Requiem For A Political Con Man: Mario Cuomo Dies

A lie is being perpetuated even unto death. The Big Lie that Mario Cuomo, former 3-term New York State Governor (and father of current NYS governor Andrew Cuomo) was a "liberal." Make that Liberal, the way the establishment tells it.

To be sure, Cuomo the Elder spouted "liberal" (according to the U.S. definition) rhetoric. But as the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. And actions are what people (and nations too) should be judged by.

Mario Cuomo's only lasting accomplishment as governor was building more prisons and increasing the inmate population of New York State. He did not ease the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. He had a horrible environmental record. For example, he was utterly passive about General Electric's refusal to clean up its massive pollution of the Hudson River with PCBs. He did nothing for poor people. (In fact he helped imprison many more of them, as mentioned.) He was no friend of tenants.

Apparently the sole substantive basis for labeling him "liberal" was his opposition to the death penalty (which NY State doesn't have), which he and his media chorus spun as somehow courageous. As if no other politicians are against it, especially in the "liberal" northeast of the U.S. [1]

Cuomo was an unctuous, pseudo-philosophical politician with an inflated sense of himself. He liked to play the philosopher-king and lecture us peons in high-handed fashion. He enjoyed teasing people about whether he would run for president, even whether he would accept an appointment to the Supreme Court from Bill Clinton. In both cases, he punked out.

I was on to Cuomo from the first time I ever heard his blather. Oh, he delivers a fine speech. And naive or credulous people can swallow it hook, line and sinker. But Cuomo was always a political fixer. He first made himself useful to the power structure by pouring calming oil on racial conflict. He's a master at holding his cards close to his chest.

Then we had a Cuomo copycat burst onto the scene in 2004- a hustler named Barack Obama. Remember that 2004 Democratic Convention Speech? It was pure Cuomoism. Just full of phony Democratic Party rhetoric. Sure enough, Obama proved to be a phony through and through who lied about every good thing he promised. (I was never taken in and never voted for him. I was baffled by the millions of stooges who were hypnotized by this con artist merely intoning the words "Hope" and "Change." Who knew a hypnotic trance could be so easily induced?)

Now we have to put up with revolting propaganda apotheosizing Mario "Maximum Unction" Cuomo.
The New York Times put his death on top of the front page January 2nd, with a posed photo of Cuomo aping the Rodin sculpture The Thinker, his chin on one hand, the other hand gripping his knee, looking off into the distance oh-so-thoughtfully. The background is all black, and the photographer artfully lit Cuomo's face so he looks like the subject of a Dutch masters' portrait. (The photo is 20 years old, by the way.)

The title of the article, suitable for carving on a grand mausoleum, repeats the Big Lie: "Governor, Governor's Father And an Eloquent Liberal Beacon." (A Pied Piper would be more like it, misleading people into a dead end. Which is a recurring crime of the Democratic Party.) I'll just quote the first paragraph in its entirety, which pretty well captures the hagiographic, press release nature of the article:

"Mario M. Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who commanded the attention of the country [did he really? Bullshit.] with a compelling public presence, a forceful defense of liberalism [only in the abstract, rhetorically, and even his rhetoric was often centrist or conservative- he loved having things both ways] and his exhaustive ruminations about whether to run for president, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82."

Well, "compelling" is like beauty, I suppose. It's in the eye of the beholder.

The author of this dreck is the reliably noxious Adam Nagourney.

The NY Times wasn't alone is releasing a flock of propagandist angels to accompany the Great Man on his ascent to Bourgeois Heaven. The main New York City "public" radio station, WNYC, treated his death like the passing of a Pope.

Even the BBC got in on the act, claiming Cuomo had "strong liberal views." Really? Only if you think being against the death penalty is somehow "leftist." Why is that a left-right issue? (In fact the death penalty was the only evidence the BBC adduced for its claim of Cuomo having liberal views.)
If mass incarceration is "conservative," which I think there is common agreement it is, then Cuomo was a conservative, not a liberal.

"Speak not ill of the dead," those offended by this essay might say. Oh? So I can't criticize Adolf Hitler either? People are not entitled to more respect just because they no longer exist. In fact, one could argue the opposite. You might want to spare their feelings while they're alive. If one cannot speak honestly at long last after they're dead, then when?

1] Cuomo's opposition to the death penalty was in fealty to Catholic Church dogma, which links opposition to the death penalty with opposition to abortion, in what the Church bosses call a "seamless" moral web. However they never threaten pro-death penalty politicians with excommunication (getting kicked out of their church) or denial of communion (some stupid religious ritual) as they do to pro-abortion rights politicians. On the abortion issue, Cuomo was very clever. He was "personally opposed" to it, but "supported" the law in New York State making it legal. In other words, he was against it, but wouldn't try to stop women from being able to get abortions. So he could have his cake and eat it too, politically. But that's morally defensible in terms of "not imposing one's beliefs on others."