Worshipping Andrew Cuomo Was One of Our Worst Pandemic-Related Behaviors

The #Cuomosexuals are now #Cuomutes. As it turns out, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an absolute creep. The power hungry maniac took victory laps while sending COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, resulting in the deaths of at least 15,000 New Yorkers. We don’t know the exact number, because Cuomo’s administration purposefully undercounted the deaths at nursing homes and long-term facilities.

Sweet guy, right? Luckily for all of the ladies, Cuomo seems more than willing to spread his good cheer. Three women, including two former aides, say the governor sexually harassed them. During one alleged exchange, Cuomo used COVID restrictions as a way to lead into some steamy chatter. Charlotte Bennett, a 25-year-old former aid, says the three-time governor once complained about being lonely, before inquiring about the last time she “really hugged” somebody.

Then he was probably off to giggle about his nose with brother Chris Cuomo on primetime TV. During one particularly disturbing exchange, Chris Cuomo joked about his brother’s status as the “Love Gov,” because apparently nothing gets the juices flowing like mass death and unemployment.

The idolatry of Andrew Cuomo and his daily news briefings was one of the more disturbing phenomenons of early quarantine–right next to the Tiger King. But that’s what happens when politics transcend culture, and like most awful things, COVID only exacerbated that trend. A septuagenarian epidemiologist became TV’s most ubiquitous personality. Spring 2020 was a dark time.

Fortunately, this spring is looking brighter. COVID cases are falling; vaccinations are rising. And finally, we are going to be rid of Andrew Cuomo. Let’s pledge to never allow something like this to ever happen again.

Cuomo’s venality should’ve been apparent to anybody with an Internet connection. During the early days of COVID, he used his broad emergency powers to ram through a budget that cut Medicaid funding and rolled back many of New York’s criminal justice initiatives. For 10 years, Cuomo ruled New York state with an iron fist, and COVID has been no exception. He’s spent the last year belittling adversaries, and on at least one occasion lambasted a reporter who asked about his haphazard school closure policy. It’s apparent that Cuomo possesses little sympathy for those suffering. This was the greatest publicity tour of his privileged life.

While the deaths piled up, Cuomo published a book: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic. Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim said recently he felt gaslit by his boastful governor. “I was on the ground, yelling with my constituents who couldn’t see their loved ones, who knew that COVID was transmitting, and they were literally seeing their loved ones die of agony and pain alone with no funeral,” he said. “I turned the TV on and I see his brother [Chris Cuomo] and Andrew cracking jokes. I stopped watching TV for six months.”

Andrew Cuomo was a hero to the MSNBC class, otherwise known as white-collar winos who spent their quarantines making memes and ordering groceries online. They were looking for a new brash protagonist to stand against Trump, and there was Cuomo, at the front of the Javits Center in his bronzed glory. With nothing at stake, politics is a game to them. Cuomo was the perfect character.

But now, Cuomo’s aura is broken, and he seems more repugnant each day. To kick off his apology press conference–in which he said he now “understands” it was wrong to do things like grab a random woman’s head at a wedding and ask to kiss her–he blamed the high COVID rates in the Bronx, the state’s poorest county, on human behavior. How did we ever allow ourselves to forget that when he ran his father’s gubernatorial campaign against Ed Koch, posters went up around the Bronx pleading to “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo”? Or that he advocated for a separate facility to house AIDS patients in the late ’80s?

In many respects, Cuomo is the perfect last gasp of the #Resistance: fraudulent, phony, and ultimately disgraced. He didn’t make life better for anyone, leaving a legacy of scandal and cover-ups.

Sound like somebody you know?