{"id":1313677,"date":"2019-08-18T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T01:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/manieri-column-maybe-the-real-fredo-wasnt-so-dumb-after-all\/"},"modified":"2019-08-19T09:32:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T15:32:03","slug":"manieri-column-maybe-the-real-fredo-wasnt-so-dumb-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/manieri-column-maybe-the-real-fredo-wasnt-so-dumb-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Manieri column: Maybe the real Fredo wasn\u2019t so dumb after all"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

Rich Manieri<\/strong>
\nBLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFredo has a good heart but he is weak \u2026 and stupid.\u201d \u2014 Michael Corleone<\/p>\n

Poor Fredo. Poor, poor Fredo.<\/p>\n

First, he\u2019s talked into double-crossing his own brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then his brother disowns him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFredo, you\u2019re nothing to me now. You\u2019re not a brother. You\u2019re not a friend. When you see our mother, I wanna know a day in advance so I won\u2019t be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then he goes on a one-way fishing trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ordered the death of my brother. He injured me. I killed my mother\u2019s son. I killed my father\u2019s son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, his very name is being misinterpreted as a racial\/ethnic slur.<\/p>\n

Someone with a camera saw CNN anchor Chris \u2014 \u201cAre you talking to me?\u201d \u2014 Cuomo at a New York bar and called the younger brother of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, \u201cFredo,\u201d Michael Corleone\u2019s simple, younger brother in The Godfather.<\/p>\n

The video went viral, not because of the \u201cFredo\u201d reference but because of Cuomo\u2019s reaction. The newsman didn\u2019t exactly dismiss the insult as if he were shooing away an annoying fly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, punk-ass b\u2013es from the right call me \u2018Fredo.\u2019 My name is Chris Cuomo. I\u2019m an anchor on CNN,\u201d Cuomo responded. \u201c\u2019Fredo\u2019 was from \u2018The Godfather.\u2019 He was a weak brother and they use that as an Italian slur \u2014 are any of you Italian?\u2026 It\u2019s a f\u2014ing insult to your people. It\u2019s an insult to your f\u2013kin\u2019 people. It\u2019s like the N-word for us. Is that a cool f\u2014ing thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris \u2014 paison, bubula (I\u2019m one-quarter Jewish so I\u2019m covered) \u2014 take it easy. I know we Italians are known for our passion and quick temper, but your blood pressure, son.<\/p>\n

\u201cFredo\u201d is not a racial or ethnic slur. If it is, it\u2019s news to me. I just think it means, as Donald Trump Jr. pointed out, that you\u2019re the meathead younger brother. That\u2019s all. No need to get all worked up. Even the real Fredo understood that much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can handle things. I\u2019m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been called \u201cFredo\u201d probably only because I don\u2019t have an older brother. But I have been called a moron and an idiot, among other things, on a fairly regular basis. It\u2019s not so bad.<\/p>\n

Years ago, when I was working as a reporter for the Fox TV station in Philadelphia, some guy I had never seen before called me a \u201cpompass a\u2013 dago. Now, that\u2019s an ethnic slur.<\/p>\n

In this case, Cuomo was giving the guy with the camera exactly what he wanted so he continued to taunt him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a much more reasonable guy in person than you seem to be on television,\u201d he said to Cuomo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to play, we\u2019ll f\u2014ing play,\u201d the anchorman responded. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got something to say about what I do on television, then say it, but you don\u2019t have to call me a f\u2014in\u2019 insult.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little later, he threatened to throw the guy down the stairs.<\/p>\n

I think I speak for most, if not all Italians, that if someone called me Fredo, I would assume he meant that I\u2019m a dope. Not sure why Cuomo went with the racial\/ethnic defense right out of the box.<\/p>\n

Yes, the outburst was over the top. But maybe he got caught in an unguarded moment, with his family, some jerk is trying to trigger an outburst and Cuomo takes the bait. The video, by the way, had more than 3.4 million views by Tuesday.<\/p>\n

And, of course, Twitter erupted, with President Donald J. Trump, who never passes on bait, leading the chorus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what Chris Cuomo did was horrible. His language was horrible, he looked like a total out-of-control animal. He lost it, and frankly, I don\u2019t think anybody should defend him because he spews lies every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump can\u2019t stand Cuomo because of his politics and Cuomo hammers Trump on CNN night after night. These two won\u2019t be ordering a margarita with two straws.<\/p>\n

So, to recap, we have some guy with a phone trying, and succeeding, to get under the skin of a network news anchor, who responds with a profanity-laced tirade, to which the president of the United States responds by calling the news anchor an \u201canimal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of all the characters in this whole drama, the real Fredo is starting to look pretty sharp.<\/p>\n

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, \u201cWe Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me\u201d is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at manieri2@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rich Manieri BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer \u201cFredo has a good heart but he is weak \u2026 and stupid.\u201d \u2014 Michael Corleone Poor Fredo. Poor, poor Fredo. First, he\u2019s talked into double-crossing his own brother. \u201cI know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.\u201d Then his brother disowns him. \u201cFredo, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1313677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 05:29:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313701,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313677\/revisions\/1313701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}