Mayor de Blasio got slammed this week for being late to a St. Patrick's Day breakfast in his own home, the latest and most absurd instance of the mayor's tardiness over an impressively consistent tardiness career.

Members of the press have seized upon this issue in part, probably, because they have so much time to work out their ledes while waiting for de Blasio to show up to stuff. He is consistently late to press conferences, but of much more importance, obviously, is his apparent disregard of the start times of events meaningful to his constituents.

The first instance of note was his failure to materialize in Queens last fall for a moment of silence commemorating the 13th anniversary of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587. He delayed an entire JetBlue flight to Puerto Rico in December, and showed showed up 30 minutes late to last weekend's St. Patrick's Day parade in the Rockaways, missing half the route.

He was late to mass at St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; he was late to a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast at Gracie Mansion, where he ostensibly lives.

As the Times wrote earlier this week:

The Mayor needs help. He needs to get with his schedulers, or with his higher power, or somebody, and fix this terrible habit, which has dogged him since the beginning of his administration and has now gone past the point of ridiculous. However enthusiastic and competent a mayor he may be, or believe he is, he has to stop sending the message that he doesn’t care quite enough about the job to show up for it on time, or enough about his constituents to stop making them wait, and wait, for him.

The reason for De Blasio's lax attitude toward timeliness is evident in his half-hearted excuses: He doesn't seem to think that handshaking and baby-kissing is part of his job. “I’m not hired by the people to go to parades,” he said following the St. Patrick's Day debacle. “I’m hired by the people to fix schools, and create jobs and do a lot of other things.”

The Daily News disagrees, referring to de Blasio's behavior as "arrogant, insulting and egotistical."

"With each act of tardiness, the mayor signals that he and his needs trump all," its editorial board puffed.

Even Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman weighed in on Fox’s Good Day New York: “He should be forced to wear a clock around his neck like Flavor Flav.”

Other suggestions have been proffered, even though the clock idea is obviously the best. According to New York's Pro Bono Life Coach Anthony Weiner, de Blasio's staff needs to "schedule for who he is," and to better allow for unknowns like traffic and oversleeping and whatever else it is that is putting de Blasio behind.

He told NY1 that helicopters are "not his thing" but...maybe they should be.