs.

Silence was bought with murder, but Whitey Bulger was not above snitching out his opponents. He grassed out any rival; Mafia, Irish, hometown.

"Oh, you dirty rat."

He was never anyone in Boston's hero.

A snitch is always a snitch.

Then again I did name my dog after him.

A hypocrite maybe, but a snitch never.

I hold my sand, because I know nothing unlike Whitey Bulger or my dog.

He knows how to lick his balls, because he can.

ps the Feds always knew where Whitey was same as they knew about Osama Bin Ladin's hide-out.

The Filth know everything.