Sopranos Uninvited, Mayor Finds a Parade He Can Refuse. So the story is that New York mayor Michael Bloomberg took it upon himself to invite two stars of The Sopranos he describes as his friends to march with him in the Columbus Day Parade. The parade’s organizers, who objected both because of the aspersions The Sopranos are said to cast on Italian-American culture and because the mayor had not asked them for permission, obtained a court order to bar the mayor’s invitation. (He could be arrested for contempt if he ignores it…) So the mayor simply won’t march. “It is highly unusual for a sitting mayor to refuse the invitation of a major ethnic group to march in its parade. But there have been controversies…. (And) the point at which a mayor enters a parade route — for example, after St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the gay pride parade — and with whom he marches is always a matter for political dissection.” NY Times