Jay Costa called it a “(Expletive) ethnic shot.”
I responded in expletive kind.
The expletives were traded over last Sunday's column on upstart GOP state Sen. Scott Wagner challenging the arguably questionable leadership of Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi.
Mr. Costa, an Allegheny County Democrat and the Senate minority whip, took umbrage to the word “dons” being used to describe Mr. Pileggi's leadership team of Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, Appropriations Chairman Jake Corman and Majority Whip Pat Browne.
“Give me a break, Pileiggi's dons,” Costa wrote from his Senate email account. “Why don't you just come out and call him Mafia Leader Pileggi.
“Regardless of how you feel about his leadership on issues, why do you reference his ethnicity via the Mafia card. (Expletive) ethnic shot.”
What, Dom Pileggi is Spanish? After all, that's the origin of “don,” dating to 1523, most popularly meaning a “Spanish title of respect for a man,” from the Latin “dominus.”
But wait. It gets worse — for Costa, that is.
As Chambers Dictionary of Etymology also details, “The word later (circa 1610) was used in the sense of a Spanish gentleman ... a meaning extended to any distinguished gentleman.”
Oh, the “(expletive) ethnic shot.”
And you'd better hold on to your homburg, Senator — note I didn't say fedora because of the underlying ethnic-shot sensitivities involved here — because circa 1660, English universities adopted “don” to mean “head fellow” or “tutor of a college.”
It was only for American slang, circa 1963, that Chambers says “don” was conscripted to mean the “head of an underworld syndicate” or, as Costa prefers, “the Mafia.” Which suggests Costa really doesn't know what the word “don” means even in the Italian sense — “a title of respect for a man” — and applies to the head guy, a dom (with an “m,” in this case, not an “n”), if you will, and not his lieutenants.
Continued Costa's email: “I can't for the life of me see how such a reference has any relevance to (Pileggi) as a leader except for the fact that you want to play the Mafia card to be cute. I am disappointed you would resort to such cheap journalism.”
I'm disappointed that Costa would resort to such intellectual malpractice. The reference was not to Pileggi and in no way could it be interpreted to mean what Costa insisted it meant. What is it about pols and their lack of reading and word comprehension?
Back in 1997, Pittsburgh City Councilman Sala Udin exhibited a similar ignorance-based umbrage.
When a Trib editorial chastised Mayor Tom Murphy for characterizing mayoral challenger Bob O'Connor's fiscal plan as “voodoo economics,” noting it was like the pot calling the kettle black — the well-worn idiom dating to Cervantes' “Don (ahem) Quixote” (1605) — Mr. Udin retorted that it was “the kind of reference that continues the notion of black inferiority and white superiority.”
Which would have been news to Cervantes and the likes of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who offered this tutorial context: “For a covetous man to inveigh against prodigality, an atheist against idolatry, a tyrant against rebellion, or a lyer against forgery, and a drunkard against intemperance, is for the pot to call the kettle black.”
Back to Sen. Costa. If he wants to live in a time-warp world of ever-battling ethnicities trading sharp shots over perceived slights that aren't slights at all, that's his business. But that's a very dismal existence.
Colin McNickle is Trib Total Media's director of editorial pages (412-320-7836 or cmcnickle@tribweb.com).
