Chris Cuomo recently unleashed a vulgar, threatening tirade on a hapless jerk who called him “Fredo,” the pathetic brother from “The Godfather,” insisting it’s “an N-word” for the Italian-American community.
It was, of course, a ridiculous overreaction. In no way is “Fredo” comparable to the N-word. The guy who yelled at Cuomo obviously meant to insult him for being the family’s weak link, not for being a mob-linked Italian.
But Cuomo may have snapped because he’s fed up with Italian-American references that are slurs and yet tolerated by society without any “woke” objections.
Like many of my fellow Italian Americans, I silently seethe over a pervasive bias that permeates the culture.
The “woke” mob erupts over every perceived instance of “ethnic slander” or “cultural appropriation” against other minority groups.
The colonialist implications of Chinese fortune cookies! The thinly disguised racism of Mexican sombreros at a Bowdoin College tequila party! Call in the thought police! Set up safe spaces to protect minorities from having their feelings hurt!
Yet there’s mostly silence over workaday ridicule and disparagement of Italian Americans. Maybe the chronic, “socially acceptable” insults gnawed at Cuomo until his Fredo flip-out — an unfortunate moment when he had enough.
“Saturday Night Fever” portrayed Brooklyn Italians as uniformly stupid and racist. “Jersey Shore” depicted a bunch of sex-crazed bozos. Words such as “goombah,” “guido” and “guidette” enjoy wide and popular currency.
Nobody picketed New York Magazine over a feature a few years ago on the best Italian restaurants, which cheerfully stated that dishes at Carbone “could feed an entire crew of Gambinos.” The mob reference in a post about a reputable eatery with a respectable clientele was later dropped, but how could editors have let it through in the first place?
Never mind that America was “discovered” (for Europeans at least) by an Italian explorer and named for another Italian explorer; or that Italian Americans, who comprise little more than 5 percent of the population, enjoy an outsize role in our nation’s life.
Artists and politicians especially believe they have license to demean Italian Americans in ways trivial and profound — from characters like Jackie Gleason’s farcically drawn “Honeymooners” neighbor “Mr. Manicotti” to insinuations that Chris’ father, the squeaky-clean Mario Cuomo, had mob ties. The libelous rumors — which were exhaustively debunked in a 1987 New York Magazine investigation — were often cited to explain why the late governor decided not to run for president.
A different former governor, Democrat Jon Corzine of New Jersey, was both the perpetrator and victim of Italian-American sliming — a bizarre double dose of stereotyping that illustrated how deeply ingrained it is in “polite” society. In 2000, when Corzine was running for US Senate, he dropped Mafia jokes and once even taunted an Italian-American construction contractor about making “cement shoes.”
The tables turned two years later, when radio host Rush Limbaugh twice defamed Corzine’s hair as “greaseball Italian.” Ugly stereotypes are fair game for liberals and conservatives alike.
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Italian Americans don’t need “safe spaces.” We’re (mostly) secure, prosperous and comfortable in our skins. Just spare us the slurs that would stir the wrath of the woke if they were hurled at any other group.