Excerpt: The public, watching, laughing, and cheering on these two brothers, was always fully complicit.
Andrew Cuomo, once the darling of the media and large swaths of the public, may have finally forced everyone to reckon with his sexism, if not his corruption. A report from the New York state attorney general released on August 2 detailed his harassment of no fewer than 11 women (the ones who felt they could tell their stories in public), including a security officer assigned to him. There are levels of assholery and then there’s the assholery of a man who feels so insulated from retribution that he gropes the woman with a gun whose job it is to protect his vile, sexist, gropey ass.
In all of this, Cuomo was consistently aided by his brother Chris Cuomo, a CNN news anchor. In the face of much criticism, the network airily dismissed all regulations and journalistic propriety when it let him bring on the governor for segments where the two joked around. The ratings soared, so of course CNN was only too happy to continue disregarding its critics. In May, the Washington Post reported that Chris Cuomo was in “strategy calls” with his brother and senior members of the latter’s staff, discussing “how to respond to the sexual harassment allegations by several women.” In other words, Chris Cuomo was bringing his journalistic background, his heft as a CNN anchor, and his legal qualifications to help his brother weather a storm that could end his political career. In recent days, more details have emerged, causing CNN employees to call for his termination, at least anonymously. To date, Chris Cuomo has not addressed the new revelations in public and appears to have the backing of his network.
In an op-ed for MSNBC, Laura Bassett writes: “Both Cuomo brothers have amassed massive power and influence, while betraying public trust. And both brothers must go.”
I agree with Bassett that both Cuomos should go. I disagree that they betrayed public trust. In fact, we, the public, created the Cuomos and we wilfully allowed them to enjoy their massive privilege as the sons of a famous governor and their multiple spheres of influence. To evoke any kind of betrayal implies that some version of the “the public” was unaware of what the siblings were up to. But everything the brothers did (apart from the nursing homes disaster, which Andew Cuomo directed behind the scenes) was done in open view of a public that cheered them on. Andrew Cuomo appeared regularly on CNN to spar and jibe with his brother. The two men would joke about…well, frankly, I have very little idea and I refuse to go back and watch any more than the few minutes that I endured (bits about who was their mother’s favourite, or some such nonsensical, useless rubbish) because I found the very idea revolting: it dripped of nepotism and corruption and the whole scenario was playing out on what still claims to be a news network. All of it was clearly an appalling violation of the most basic principles governing journalistic integrity.
I also could not stand to watch Andrew Cuomo’s “news conferences.” The very sight and sound of him pontificating and theatrically playing a version of a tough Noo Yorkah nauseated me: this is not the 1960s or even the 1990s and I didn’t feel compelled to watch yet another hetero, macho man pontificating and flexing his muscles. I have no doubt many others, including many New Yorker men and women, felt the same way. But it was the Age of Trump, and liberals and progressives everywhere glommed onto anyone who bore the appearance of an anti-Trump. It was widely decided by and in media outlets that Andrew Cuomo was Our Saviour, there was buzz about a presidential run, and he even received an International Emmy Founders Award for…being Andrew Cuomo?
If there had been a more watchful, thoughtful public, CNN would have been excoriated so thoroughly for its breach of journalistic integrity that what effectively became the Cuomo Brothers Show would never have been allowed. Instead it was buoyed by high ratings, and many of the same people who had grown tired of Andrew Cuomo’s problems as a governor in prior months now happily tuned in to watch his macho bullshit because he was not Trump (Lyta Gold was one of the few who wrote critically about him). In fact, both he and Trump are corrupt bullies who shout down their opposition, often with threats, and treat women around them like objects brought in for their pleasure. None of that was a secret, none of that comes as a shock, and we should stop clutching our pearls and fainting in disbelief. Words like those of Bassett, whose op-ed is otherwise a strong and clear indictment, only help us to engage in a massive public forgetting, a historical amnesia that is, sadly, a salient feature of American public life (as I’ve said here).
Despite these entangled complications that reveal how the brothers have colluded and profited from their joint enterprise, Let’s Con the Public Inc., CNN has so far refused to do much more than issue mild rebukes of Chris Cuomo. Only in May of this year did it finally admit that, yes, Chris Cuomo’s strategy planning with his brother was “inappropriate”—but it will not take any disciplinary action against him. The New York Times pointedly notes that “his program was CNN’s highest-rated show in the first quarter of the year.”
Ratings don’t happen without a public and it’s clear that the public, far from feeling betrayed, is happy to encourage Chris Cuomo, that it has no problem when a famous scion of a famous father and younger brother to a famous governor publicly and brazenly profis from nepotism and enables the corruption and sexual harassment engaged upon by his sibling.
Which brings us to the matter of those thousands of people who died due to Andrew Cuomo’s actions. Newer reports on the nursing home scandal indicate that Cuomo’s supposed efficiency and tough love attitude in the midst of the pandemic was a coverup for thousands of deaths. Did Chris Cuomo know of his brother’s handling of the matter, that he caused people to die? There’s a strong possibility, but we won’t know unless the powers that be decide to investigate his culpability in the matter, and they should.
Furthermore, if Chris Cuomo actively worked with his brother on mitigating the effect of the sex scandal, can we not also hold him responsible for enabling the culture of sexual harassment in the governor’s office? The charges made against the governor go back to at least 2017, but there is every indication that people around him helped foster a toxic workplace for women, often preemptively shutting down the possibility that they might say anything in public. So, Cuomo’s behaviour more than likely has gone on for years and his brother has clearly known all along. Chris Cuomo is complicit in the sexual harassment of all the women who had to endure his brother’s unwanted attentions.
In May, Chris Cuomo addressed the matter of his helping his brother in a breezy, couldn’t-care-less statement, saying that his consulting had been a “mistake” but that he is “family first, job second.” He went on to add that “being a journalist and a brother to a politician is unique and a unique challenge, and I have a unique responsibility to balance those roles. It’s not always easy.”
No, actually, it’s really very easy, and made much easier if your employer actually believes in journalistic integrity instead of letting one of its reporters get away with saying that his family—which just happens to be one of the most powerful in the state and the country—comes first. Cuomo’s words here slyly evoke the discourse about the tensions between workplace and family commitments, something that women in particular, burdened by the demands that they be both perfect homemakers and career women, have addressed for decades. In using those specific words, Cuomo was implying that this was an emotional conflict when in fact the conflict is one of interest and easily resolved: He should never have been allowed to interview his brother in any capacity, ever. Instead, CNN consistently bent the rules in his favour.
None of this was a mistake, as CNN and Chris Cuomo have characterised it. Cuomo has a law degree and was a practicing attorney before he left his legal career to become a journalist: he knows the difference between a mistake and deliberate and intentional lies and misleading. One of his suggestions to his brother about the sex scandal was to claim harassment under “cancel culture,” a buzzword that is often easily used as a distraction whenever someone wants to claim widespread and malicious targeting by an unclear but vicious horde of trolls. Chris Cuomo knows and understands contemporary cultural trends and is adept at weaponising them.
None of this is a surprise. All of it has happened in the public eye, with the approval of masses of people who are still clearly smitten by the Cuomo name and especially by the glamour of the younger brother. Yes, both men should be relieved of their duties, and Chris Cuomo should leave journalism and return to practicing law: with his wealth and influence, he won’t lack for clients. But let’s stop pretending that either man betrayed public trust. The public, watching, laughing, and cheering on these two brothers, was always fully complicit. We created the Cuomos. It’s time for us to recall and repudiate both of them.
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See also:
“A Better Son Or Daughter: Donald Trump, Amnesia, and a Capitalist Fable.”
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