{"id":24,"date":"2003-06-18T11:26:00","date_gmt":"2003-06-18T11:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2018-08-01T17:41:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T22:41:54","slug":"24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/18\/24\/","title":{"rendered":"Gangsta Kitsch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stlouismagazine.com\" target=\"new\"><i>St. Louis Magazine<\/i><\/a> has a story in its June issue (not yet online) about St. Louis gangs in the 1920s and their wacky whackings.  Written in sepia-prose and laid on a parchmentesque watermark, this piece romanticizes a bloody bunch of men and their battles to control crime, which included mail truck robberies and control of the illegal drug market, which meant alcohol trafficking.<\/p>\n<p>Contrast that with gangs today.  Rap music, particularly gangsta rap, idealizes the lifestyle, and I suspect most people who turn to <i>St. Louis Magazine<\/i> to find dining plans or interior design ideas don&#8217;t care for gangsta rap and probably hate and fear the thought of current gangland violence.<\/p>\n<p>Is the difference in gang perception based on race?  That is, does middle America prefer its gangs Irish instead of another, differently-colored minority?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe a little bit, but I reckon it&#8217;s more the <i>long, long ago in galaxy far, far away<\/i> aspect of it.  Egan&#8217;s Rats and the Cuckoos, whose the survivors have died of old age by now, aren&#8217;t a current threat to law abiding, SUV-driving folk, but today&#8217;s gangs are.<\/p>\n<p>Someday, I imagine our descendants will read about drive-by shootings with the same amused interest, thinking &#8220;Shooting from a <i>car<\/i> with a <i>nine millimeter pistol<\/i>!  How quaint!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St. Louis Magazine has a story in its June issue (not yet online) about St. Louis gangs in the 1920s and their wacky whackings. Written in sepia-prose and laid on a parchmentesque watermark, this piece romanticizes a bloody bunch of men and their battles to control crime, which included mail truck robberies and control of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21242,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/21242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}