New Yorkers are so fickle. One day you’re “in like Flynn” (pardon the rape-originated saying), the next you’re out with the trash because the “collective” has said something–or someone–is no longer chic. To be clear, this critic could give two shits about Cuomo, and never believed him to be the savior everyone seemed to when corona arrived to rattle New York from its precious claim to “scenes.” But what is interesting is how far up his asshole everyone was only last summer. Only for us to find him presently disgraced in manifold ways.
Gone are the days of the “t-shirt ready” saying, “I’m A Cuomosexual” or, plainly, “Cuomosexual.” One component of merchandise in the form of a greeting card even went so far as to accompany the term with an “official” definition: “In love with competent, reassuring governance by a leader who uses complete sentences and displays common sense during a pandemic.” Damn, have we sunk so low as a nation that we revere people who display the slightest level of appearing to know what they’re doing?
Alas, Cuomo’s place in the sun is now searing, for in addition to the first woman, Lindsey Boylan, who came forward with charges of sexual misconduct, then came a second and third. This, indeed, is what’s called a “pattern.” And while Boylan’s account remains the most lurid, who knows if fourth and fifth and sixth women who come forward might not have something more cringe-inducing to offer.
People could almost forgive him “Rest Home-gate” (a testament to how little anyone cares about the elderly) were it not for this sudden barrage of allegations regarding his skeeviness. And here, again, one must ask that people please stop comparing California turning on its governor, Gavin Newsom, to anything like what’s happening with Cuomo. Gavin don’t need to push himself on nobody. He just likes fine dining at an illicit moment in time. Not, you know, “making incriminating documents disappear.” In short, it’s another way New York proves it still has this odd affection for its “erstwhile” Tammany Hall sense of lawlessness in government (albeit on a much less nefarious and pervasive scale) that bulldozed through the early centuries of its “modern era.”
And so now, all at once, people are reminded that they never really liked Cuomo all that much–which is why Cynthia Nixon actually got way more of a percentage than she ever should have (34.47 to Cuomo’s 65.53%) in the 2018 gubernatorial race. In fact, some were, in this new post-corona context, quick to express gratitude that she didn’t actually win because she wouldn’t have handled the pandemic as well as Cuomo.
But Cuomo has never been a politician “beyond reproach.” His history of hiding information and misappropriating funds has been present from the beginning. Yet New Yorkers have been content to look the other way for as long as they did with Bloomberg, who was able to serve three consecutive terms as mayor when the New York City Council altered the law in 2008, because, tellingly, “About two-thirds of the council would have been forced out of office under the two-term limit, but they can now run for a third term in the November 2009 election.” Bloomberg somehow managed to wield the 2008 financial crisis to make his case for being “needed” as a source of “financial stability” in New York in a way that even Rudy Giuliani wasn’t able to manipulate a crisis when his second term was coming to a close after 9/11.
Then came another nefarious mayor, but he had the advantage of being a Democrat and, more importantly, the son of beloved former mayor, Mario Cuomo–the source of the following slogan against Ed Koch in the 80s: “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” Nonetheless, Cuomo was lauded enough to elicit a statement from Obama upon his death in 2015 that touted Mario as, “An Italian Catholic kid from Queens, born to immigrant parents. Mario paired his faith in God and faith in America to live a life of public service–and we are all better for it. He rose to be chief executive of the state he loved, a determined champion of progressive values, and an unflinching voice for tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness, dignity and opportunity. His own story taught him that as Americans, we are bound together as one people, and our country’s success rests on the success of all of us, not just a fortunate few.”
Current president and then vice president Joe Biden would also chime in that Mario was “a forceful voice for civil rights, for equal rights, for economic opportunity and justice. He had the courage to stand by his convictions, even when it was unpopular.” Poor Andy, he’ll never have such kind, thoughtful words said about him now. Not with everyone turning in their “Cuomosexual” card. How disgraced Papa Cuomo would be.
Like John F. Kennedy, a family lineage that Cuomo married into via Kerry Kennedy (forming “Cuomolot”), one could see how the “liberal” politician would also assume the luxury of being able to take liberties with women as well. But this damn sure ain’t the 1960s and no one is interested in helping a man cover up his many sexual indiscretions. Like Kennedy, Cuomo’s political career was also handed to him as a result of his father, who certainly helped grease the wheels to get “Andy” a job in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under fellow lecher and then president Bill Clinton in 1993. By 1998, he was being accused by the inspector general of HUD, Susan Gaffney, of general “dirty dealing,” including telling “her to undertake an aggressive anti-fraud initiative in only cities with African-American mayors and, when the selections were criticized as racist, [to say] Cuomo had nothing to do with them” and “proposed a program that would shield landlords from her investigations.” The tension between Gaffney and Cuomo over the former not yielding to his pressure smacks of the same tactics the governor implemented and got caught for with the nursing home coverup.
And he was covering it up right around the same time New Yorkers were lavishing praise upon him enough to call themselves Cuomosexuals. Alas, the Cuomosexual “epithet” has already not aged very well–is, in fact, the worst possible term for someone accused of sexual assault–and it hasn’t even been a year. In fact, it’s getting to a point where New York has taken parodying itself to the next level, in terms of Stefon from SNL saying what the hottest new club is. Except it’s now what the hottest new entity to place on the pyre for the lynch mob is. Indeed, something said or written even yesterday can fall prey to not aging well in the current (ever warming) climate. It’s the risk a New Yorker takes in their daily attempts to be “au courant.” But if they stopped long enough to look around and really see things, maybe they’d intuit a bit of poetry to Cuomo’s fall and “sudden” decay coming at a time when, God forbid you say it out loud to anyone still clinging to New York, that the city has, too, reached its own nadir.
Granted, Cuomo is not the first NY mayor of late to be accused of misconduct, it’s just that he still happens to be in office during the accusations. Not like his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, whose various skeletons were pulled out of the closet during the 2020 presidential election, when Elizabeth Warren called him out for the nondisclosure agreements he’s used for years for the purpose of immunity. The ones that have kept women working at his company from speaking candidly about their harassment.
The difference between Cuomo and Bloomberg, however, is that the latter was never beloved. Even Rudy Giuliani wasn’t all that beloved after 9/11–for he’d already wrought so much damage in terms of altering the landscape and “values” of NYC forever. Cuomo, somehow, some way–and despite that weird, grandstanding “New York Tough” poster he created to sell on his website in the summer of ‘20–managed to go from being largely ignored to turning rona into his cause célèbre. But if you “ride” one thing too long, you’re bound to fall off. In contrast to trying to ride multiple women who don’t want you anywhere near them, Cuomo should have diversified his political focus instead of his sexual one. Then again, not that it really would have made a difference. In New York, no matter what you do, the people’s affections are here today and gone tomorrow. Especially since so many creeps live there to help bolster the disappointment quotient.
