Dear Mrs. Cuomo,
Last April, I pleaded with you from these pages to tell your sons to leave the public stage, yet they continued as cafone-di-televisione.
Now, your son Andrew has been stripped of his office as governor and faces criminal charges, and his brother Christopher has been booted from CNN because he is an indisciplinato and a maladrino who threw away the last vestiges of journalistic professionalism to help cover up Andrew’s gross behavior, and then apparently lied about it.
And allegations are being leveled that Chris has the same lust-driven roaming hands for which his brother is notorious. A former ABC colleague has accused Chris of sexual misconduct.
Infamia!
Your sons are destroying the positive image of Italian-Americans, especially male Italian Americans, who have striven for over a century to get rid of the Hollywood-promoted underworldish, curly-haired greaseball, ill-mannered, under-educated, womanizer caricature most recently echoed by the embarrassing show Jersey Shore—and now by your two sons, especially Chris.
Chris, in fact, with his exhibitionist videos of his physique, is nothing more than Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino with a fancy degree and a fancier pedigree.
Unfortunately, that pedigree, which your late husband Mario spent a lifetime building, is no longer characterized by excellence but rather by excess.
Perhaps you can convince Christopher, who has single-handedly done the most to destroy the credibility of Cable News Network, the organization I helped to build in its earliest days, to contemplate the negative effects of his ill behavior.
Perhaps you can recommend to him contemplation and confession—although any priest would have to consult with the archbishop to get an estimate of his penance.
Perhaps Chris should spend some time with the Cistercian monks at the abbey in nearby Genesee, New York where he could learn to appreciate their Trappist propensity for silence.
Perhaps with a humbling tonsure for his curly Brylcreem locks and a few weeks of donkey riding lessons he could learn, from the source, how to be a lesser ass.