A Tale of Two Insults

Banner outside the Bentegodi urging Putin to bomb Naples

Al Capone has nothing on Lori Lightfoot. ~ Leo Terrell

I like to think I’m thick-skinned and have a good sense of humor. When a co-worker told me a joke poking fun at Italians I laughed. I still laugh when I think of it. To his credit, he laughed when I poked fun back at him. The sky didn’t fall and we didn’t have to scurry to our safe spaces equipped with service dogs and crayons to bawl inconsolably like two blithering idiots. Admittedly, jokes and abusive epithets are two different things, though you wouldn’t know it in today’s hypersensitive socio-political climate.

The recent outrage over a banner displayed outside the Stadio Bentegodi in Verona before the match between Hellas and Napoli is a good case in point. Emblazoned with the Russian and Ukrainian flags, the sign provided the coordinates of the city of Naples so Putin could presumably bomb the Neapolitans. Callous and insensitive to the plight of the Ukrainian people, it was meant to be provocative and it succeeded. Indicative of the ultras’ capacity for gallows humor, it was not (as some have claimed) racist abuse. The Neapolitans will undoubtably have an incisive retort at this fixture next season, but they ultimately got the best revenge by beating the Gialloblu two goals to one.

I also didn’t lose any sleep over the latest controversy concerning Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. It seems Chi-town’s First Lady allegedly asserted in a profanity laced tirade to have a bigger [penis] than the Italians. She made the admonishing boast during a heated zoom conference with lawyers over the planned use of a Christopher Columbus statue at the city’s annual Columbus Day Parade. Ideologically driven, in 2020 Lightfoot had the statue in question removed from Grant Park during the violent BLM riots.

Saying the quiet part out loud, Lightfoot claimed she was trying to protect police officers from getting shot, unintentionally admitting her far-left constituency are the intolerant and violent thugs we know them to be. We reached out to Ms. Lightfoot for a comment, but she is still only granting interviews to journalists of color. Despite the assertion by some, we Southern Italians still don’t fit the bill. Anyway, who are we to question the size of her manhood?

As objectionable and worrisome as Lightfoot’s priapic hubris, inept policies, and racism are, her sacrilege at fallen police officer Ella French’s funeral Mass in 2021 was infinitely more offensive to me than any vitriolic outbursts she could possibly spew at the city’s Italians. Never mind her other problematic issues, as a non-Catholic alone she should not have been allowed to receive Holy Communion. Feigning ignorance by all involved, we’ve sadly come to expect this kind of opprobrium from our contemptible lords and masters in church and state.

Humorous meme poking fun at modern day Italians. Sadly, this biting criticism of modernity and decadence can be applied to all Western peoples (e.g., vikings and Scandinavians; crusaders and Franks; conquistadors and Spaniards; etc.) 

Even with Lightfoot’s coarse behavior, I still give no credence to the often repeated misbelief that Italophobia is the “last acceptable form of bigotry in America.” Surely "rednecks," "hillbillies," working class whites in general, Catholics, and countless others would all disagree. This, of course, doesn’t mean I deny the veracity of anti-Italian prejudice, I experience it often enough to know it still exists, I’m just saying it’s not the only acceptable form of bigotry and racism. As much as some people would like us to believe it to be so, no one has a monopoly on suffering.

As far as I’m concerned, the incident in Verona was a crass prank and a nonstory. Again, we are not saying there is no anti-Neapolitan bigotry, it's just that we have seen far worse from the Veronese, and others. In heated confrontations such as sporting events name-calling and taunting are par for the course, and I expect nothing less from our regrettable neighbors to the North. As bad as the lowbrow and inflammatory antics in the terraces can sometimes get, I am much more concerned with corruption and real territorial discrimination by the Italian State.

On the other hand, the Lightfoot scandals are significantly more troubling because she is in a position of power and authority. An unhinged ideologue with racist inclinations and oversized genitalia, she clearly cannot be trusted to be fair and impartial. One would think her gross mismanagement of that crime-ridden city would be enough to remove her from office, but hey democracy. In a sane world she would never have been elected in the first place. It’s anything but sane and we live in a humorless, easily manipulable, and disordered society. 

~ Giovanni di Napoli, March 21st, The Feasts of Bl. Maria Candida of the Eucharist and San Benedetto da Nursia