Ok, this one is gonna hurt, but: Andrew Cuomo should not be brought down by accusations of sexual harassment aired through the media.
Wait, what? That Andrew Cuomo? Yes, that Andrew Cuomo.
I’m not going to hide the fact that I despise Andrew Cuomo – but that doesn’t matter. If I’m going to defend the right of Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter not to have his name dragged through the mud by the media by unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations, then logically I must do the same for Cuomo.
The true test of our principles, after all, is whether we’re willing to extend them to people we don’t like, as we do people we do like. However much it hurts.
This is what Noam Chomsky meant when he said that, If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech. The same applies to due process and the rule of law. If you’re dismayed by the blatant trampling of the rule of law by Labor, the Greens and the media in Australia, or by the American left in such deplorable affairs as the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, then you ought to be equally dismayed by what’s being done to Cuomo.
For years, Cuomo has been a left-media darling. Even as the bodies piled up in New York’s nursing homes during Cuomo’s disastrous mismanagement of that city and state’s COVID outbreak, the media ran solid cover for the governor. In complete defiance of the evidence, the media and the left-establishment insisted that Cuomo had done a magnificent job in dealing with COVID. As I recently reported in The BFD, some journalists have gone further, as it’s claimed that journalists deliberately covered up Cuomo’s bullying behaviour.
At this point, you might protest, didn’t you write that Cuomo behaves like a “two-bit thug”? That’s a reasonable objection and in retrospect possibly unfair.
On the other hand, bullying of journalists is a far, far less serious accusation than sexual harassment and abuse. Indeed, many journalists might complain that bullying by politicians is just part of the territory. After all, former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard famously rang journalists and subjected them to a tirade, demanding (and getting) a story spiked and a journalist sacked. Her supporters fêted that as the admirably feisty actions of a woman wronged.
But sexual harassment and abuse are several orders of magnitude of heinousness above monstering journalists. Consequently, we should set the bar of proof and presumption of innocence higher.
As with Christian Porter, the only honourable course of action is for the accusations against Cuomo to be tested in courts of law. The accusations are so serious that no other recourse should be considered. Like him or not, Cuomo is entitled to the same presumption of innocence and right to due process as Christian Porter, or your husband, brother, father or son.
It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other matters that should bring Cuomo down. His handling of New York’s COVID outbreak is scandalous enough on its own. In particular, his order that required nursing homes to admit patients who were suspected to have or had tested positive for COVID-19.
Forcing places housing the group of people most vulnerable to COVID to host COVID infectious patients was, it appears, literally a death sentence for nearly 6,000 people.
Indeed, it’s that scandal – which is still mostly being buried by the mainstream media – which makes the sudden flurry of reporting of alleged sexual harassment so suspicious. The whole affair smells to high heaven of a desperate attempt to divert attention from the media’s COVID narrative by throwing Cuomo under a completely different bus.
The media and the Democrats have plenty of form on this kind of thing, after all. The media ran cover for what was an open secret about disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for years, before turning on their former darling like a pack of hyaenas. Bill Clinton was the revered elder statesman of the Democrats – until he outlived his usefulness.
So, it hurts to say so, but – end the media witch-hunt of Andrew Cuomo. Take the accusations to court and let the law run its course.
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