You don’t have to be Irish to hate Andrew Cuomo, but if you are, the following video will help. The setting is a press conference at which the New York State governor is informing the media that New York City will be cancelling its St. Patrick’s Day Parade for the first time in the event’s 258-year history. The reason for the cancellation is fears of spreading the coronavirus, which has also put the kibosh on March Madness, canceled and opening day for Major League Baseball, and has shuttered Broadway theater.
The cancellation of the parade will result in lost revenue for bars, restaurants, and souvenir vendors, not to mention disappointing the city’s 693,000-strong Irish community. In other words, it’s no laughing matter.
So how did the governor break the word of the parade’s cancellation to the press? Watch:
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As the Irish Post reported, Cuomo spoke “in what we can only call a Leprechaun accent”:
“We’re authorised, d’you know, by St Patrick,” he told journalists gathered to hear him speak.
“Oh yes! We have the highest authorisation, sure!” he continued, practically dancing up a rainbow as he spoke.
Some politicians mimic the dialectal patterns of a crowd they are speaking to in an attempt to ingratiate themselves, but Cuomo’s offense can’t even be explained away as that. There is no imaginable reason why he lapsed into his outrageous accent. The Post acknowledges that “at least he didn’t say ‘Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,'” but that was probably only because he ran short of time.
You would imagine the governor would be more sensitive to ethnic stereotypes in light of the ruckus his brother Chris raised when a man accosted him in public and called him “Fredo.” The CNN anchor was so agitated by the “insult,” which he equated to the N-word, that he threatened to knock the stranger’s block off — which his brother Andrew would now tell you “sounds Irish.”
