The Other McCain

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CUOMO ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Posted on | August 10, 2021 | Comments Off on CUOMO ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Wow! This just happened on live TV without any forewarning. First, the lawyer for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did a long defense presentation criticizing the investigation of him, and then the governor came on with a statement that began with him sounding like he was preparing to dig in and hold onto office. So I turned the sound down and went back to work, but then my brother Kirby walked in and looked at my office TV and said, “Cuomo resigns.” What the hell?

UPDATE: Brittany Bernstein reports at National Review:

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation Tuesday, saying he would like to spare New Yorkers the distraction of a protracted impeachment inquiry.
“I work for you and doing the right thing is doing the right thing for you because as we say, it’s not about me, it’s about we,” Cuomo said in a televised address, adding that his resignation would be effective in two weeks.
He said that fighting back against the “politically motivated” attack on him would throw New York into months of turmoil and “I cannot be the cause of that.”
“The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government,” the 63-year-old three-term governor said.
Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul will become the state’s first female governor.
“I agree with Governor Cuomo’s decision to step down. It is the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers,” tweeted 62-year-old Hochul, who previously served as a member of Congress.
Ahead of his resignation on Tuesday, Cuomo said he takes “fully responsibility” for his actions, though he continued to defend himself, saying he had “never crossed the line with anyone.”
“I have slipped and called people ‘honey, ’sweetheart’ and ‘darling.’ I mean it to be endearing but women found it dated and offensive,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my actions. I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting.”
“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” Cuomo added. “There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate and I should have — no excuses.”

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Most guys our age — I’m a couple of years younger than Cuomo — could actually sympathize if (and it’s a big “if,” so big as to be a farfetched speculation) all Cuomo did was make jokes or behave in ways that could be politely deemed “flirtatious.”

Once upon a time, perhaps as recently as 20 or 25 years ago, men and women were allowed to joke around in the workplace in ways that now seem to be automatically construed as “harassment” — at least when men do it. I suppose women are still allowed to joke around, but apparently an “insensitive” joke is now grounds for immediate termination, if a guy does it. It’s been a dozen years since I had a regular office job, so my understanding of workplace protocol may be obsolete, but judging from news coverage of “harassment” in the #MeToo era, any young man would be best advised never to speak to any woman in the office, if he could possibly avoid it, and certainly no man should ever make a joke at work, if a woman is within earshot. Be a serious as a 17th-century Puritan in Salem — that’s the only way for a man to survive the contemporary workplace climate. Keep your mouth shut and never make eye contact with a woman at the office. Strive to be invisible.

All that said, women have accused Cuomo of behavior that “crossed the line” by anyone’s standards, and I suspect he just thought he could get away with groping every cute young thing within reach.

You know, like Joe Biden, who is allegedly President of the United States?

UPDATE II: As at least one commenter has reminded me, just yesterday I expected Cuomo to ride it out, the way Ralph Northam rode out that KKK/blackface scandal. But beyond this latest failure of my crystal ball, the real mystery is, “Why now?” Cuomo has been in public office since 1993, and was the New York state attorney general (2007-2010) before becoming governor, and has been re-elected governor twice, in 2014 and 2018. Recall that the #MeToo movement was a gigantic public bonfire in 2018, incinerating the reputations and careers of dozens of famous or powerful men, so how was it that Andrew Cuomo — now accused of being a serial groper — had no trouble getting re-elected in 2018?

Why was Cuomo destroyed by scandal this year, and not previously? What can explain this timing? My guess — and it’s only a guess — is that it might be somehow related to Cuomo, who divorced his wife in 2005, breaking up with his girlfriend Sandra Lee in 2019. That is to say, whatever offenses Cuomo may have committed during his first two terms as governor, he wasn’t actually on the hunt then. But the past two years, since breaking up with Lee, Cuomo’s lechery has gone too far, because (a) he’s desperate and (b) he’s 15 years older than he was the last time he was on the dating market. That’s my best theory, although I would not argue with anyone who suspects there was some kind of arcane political conspiracy involved. Because Democrats are like that.




 

Category: Democrats, New York, Scandal

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