Cuomo was so angry about being called Fredo -- like the weak, sniveling brother in "The Godfather" -- that he said it was akin to using the N-word. Then he threatened to break the guy's bones.
"It's an insult to your (expletive) people. It's like the N-word for us," Cuomo said before threatening to throw the guy down the (expletive) stairs.
What Cuomo forgot to mention is all the times left-leaning
Yes, henceforth, you shall be known as
All this prompted a lively discussion at the dinner table over what should have been veal saltimbocca the way it's done at Bruna's Ristorante on
"Cuomo?" Betty said. "All he wants is publicity. Who cares what that spacone (showoff) says? And don't quote me."
But honey, I'm a journalist, and as the political left grows crazier by the day, I'm bound to chronicle its crackup on the
Only a spacone would scream that he'd "throw you down these stairs like a (expletive) punk" for calling him Fredo and then saying Fredo was the N-word. And then not do anything at all.
In that crazy video gone wild,
"One thing for sure," said reader
Well, he could be called worse than Fredo, like
I defended Cuomo on Twitter, because he was out with his family and a guy got in his face and provoked him by calling him Fredo.
Don't provoke people, I always say.
And if I'd have been there with Cuomo, I'd have cooled things off by telling the provoker, "You did insult him a little bit."
Yet
Many Americans of Italian descent are split on whether Cuomo should have been provoked, but on one thing they're clear: Calling a guy Fredo is not the same as using the N-word.
Down at the cigar store where the philosophers gather, I asked two Italian guys, Pete and Joe, who grew up in 100 percent Italian families, about it.
Joe doesn't say much, but he made it clear that of the two words, Fredo can be uttered out loud and the other shouldn't ever be said.
"Case closed," said Joe with a shrug.
Pete agreed that it wasn't a slur on all Italians.
"But anyone familiar with 'The Godfather' movies knows that being called a Fredo is worse than a slur," said Pete, listing off the other slurs that I won't use. "But being called Fredo means you're a back-stabbing piece of (deleted)!"
Perhaps, but just to be clear I called upon
He's amused that so little about the real
"Me too," Raia said. "It's authentic down to the dialect of that part of
If there's one thing that drives him crazy it's inauthentic Italian stuff. Like American journalists insisting that the late
"It's like saying, literally, nothing," Raia said. "As in, if I ask you, 'You want more marinara sauce?' And you flick your chin, with the fingers, you're saying no, nothing, you don't want any. But that didn't stop journalists."
Also, inauthentic marinara sauce drives him crazy.
"Mare is the sea. And if there's not anchovy in it, it's not marinara sauce," he's told me a million times. "Make tomato sauce, call it what you want, but it's not marinara."
When I reached him, he was researching ways to make proper limoncello at home. He hadn't heard of the Fredo Cuomo business.
"In
With pity.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.