HALIFAX, N.S. — In what political aides described as “tone deaf” and “as close to a white-on-white microaggression as you can get,” Andy Fillmore recently gifted an Irish ambassador a family-sized box of Lucky Charms.
The original idea was to gift the ambassador, Niamh O’Connell, a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, but upon discovering that O’Connell is a recovering alcoholic, Fillmore was left scrambling. Fillmore quickly googled “Irish things” and, after realizing it was too short notice to book Niall Horan, settled on Lucky Charms as the next best thing.
At this point, Fillmore sent an aide to rummage through community fridges until they found a box, claiming, “There was room in the municipal budget for $103 million to go towards the police, but not enough to buy groceries in this province.”
Upon receiving the gift, O’Connell smiled and thanked the mayor before turning away, rolling her eyes and sending a text that read, “Get me the fuck out of this city,” to her boss.
While some believe that the cereal was intended to bring luck to future negotiations — that totally exist and are not just hypothetical for the sake of this story — between the city of Halifax and the country of Ireland, others took the gift as a thinly veiled threat.
One aide reportedly heard Fillmore whisper to O’Connell, “You’ll need luck in what happens next,” and “I don’t care where you hid the end of the rainbow, that pot of gold is mine.”
Needless to say, Halifax is certainly causing big waves in the political world.
By Sam Creighton