What was gong to happen
finally happened late yesterday morning.
Personally, I have some very mixed feelings about it.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who served in that office for nearly three terms or the past 10 years, resigned yesterday amid the sordid details of sexual harassment involving 11 women.
This follows by a week the conclusions of an investigation done by the state attorney general’s office, where the 11 women who claimed foul were found to have credible stories, experiences where the governor acted in a sexually aggressive manner with each of then, through his speech and/or through sexually aggressive behavior including touching their private areas or kissing them suggestively.
The governor has denied any of this, and said if anything did happen that was untoward to these women, it had to do with generational and cultural differences between his Baby Boomer upbringing in a highly political household—his father, Mario Cuomo, was also the state’s governor when the younger Cuomo was growing up—and the current stance by younger generations that any such behavior was sexual in nature.
This is a difficult one to sort out, as I said in the earlier Rant when the report came out, and I do believe Cuomo when he says that generational and cultural differences between he—at current age 63—and these women—in their 20s and early 30s—probably damned him.
He was brought up in a highly political household, and mix that with his ethnic upbringing, and yes, you have what amounts to a political Barnabas Collins, a man born in a different time where certain things were looked at differently than today.
Like Barnabas—the engaging vampire in the classic “Dark Shadows” TV series—he was forced to adapt to the current narrative, and both he and Cuomo had problems doing so.
If you remember the show, Barnabas was awakened from his eternal damnation as a vampire, and he had to conform his proclivities of hundreds of years earlier--horrible things he did to both women and men, in particular to women, things which got him in his bloodthirsty predicament to being with--to the then-current time period of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Barnabas was stuck in the past as he survived in what was his future, even refusing to have electricity in his home, preferring to use candles for illumination, had no phones no TVs, and he often worried about being found out as a vampire, a man of a different time.
Cuomo. himself, might have also needed some more modern illumination to understand why he put himself in such a predicament. He also seemed to use candles when he should have been using lamps that would shine a brighter scope on the predicament he got himself into.
He was brought up and raised during a time when outward instances of hugging, kissing and putting your hands on a person’s body was an acceptable way of greeting people, and he was also brought up in a time when people could cut the ice with others by listening to what they had to say, no matter what the subject.
Like Barnabas, he had a tough time fitting into the milieu he was in, and in Cuomo’s case, he did not understand that the younger generation looked at his actions as vulgar ones, even though I do believe that that was not his intention.
Personally, I have some very mixed feelings about it.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who served in that office for nearly three terms or the past 10 years, resigned yesterday amid the sordid details of sexual harassment involving 11 women.
This follows by a week the conclusions of an investigation done by the state attorney general’s office, where the 11 women who claimed foul were found to have credible stories, experiences where the governor acted in a sexually aggressive manner with each of then, through his speech and/or through sexually aggressive behavior including touching their private areas or kissing them suggestively.
The governor has denied any of this, and said if anything did happen that was untoward to these women, it had to do with generational and cultural differences between his Baby Boomer upbringing in a highly political household—his father, Mario Cuomo, was also the state’s governor when the younger Cuomo was growing up—and the current stance by younger generations that any such behavior was sexual in nature.
This is a difficult one to sort out, as I said in the earlier Rant when the report came out, and I do believe Cuomo when he says that generational and cultural differences between he—at current age 63—and these women—in their 20s and early 30s—probably damned him.
He was brought up in a highly political household, and mix that with his ethnic upbringing, and yes, you have what amounts to a political Barnabas Collins, a man born in a different time where certain things were looked at differently than today.
Like Barnabas—the engaging vampire in the classic “Dark Shadows” TV series—he was forced to adapt to the current narrative, and both he and Cuomo had problems doing so.
If you remember the show, Barnabas was awakened from his eternal damnation as a vampire, and he had to conform his proclivities of hundreds of years earlier--horrible things he did to both women and men, in particular to women, things which got him in his bloodthirsty predicament to being with--to the then-current time period of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Barnabas was stuck in the past as he survived in what was his future, even refusing to have electricity in his home, preferring to use candles for illumination, had no phones no TVs, and he often worried about being found out as a vampire, a man of a different time.
Cuomo. himself, might have also needed some more modern illumination to understand why he put himself in such a predicament. He also seemed to use candles when he should have been using lamps that would shine a brighter scope on the predicament he got himself into.
He was brought up and raised during a time when outward instances of hugging, kissing and putting your hands on a person’s body was an acceptable way of greeting people, and he was also brought up in a time when people could cut the ice with others by listening to what they had to say, no matter what the subject.
Like Barnabas, he had a tough time fitting into the milieu he was in, and in Cuomo’s case, he did not understand that the younger generation looked at his actions as vulgar ones, even though I do believe that that was not his intention.
He was a man still living in the 1970s although he was governing New York State in the 2020s, and he became out of touch with a generation of people, people who were his own three daughters' ages.
The other stuff—the alleged touching of private areas, the aggressive kissing and hugging, the lewd thoughts that the women said were played out by the power the governor wielded—well, those are things that I, personally, am not entirely convinced actually happened.
I believe that some of the women were so repulsed by his behavior to begin with that they might be stretching the truth a bit, imagining that these things actually happened, or perhaps the groping incidents were consensual, and might have gotten out of hand.
Or maybe the women ARE telling the truth, and the governor just lost his sense of reality because of the power he wielded.
We may never know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because these entire proceedings reeked in a “he said, she said” manner, and that stink is never good for either side in such cases.
And these sordid tales kind of took precedence over what was really the reason to get rid of Cuomo, which was the nursing home scandal early on in the pandemic, when he forced such places to take on COVID patients, which ended up spreading the virus like wildfire in these facilities, as well as the under-reporting of numbers related to COVID deaths due to his decision.
My father in law was in the Veterans Home in Stony Brook, New York, and the governor’s decision greatly impacted my father in law, put him in great danger for months, and eventually got to him and killed him last year.
And he was just one of thousands of our elderly citizens who suffered because of the governor’s actions.
But let’s be real about it: does the public prefer tales about our senior citizens or prefer those about young, nubile women?
Sex will always sell better, and it certainly did here.
What is next for the governor, who will be replaced by his lieutenant governor, the relatively unknown Kathy Hochul, in two weeks’ time?
He will be without a job, but I can guarantee you that he won’t be filing for unemployment insurance anytime soon.
He is probably already mapping out his strategy for the next few years, and it could even include a run for governor in his future,
He could still be impeached, even while he has resigned from office, which would prevent him from ever running for elected office in the state again, but until that happens—it might or it might not—he is open to run again, even in the upcoming election next year, as an independent.
Yes, he is that popular in New York State. and with the rag-tag bunch of gubernatorial wannabes--including, reportedly, the same attorney general whose report helped oust him--he could actually win back his job next year, and I think he knows that he would win against this bunch--and so do his fellow legislators.
He could also lay low for the next gubernatorial election, and run again four years later, well after all the dust has settled.
Cuomo could also live the life, write another book about his experiences with these women, become a public speaker, become a political talking head on TV, or even revert back to what he is—a lawyer—and into private practice.
I think he will lay low for a while. It has helped others in a similar situation, including one of his immediate predecessors, Eliot Spitzer, who had to resign after it was found out that he had sexual relations with prostitutes while in office.
Spitzer was out of the public eye for a few years, but now is a popular guest on the TV news channels, writes political columns for newspapers and magazines, and is s sought after speaker.
And then we have Bill Clinton … he has emerged as a highly regarded elder statesman in the Democratic Party, in spite of the fact that his past--including his time in the White House--was fraught with one sex dalliance after another.
So Cuomo has lots of options, and he is smart enough to know that.
Me, I never voted for either him or his dad, never agreed with his policies, and kind of knew that there was something fishy going on when he became “America’s Governor” during the height of the pandemic.
But what do I know?
He was beloved by so many, and one thing that we, as a culture, love more than anything else is a good comeback story, where the principle comes back against all odds and is revered as a conquering hero.
The other stuff—the alleged touching of private areas, the aggressive kissing and hugging, the lewd thoughts that the women said were played out by the power the governor wielded—well, those are things that I, personally, am not entirely convinced actually happened.
I believe that some of the women were so repulsed by his behavior to begin with that they might be stretching the truth a bit, imagining that these things actually happened, or perhaps the groping incidents were consensual, and might have gotten out of hand.
Or maybe the women ARE telling the truth, and the governor just lost his sense of reality because of the power he wielded.
We may never know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because these entire proceedings reeked in a “he said, she said” manner, and that stink is never good for either side in such cases.
And these sordid tales kind of took precedence over what was really the reason to get rid of Cuomo, which was the nursing home scandal early on in the pandemic, when he forced such places to take on COVID patients, which ended up spreading the virus like wildfire in these facilities, as well as the under-reporting of numbers related to COVID deaths due to his decision.
My father in law was in the Veterans Home in Stony Brook, New York, and the governor’s decision greatly impacted my father in law, put him in great danger for months, and eventually got to him and killed him last year.
And he was just one of thousands of our elderly citizens who suffered because of the governor’s actions.
But let’s be real about it: does the public prefer tales about our senior citizens or prefer those about young, nubile women?
Sex will always sell better, and it certainly did here.
What is next for the governor, who will be replaced by his lieutenant governor, the relatively unknown Kathy Hochul, in two weeks’ time?
He will be without a job, but I can guarantee you that he won’t be filing for unemployment insurance anytime soon.
He is probably already mapping out his strategy for the next few years, and it could even include a run for governor in his future,
He could still be impeached, even while he has resigned from office, which would prevent him from ever running for elected office in the state again, but until that happens—it might or it might not—he is open to run again, even in the upcoming election next year, as an independent.
Yes, he is that popular in New York State. and with the rag-tag bunch of gubernatorial wannabes--including, reportedly, the same attorney general whose report helped oust him--he could actually win back his job next year, and I think he knows that he would win against this bunch--and so do his fellow legislators.
He could also lay low for the next gubernatorial election, and run again four years later, well after all the dust has settled.
Cuomo could also live the life, write another book about his experiences with these women, become a public speaker, become a political talking head on TV, or even revert back to what he is—a lawyer—and into private practice.
I think he will lay low for a while. It has helped others in a similar situation, including one of his immediate predecessors, Eliot Spitzer, who had to resign after it was found out that he had sexual relations with prostitutes while in office.
Spitzer was out of the public eye for a few years, but now is a popular guest on the TV news channels, writes political columns for newspapers and magazines, and is s sought after speaker.
And then we have Bill Clinton … he has emerged as a highly regarded elder statesman in the Democratic Party, in spite of the fact that his past--including his time in the White House--was fraught with one sex dalliance after another.
So Cuomo has lots of options, and he is smart enough to know that.
Me, I never voted for either him or his dad, never agreed with his policies, and kind of knew that there was something fishy going on when he became “America’s Governor” during the height of the pandemic.
But what do I know?
He was beloved by so many, and one thing that we, as a culture, love more than anything else is a good comeback story, where the principle comes back against all odds and is revered as a conquering hero.
The same could happen to Cuomo, and I bet we have not heard the last of him in any way, shape or form.
Like Barnabas Collins, he will rise from the grave, and I will bet you that he becomes a model citizen in the coming years just like the vampire became on that old TV show.
"Dark Shadows" indeed.
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