In Popular Culture
The parade itself has been featured in an episode of the NBC situation comedy Seinfeld titled "The Puerto Rican Day." In it, Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza, Elaine Benes, and Cosmo Kramer get stuck in a traffic jam as a result of the parade. Due to controversy relating to a scene in which Kramer accidentally burns and then stomps on a Puerto Rican flag and is chased by a mob of angry Puerto Ricans, NBC refused to air the episode again.> The episode was also withheld from syndication as a result, but has been shown sparingly in syndicated repeats since 2002 and has been released on DVD along with all of the sitcom's episodes.
The parade was portrayed in a negative aspect following the controversial 2000 parade in an 2001 episode of the long-running NBC crime series Law & Order titled "Sunday in the Park with Jorge". Before the National Puerto Rican Coalition protested the episode, network executives issued an apology. The company also made a pledge to "improve our procedures regarding sensitive programming issues."
Read more about this topic: Puerto Rican Day Parade
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