Completing His Humiliation, Cuomo to Have Emmy Rescinded
[guest post by JVW]
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving asshole:
Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was stripped of his Emmy Award on Tuesday due to sexual harassment allegations substantiated in the state attorney general’s probe that delivered the death knell to his gubernatorial reign.
“The International Academy announced today that in light of the New York Attorney General’s report, and Andrew Cuomo subsequent resignation as governor, it is rescinding his special 2020 international Emmy Award,” reads a statement from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
“His name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy material going forward.”
Cuomo was bestowed the award in November 2020 for his COVID-19 pandemic press briefings.The scandal-scarred governor, who formally resigned Monday, was formerly recognized for his “effective use of television during the pandemic,” the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced.
You don’t have to be a Donald Trump fan to realize that Cuomo’s Emmy was meant to be a eff-you finger from the entertainment industry to the Trump Administration, so it’s high comedy indeed to watch them now behave in an utterly Pecksniffian manner. But given how fantastically awful Sonny Cuomo’s behavior was over the years, given how the Democrat establishment was happy to downplay his abusive behavior towards everyone in his orbit from staff to legislators to media, given the rampant corruption that occurred under his administration both in official policy and in Sonny’s own financial dealings, I welcome that one brief moment where the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences pretends to grow a conscience and endeavors to right a wrong.
And, naturally, the former governor left office in the most self-pitying and obnoxious way possible. Kyle Smith at NRO sums up the disgraced governor’s farewell pretty well:
[. . .] Even to dedicated Cuomotextuals, the [speech] was a masterpiece of effrontery, arrogance, and Escher-style self-negating twists. The obfuscation! The blame-shifting! The conspiracy-theorizing! The denial! The sheer, sordid cheek of the thing! It was a positively Frankenian farewell.
Mr. Smith hearkens back two-plus decades ago to Cuomo’s former boss, Bill Clinton, in comparing Handsy Andy’s dismissal of the allegations against him with Bubba’s shameful rationalizations for why the Monica Lewinsky scandal was overblown. Quoth Cuomo:
There will be another time to talk about the truth and ethics of the recent situation involving me, but let me say now that, when government politicizes allegations and the headlines condemn without facts, you undermine the justice system — and that doesn’t serve women and it doesn’t serve men or society.
Of course, as Kyle Smith points out, “the facts” have never been on Sonny’s side. Not only did eleven women raise allegations against him, not only did several of them report this abhorrent behavior to family and friends immediately after it occurred, not only did more than one damming picture appear to show Sonny engaging in the alleged behavior, but the New York Attorney General, a nominal ideological ally if also a political rival, investigated the matter and determined the allegations had merit. Yet to Asshole Andy, this is all some big cultural misunderstanding and no doubt will at some point morph into an outlandish claim that the state with the largest total number and fourth-highest percentage of Italian-American residents is somehow biased against a son of Italy.
The body politic won’t miss a depraved character like Andrew Cuomo, though this entire affair isn’t going to amount to much unless the Empire State takes a long and difficult look at their political culture and resolves to address the huge influence that sleazy political machines wield. Both major parties have seen their leadership wind up in prison for various levels of malfeasance, so verily there aren’t too many — if any at all — virgins in the Albany brothel. But anyone who professes to believe in the general beneficence of government — and I’m looking at you as a prime example, New York Times editorial board — has to pay more attention to the cast of characters it is willing to support in order to achieve their ideological objectives, and perhaps wonder if it is truly worth suffering the Andrew Cuomos of the political sewer merely to promote abortion, gun control, and same-sex marriage.
– JVW