2020: A year of disgraces
Shameless.
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to reap the benefits of being a Democrat.
The governor, whose disastrous pandemic leadership is partly responsible for why the Empire State has the most total coronavirus deaths in the United States, as well as the second-highest per capita death rate in the country, will go home today with the International Emmy Founders Award.
The award comes “in recognition of [Cuomo’s] leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world,” the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced in a press release.
This has real shades of when former President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize just months after taking office. The chief difference is that Obama won the award before he amassed a small mountain of dead bodies.
“The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,” International Academy President and CEO Bruce Paisner said of the group's decision to reward Cuomo's failures.
Paisner adds, “People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”
Prior recipients of the award, which goes to individuals or organizations who cross “cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity,” include former Vice President Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey, and Steven Spielberg.
The academy makes its case for why it believes Cuomo deserves the Emmy:
On March 2, 2020, New York Governor Cuomo conducted a media briefing from Albany, the State’s capital, to inform and educate New Yorkers and the public at large about the coronavirus outbreak that was just starting to be recognized as a massive public health threat. That 12-minute introduction, part of a 34-minute session with other state leaders, was the first of 111 consecutive daily briefings for New Yorkers and the wider world about the grim progress of the worst pandemic to hit the United States in a century. The briefings were carried live by New York’s local TV stations, nationally on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other news outlets in the U.S. and around the world. The last “daily” briefing was held on June 19, 2020. These daily communications have drawn a total of 59 million viewers.
Rewarding Cuomo's failures is offensive on at least three levels.
First, it is offensive to the victims of the governor's disastrous leadership, including the more than 11,000 people who may have died as a result of his order forcing infectious coronavirus patients into long-term care facilities.
Second, it is offensive because it denies the reality that Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic has been anything but noble and praiseworthy. It has been toxic, capricious, misguided, confused, dishonest, self-aggrandizing, and, worst of all, ineffectual.
Lastly, the Emmy is offensive because it assumes we are all too stupid to know any better.
Andrew Cuomo has done a great job! Don’t trust every single thing that says otherwise!
In a way, Cuomo serves as a reminder of what the world would look like had President Trump run and won as a Democrat. Every failure, every excess, every outburst, and every lie would have been overlooked or praised as a virtue. Just look at Cuomo. The news and entertainment rackets hold him up as a hero, despite the fact that he engages in the exact behavior for which Trump is rightly condemned. But Cuomo has the correct political affiliations, the correct policies. His failures are not just overlooked. They are rewarded.
At this rate, Cuomo would have to murder someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight for our news and entertainment industries to question his abilities as a leader.
Then again, now that I think about it, when the governor appeared on television to play the role of a competent and thoughtful leader, that was a hell of an acting job. So, maybe he deserves an Emmy after all.