Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is only a governor. Do not stand on the tracks
of this Bullet Train when lives are at stake.
On Monday, September 10,
2001, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, mired in scandal, surrounded by
misfits and miscreants, enemy of minority residents and dictatorial dunderhead
couldn’t have won an election for hall monitor or freshman class
president.
Then, there was 9/11 and
all of a sudden, Rudy was “America’s Mayor,” constantly on TV, constantly
reassuring, constantly blunt and to the point about what was and remains the
most important peacetime attack on the continental US by other human beings.
Since then, Rudy has
backslid into the caricature of a public official he’s always really been and
the ambulance chaser he once was, complete with shady associates and shady
deals.
Now, comes Andrew Cuomo
the governor of New York. A shark of a politician, an unlikeable man with
too many friends in high places and the son of a revered former governor
without his father’s substance. And he is having his Rudy Giuliani Moment.
Every day around noon,
he goes on TV to tell us at stultifying length what the state needs, how the
state is handling the covfefe virus, what he expects in both the near and long
terms and what he wants you to do. He is a model for telling it like it
is. Maybe we should call it a “Mario
Moment.” Except the actual Mario lived
in reality all day, every day, and told it like it was in beautiful and elegant
prose. He was that way full time.
Right now, it’s time to
give Andy credit for what he’s doing, leading a state, one of the handful of
consequential states in a time of attack from an unseen enemy.
There is no bin Laden in
today’s war. There’s no one flying jumbo jets into skyscrapers. And
there is no Secretary of Pollution like Christine Todd Whitman lying to us
about the safety of the air. It wasn’t safe then. It’s not safe now, but
for different reasons.
The question is which
path will Andy tread when all of this virus-mania is over? Will he remain on
the high road? Or will he slip back to form and become the Democrats’
brass knuckled hack that until recently he’s shown himself to be?
Rudy always was a
grasping attention whore and fits right into the trumpistry. Rudy
cleared the streets of squeegee men, temporarily. And turnstile jumpers. Andy’s trying to clear the air of a deadly
virus that death wraps like expensive jewelry and swallows whole.
Cuomo’s daily televised PowerPoint
presentations are so good you can watch them with the sound turned off and
still get the message. They are MTV music videos without the sound: tempting,
informative and who cares what the songstress or the governor sounds like… just
watch the pictures.
No illusions here. Cuomo
is no J-Lo or Barry White. But what he says is important, not only to the
people of New York, but to the sane people of all America.
SHRAPNEL:
--It’s April Fool’s Day
and maybe you were expecting a joke. Sorry to disappoint you. But bad
jokes this year don’t have the snap they used to.
Coming Friday: what to
do when you can’t bet on sports because there aren’t any.
I’m Wes Richards. My
opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Any questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2020
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