CNN host Chris Cuomo is with the shits on his show. He never backs down from a fuss fight no matter which white person he has on his show spouting nonsense to try and make Donald Trump’s racist policies sound less racist.
Nothing about him says he wouldn’t be with the shits in the street. A video recently surfaced of a jackhole approaching Cuomo and instead of calling the famed anchor by his name, he instead calls him “Fredo,” the fictional inept son from The Godfather who betrays his family.
In the video, Cuomo quickly gathers the man up.
“Punk-ass bitches from the right call me Fredo,” Cuomo says to the man. “My name is Chris Cuomo. I’m an anchor on CNN. Fredo is from ‘The Godfather.’ He was a weak brother and they use it as an Italian aspersion,” the Hill reports Cuomo saying. “You Italian? It’s a fucking insult to your people. It’s like the n-word for us.”
The man, who is clearly being condescending, tells Cuomo that he’s a “much more reasonable guy in person than you seem to be on television.”
“If you want to play, then we’ll fucking play,” Cuomo responds. “If you’ve got something to say about what I do on television then say it.”
The man, who clearly knows that Cuomo’s name is not Fredo, claims that he thought his name was Fredo.
Cuomo lets the asshat know that he’s not for the games.
“You’re going to have a big fucking problem,” Cuomo says at one point, before letting the human floormat know that he’d “fucking throw you down these stairs like a fucking punk.”
Cuomo’s reaction is perfectly fine for me. I’m not Italian, so I’m not bothered by the word Fredo, but unless there is another Fredo who was stolen from his homeland, enslaved, beaten, ripped from his children and forced to watch as his wife was raped, then Fredo is nowhere close to the n-word.
That’s what Cuomo tried to explain during the incident. He literally argued that Fredo is a racist slur akin to calling a black person the n-word.
It ain’t. It ain’t again. And, it ain’t some more.
I know what Cuomo was trying to do in that moment; he was trying to explain to a group of non-Italian white men that you don’t use this word with Italians unless you’re ready to fight. The word is loaded and isn’t taken lightly for Italians. What he wanted to do was let the men know quickly that the aggression he was feeling was charged because the word isn’t just a word for Italians; it has meaning and context.
But my nigga, it’s not the n-word; It’s not even the in same league. Fredo is Lil Mama while the n-word is the Beyoncé of racial slurs. Fredo is Harold Miner. The n-word is Michael Jordan. Fredo is Starburys. The n-word is Nike.
Want to know immediately how powerful the n-word is? The n-word is the most violent racial slang which even has its own nickname; you can’t even say it when trying not to say it.
Fredo is the name of a fictional character in a movie about Italians. The story isn’t real. The people are actors and the names were all made up. I get that Italians don’t see it as flattering, but they aren’t out here saying the “f-word.” In fact, another derogatory slang toward the LGBTQ community already has that nickname.
Basically what happened on this day is that a bunch of white guys thought they were going to be funny and call a CNN anchor Fredo and they forgot that the man that he is on TV isn’t the man that he is offscreen. They almost got their asses handed to them and that would’ve really been amazing.
What’s really embarrassing about all of this is, that much like a SoundCloud rapper who invades a hashtag to promote his new single, “Fuck You Mean This Ain’t Fur,” the president of Fredos joined the fray to talk shit.
National pariah Sean Hannity even jumped into the conversation to side with Cuomo:
But the only voice that really mattered in this fight was Fredo himself, Trump Jr.: