thornwalker.com/ditch/morley_cuomo_rip.htm
August 27, 2021
Departing with grace and class. Not.
Andrew Cuomo, “Prince of Darkness,” RIP
By EDWARD MORRISON MORLEY
Editor’s note: Mr. Morley once visited New York State, took one look around, and skedaddled out of there as soon as he could. One reason was the unnaturally high proportion of Cuomos in politics there. Another was the abnormally low number of readers of TLD. Mr. Morley still shares the sentiment imputed to President Gerald Ford by New York newspaper headline writers: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” (Though Andrew Cuomo last September attempted to perpetuate this urban legend, Ford did not, in fact, say “Drop Dead.” Closer to the truth is this made-up headline: “Cuomo to Accusers: Drop Dead.”)Once again, I must caution the reader unpracticed in dealing with Mr. Morley that all the “editor’s notes” after this one are ... not by me. Actually, the previous paragraph was ... Well, actually, I ought to clam up right here. — Nicholas Strakon
LET’S HOPE that this week is the end of the sad tale of Andrew Cuomo, sometime governor of New York (2011-2021), assistant secretary of housing and urban development (1993-1997), and then at 39, ascending to secretary of HUD (1997-2001) under Bill Clinton. His political career had begun at age 24 when, fresh out of law school, he was campaign manager for his father Mario (founder of the Cuomo crime syndicate) for the Don’s first election campaign for governor of New York in 1982. (Editor’s note: The older Cuomo’s professional baseball career was cut short when, in pre-batting-helmet days, he was hit in the head and hospitalized for nearly a week. You be the judge.)
Andrew then served as policy advisor to his father, in which post he was known as “the Enforcer,” playing bad cop to his father’s good cop. (Editor’s note: Somewhere along the line he unwisely decided to play both roles himself, resulting in the fiasco of 2021.)
Was Andrew Cuomo qualified for any of those offices other than having not-so-mysteriously been appointed to his previous office? At HUD, Andrew was the genius who pushed government-backed loan agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy home loans made to poor credit risk homeowners. That contributed mightily to the 2007-2010 subprime mortgage crisis. According to James Bovard in “Feeling Your Pain”
In 2002, at 44, Andrew ran for governor, and was the favorite — leading in polls and fund-raising — when, in the aftermath of 9/11, he said about the Republican incumbent, George Pataki, “Pataki stood behind the leader. He held the leader’s coat. He was a great assistant to the leader. But he was not a leader. Cream rises to the top, and Rudy Giuliani rose to the top.” That gaffe was widely mocked, and his campaign went into free-fall. Just prior to the Democrat state convention he withdrew. His acquaintances said that setback was an extremely traumatic experience for him, especially the part about not having power.
However, in 2006 he was elected state attorney general and then became governor in 2011. Skipping over the lurid details of his governorship, here. (Editor’s note: Thank goodness for that, since TLD is obviously a family-oriented publication.) But don’t forget:
1) He’s the guy who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book (illegally utilizing state resources and personnel) praising himself for his masterful handling of the COVID-19 crisis; and
2) he was actually the front-runner in 2020 as a possible replacement for Sleepy Joe in the event that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. physically keeled over before November or went completely off the mental reservation; and
3) he was awarded, during the aforementioned COVID crisis, a special International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy Founders Award “for effective communication and leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.” As Bruce L. Paisner, International Academy president, put it at the time, “The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure. People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.” In the meanwhile Governor Cuomo was effectively passing death sentences on thousands of elderly New Yorkers by mandating that COVID-infected oldsters be sent to retirement homes.
STOP THE PRESSES: In late-breaking news, TLD has been informed by Variety magazineAndrew Cuomo is a Roman Catholic, but his stances on abortion and same-sex marriage are contrary to his Church’s doctrines. I believe that conservative Catholics have a name for those who pick and choose with respect to Catholic dogma: “Cafeteria Catholics.” More seriously questionable in the Church’s eyes might be his marital history. He started off well by marrying Kerry Kennedy, the seventh child of(August 24, 2021) that the International Academy “is rescinding his special 2020 International Emmy Award. His name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.”
The above might or might not explain how Cuomo became known during the COVID-19 crisis as the “Love Gov” for showing his softer side in the response efforts (always excepting senior citizens). He told his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, “I’ve always been a soft guy. I am the love gov. I’m a cool dude in a loose mood, you know that. I just say, ‘Let it go, just go with the flow, baby.’” Yeah, cool, baby. What 20- to 30-year-old woman in his office could resist that? And you can bet that was followed up with a lot of hard questioning of Cuomo by Cuomo. (Editor’s note: You would lose.)
Now we have arrived at a great day in New York history: Andy’s last day in office, or as The Wall Street Journal trumpeted: “Cuomo Lies Low in Final Days as New York Governor,” by Jimmy Vielkind (August 23, 2021). (Editor’s note: readers accustomed to rapidly scanning newspapers might have stopped when they saw “Cuomo Lies” and wondered “So what?”) Cuomo signed several bills — though the state legislature had stopped sending legislation to him when he announced his resignation — and declared, “I am governor today, and I am in charge. This is also something I’ve done a few times. (Editor’s note: I don’t know what that means either.) I will be 100% available to the people of the state of New York every minute of the day, which I have been for my entire tenure as governor.”
If we looked up “hubris” in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure we would find Andy Cuomo’s picture with it. The Journal reports: “The governor hadn’t yet filed a resignation letter with the secretary of state as of Friday, which is required by law,” but, judging from the above, when Cuomo says he is “in charge,” he means he is above the law. However, he wasn’t too busy to apply on Tuesday for his $50,000 pension (with a puzzling retirement date of
Meanwhile, the Dumbocrats were cozying up to incoming Governor Kathy Hochul and hailing a new day for a New York brought into disgrace by ... the Dumbocrats. Democrat state Senator Sean Ryan said, “The Prince of Darkness has been replaced by the light.” While more or less blasphemously applying to Hochul a designation usually applied to God or Christ, Ryan doesn’t explain how his party could have supported a known abuser of women nicknamed “Prince of Darkness.” (Editor’s note: Isn’t Ryan also affronting the real Prince of Darkness? Inquiring minds want to know.) And according to The Wall Street Journal (“Cuomo Unapologetic on Last Day in Office,” August 24), Dumbocrat Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (I am not making this up) tweeted “100,000,000 opportunities to be a better leader. Chose himself every time. Goodbye, Governor Cuomo.”
The New York Times joined in the piling-on, in “Cuomo Blames ‘Political Pressure and Media Frenzy’ in Farewell Speech,” by Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Katie Glueck (August 24, 2021): “The governor, whose aggressive governing style relied more on fear than comity, left with few political allies at the end of his tenure.... President Biden, a longtime friend of Mr. Cuomo’s, has not spoken with him since the attorney general’s report came out, a White House official confirmed on Monday.” (Editor’s note: Imagine! The president turning on allies. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.) Other New York pols “close to him criticized the governor’s speech as self-aggrandizing and disingenuous....” Chickens coming home to roost, possibly.
Of course, the implication in the headline that Andrew Cuomo is politically dead overlooks the fact that the political elite usually takes care of their own. Cuomo is only
Then, too, American political memories are short: who now remembers even a fraction of Sleepy Joe’s multiple plagiarisms, assorted gaffes, allegations of sexual harassment, and implausible terminological inexactitudes (=lies)? On the other hand, maybe Cuomo’s youth will tell against him. The President gets a pass because he is in his dotage. The old gibe “Hire the handicapped: They’re fun to watch,” applies to a guy who’s obviously slipped several mental gears, rarely appears after dark, possibly because by that time of day he just doesn’t have it anymore, and who appears in numerous hilarious You Tube video compilations. Don’t be surprised if Andrew Mark Cuomo, like Richard Milhous Nixon, comes back even after several stakes have been pounded through his heart. Or to paraphrase the words of the Terminator: “He’ll be baaack.” (Editor’s note: does anyone need any more proof that karma is essentially false?)
At any rate, Andrew Cuomo kept his blotted copybook intact to the end by leaving office with the same grace and class he has grown accustomed to showing over the last few years (63 to be exact). That ranges from his harassment of women (he continued to deny touching anybody ”inappropriately,” but declined to say whether his definition of “inappropriately” was any degree similar to that held by mere mortals); to his abandonment of his dog (does anyone remember the brouhaha about the unspeakable Willard Mitt Romney AKA Mitt Romney for putting his dog in a car-top carrier?); to the graceless power-mad arrogance of “I am in charge” to the bitter end. Ω
August 27, 2021
Published in 2021 by WTM Enterprises.
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