March 2021 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Andrew Cuomo: how soon will he go?

Mario’s son

People all over the country were having this odd fantasy about New York State’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, in 2020.

They became self-described Cuomosexuals, especially when he was being interviewed by his brother Chris on CNN, inexplicable journalistically but probably good for the ratings.

It was all about the near-daily press conferences, in which he appeared to give competent information about the coronavirus situation. Certainly better than that other guy giving regular updates from DC. Still, I was a bit bemused by it.

Now he is in trouble because his administration reportedly undercounted the number of nursing home deaths. And his initial suggestion that “it doesn’t matter” whether they died from being in the nursing home doesn’t really matter because they’re still dead did not play well. There’s an investigation.

Plus another investigation because he allegedly sexually harassed four – no, wait, six – women. I heard Charlotte Bennett, a former aide, accuse Cuomo of grooming her for sex. She was extremely credible. Worse, he used the information that he knew about a sexual assault she had experienced, which left a really bad taste in my mouth.

A different problem: structural problems on the bridge named for his father, the late Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, were covered up. “For structures like bridges and high-rises, experts say even a few broken bolts can weaken the immense splices and result in a catastrophic collapse.”

The father

I had voted for Mario Cuomo every chance I got, including in the 1977 NYC mayoral primary against Ed Koch – he lost – and the 1982 gubernatorial primary race against Ed Koch – he won! But when Bill Clinton was considering appointing him to the Supreme Court in 1993, he took himself out of consideration. Then he lost to an obscure state legislator named George Pataki the following year.

(The country did pretty great with Clinton’s ultimate SCOTUS nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)

He was married to Matilda Raffa for 60 years, and it was a great love story. Matilda was and continues to be a force in the family.

The son

Andrew Cuomo was his father’s campaign manager when Mario successfully ran for governor. He joined the governor’s staff as one of his father’s policy advisors, earning $1 a year. He was an assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first term of Bill Clinton’s Presidency and HUD secretary during the second term. His tenure was a mixed bag.

Andrew was running for governor in 2002. But he derailed his own campaign when he said (in reference to the aftermath of the September 11 attacks): “Pataki stood behind the leader. He held the leader’s coat. He was a great assistant to the leader. But he was not a leader. Cream rises to the top, and Rudy Giuliani rose to the top.” This was back in the day when Rudy had not gone bat guano crazy.

In 2006, Andrew ran for NYS attorney general. While I voted for Mark Green (no relation) in the primary, I selected him in the general election. He ran against former Westchester district attorney Jeanine Pirro. Yeah, the one now hosting Fox’s Justice with Judge Jeanine, who even then was guano crazy.

Moving up

David Patterson had become governor in March 2008 after Eliot Spitzer resigned in the midst of a prostitution scandal. Andrew Cuomo had hoped to get appointed to the Senate seat vacated when Hillary Clinton became US Secretary of State in 2009, but that position went to a then-obscure upstate member of Congress, Kirsten Gillibrand.

Patterson had his own problems involving witness tampering and accepting free New York Yankees tickets and declined to run for election. Andrew Cuomo was the Democratic nominee, running against the vilely racist Tea Party Republican Carl Paladino, a Buffalo-based businessman. Cuomo won the election for governor by a landslide, which was the last time I voted for him.

Among other issues, I was less than thrilled with his wasteful program called START-UP NY which was supposed to create jobs but only hemorrhaged money. I also disliked his policy towards teacher testing. In 2014 and 2018, I voted for his Democratic primary opponents (Zephyr Teachout, Cynthia Nixon) and picked Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins in the general elections, knowing that Cuomo was running against weak Republicans.

Cuomomania

So I was amused when Andrew Cuomo became a hero of the pandemic. He wrote a book about his great leadership during the crisis. CBS Sunday Morning did a puff piece about him with his three daughters. They are twins Cara Ethel Kennedy-Cuomo and Mariah Matilda Kennedy-Cuomo (born 1995), and Michaela Andrea Kennedy-Cuomo (born 1997). Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and Andrew were married in 1990, separated in 2003, and divorced in 2005.

“Cuomo began dating Food Network host Sandra Lee in 2005, and the couple moved in together in 2011. The two resided in Westchester County, NY. On September 25, 2019, the couple announced that they had ended their relationship. As of the fall of 2019, Cuomo is living in the New York State Executive Mansion in Albany on a full-time basis.”

So maybe he is “lonely,” as Charlotte Bennett reported that he indicated. But it doesn’t give him license to hit on his own staff, or other women. Ironically, his office had mandated sexual harassment training back in 2018, though he is accused of skipping it.

The NYS Republicans are looking to have Andrew Cuomo impeached. The Albany Times Union called for him to resign, as have some Democrats. I don’t know where this all going to end up. But you can bet that on January 2, 2023, he will no longer be governor.

With another governor in trouble, New York is becoming another Illinois.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

How can you stop the rain from falling down?

Barry Gibb says he can’t watch the entirety of the documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. He told CBS News’ Anthony Mason, “I think it’s perfectly normal to not want to see how each brother was lost, you know?”

But you should. I saw it on HBO last month. The film was directed by Frank Marshall.

This is the story of Barry (b. 1946) and his fraternal twin brothers Robin and Maurice (b. 1949), who lived in Manchester, England. They were more like triplets, Barry said, listening to the same music and by 1955, singing together. The family moved to Queensland, Australia, where they achieved their first chart success with Spicks and Specks, their 12th single.

They returned to the UK in January 1967. Producer Robert Stigwood began promoting them to a worldwide audience. They wrote and sang a series of hits, including To Love Somebody, Words, Massachusetts, and I’ve Got To Get a Message to You. But fame is not forever, and their excess lifestyles caused division in the trio.

461 Ocean Boulevard

A change in venues, to Miami, and the right compatriots, got them back on track. In fact, they lived at the same location that Eric Clapton had stayed when he created his “comeback” album, 461 Ocean Boulevard.

They created the Main Course collection, with the hit Jive Talking. Then the enormous, and unexpected success of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And, coming along as a complementary artist, was baby brother, Andy Gibb (b. 1958), with hits of his own.

As dance music was co-opted, and pale imitations of it were created – think Disco Duck – a backlash ensued. It was epitomized by Disco Demolition Night, a Major League Baseball promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

One of the ushers recalled that there were LPs of several non-disco black artists, such as Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder among the recording to be destroyed. The fans rioted during the event, and the White Sox ended up having to forfeit the second game of the doubleheader.

This time of changing fortunes, the brothers were able to pivot to becoming primarily songwriters, for Barbra, Celine, Diana, Dionne, Dolly, and Kenny, among others. This allowed them room to reach their next act in their careers. It was supposed to be with Andy Gibb as an official member of the Bee Gees. Unfortunately, he died on 10 March 1988, at the age of 30, as a result of an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Barry, by himself

Then Maurice, the chief negotiator between Barry and Robin, died unexpectedly on 12 January 2003, at the age of 53. He suffered a heart attack while awaiting emergency surgery to repair a strangulated intestine.

The surviving brothers bounced between solo gigs and the occasional duet. Late in 2011, it was announced that Robin Gibb had been diagnosed with liver cancer, which he had known about for several months. He died on 20 May 2012 of liver and kidney failure. He was 62.

The Bee Gees, though in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 1997, has been, to my mind, undervalued and unnecessarily vilified. Their resilience and reinvention over the decades alone are praiseworthy. Recorded music they’ve performed and/or written is in the hundreds of millions of units.

The documentary had a few new insightful interviews with other artists. Eric Clapton was also signed to Stigwood. Nick Jonas and Oasis’ Noel Gallagher amplified the tricky balance of performing with one’s brothers.

Barry is still performing and recording. But he noted that he’d give up all the fame if he could have his brothers back. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart indeed?

“I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do
I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow.”

And Theodor Geisel as Dr. Seuss

sturm und drang

Seuss books — Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

In this blog, Dr. Seuss has been mentioned numerous times, often on March 2, his birthday. I love the work of Theodor Geisel, especially Bartholemew and the Oobleck. It involves speaking truth to power. And oobleck is green. Though I found The Lorax movie only so-so, I don’t fault the source material.

I’ve learned new words, such as gox, which my spellcheck doesn’t seem to like. REM confounded me with their reference to him. But Ted hasn’t said all of the trite things that have been attributed to him.

Back in 2009, I noted him as one of 20 men I admired. So this made-up “controversy” over the voluntary cessation of future publication of a few books hurts my heart. It’s because I think Dr. Seuss, were he still alive, might very well agree with the action.

As Ty Burr said in the Boston Globe, “You can still get a hold of the six early titles that Seuss Enterprises has chosen to cease publishing anytime you want to. They’re in libraries and used bookstores; they’re on eBay and Alibris and Amazon. No one’s destroying any copies; they’re just not printing any new ones.”

Recognizing changing attitudes

More to the point: “It’s likely the good Dr… would be down with that. Before his death in 1991, he expressed regret to biographers over the virulently anti-Japanese political cartoons he had drawn during World War II; a great-nephew told the New York Times in 2017 that ‘later in his life, he was not proud of those at all.'”

And have the folks screaming “cancel culture” even perused these books? I read If I Ran the Zoo as a child. And I found the stereotypes of “potbellied, thick-lipped blacks from Africa, squinty-eyed” Asians unsettling.

But I didn’t read And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street until I was an adult. The yellow-colored “Chinaman”, later recolored and relabeled “Chinese man,” bothered me greatly. I noted that things were different in 1937.

The sturm und drang of the false narrative exhausts me. The “thinking” is that “liberals” are inflicting the cancel culture. But folks such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris had praised Seuss in public settings. Therefore liberals are also disingenuous hypocrites. QED. Oy.

Some folks seem to relish the fact that Dr. Seuss is now dominating the Amazon best-seller list. At this writing, 11 of the top 12. But, oddly, NONE of the six books being pulled is even on the Top 100.

See also what Jaquandor and Chuck Miller wrote. Daily Kos quotes Ben Carson. The Weekly Sift takes on the Silly Season in the Culture Wars.

First is important; “can’t count” is better

Nine is enough

I’ve long had this rule of thumb about progress for groups who have been traditionally underrepresented in an area. The person who is first is important, of course, indeed vital. But real equality takes place when one can’t count the number without looking it up.

So it’s excellent that Sarah Thomas is the first woman to referee a Super Bowl game. And there are plenty of other firsts in sports in recent years.

But “‘What is really going to excite me is when this is no longer aberrational or when this is no longer something that’s noteworthy,’ said Amy Trask, who in 1997 became the Oakland Raiders’ chief executive and the first woman of that rank in the N.F.L. Few have followed in similar roles.”

Once I knew all of the female spacefarers. Now that there have been more than five dozen, I look at the list and not recognize some of the names. And THAT is a GOOD thing. Too many to keep track of is the point of the exercise.

US Govt

There are currently 24 women in the US Senate and 58 all-time. That’s not nearly enough. Still, I can no longer name all of the current female Senators, which I could do as recently as the early 1990s. (Margaret Chase Smith, R-ME, was the ONLY woman in the Senate the year I was born.)

I’m looking forward to the point when I can’t name all of the women who have been on the US Supreme Court. (Hint: there have been five of them, and three are on the court presently.)

The late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a great quote about this. “When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?’ and I say ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.” Amen.

Of course, I needed to get my calculator to count all of the women who have been elected President or Vice-President of the United States. I can’t count that high. Lessee, there’s one…

United Nations

UN Women announces the theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March 2021, as “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” It calls for “women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls…

“The majority of the countries that have been more successful in stemming the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic and responding to its health and broader socio-economic impacts, are headed by women.

“For instance, Heads of Government in Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, and Slovakia have been widely recognized for the rapidity, decisiveness, and effectiveness of their national response to COVID-19, as well as the compassionate communication of fact-based public health information.

“Yet, women are Heads of State and Government in only 20 countries worldwide.”

68: “Put it back on the menu”

Didn’t Neil Diamond write that?

For all those years not divisible by 5, or otherwise significant (double numbers such as 66, 57 Heinz variety, 52 cards in a deck), remembering my age is sometimes a challenge. What does Wikipedia say about 68?

“It is the largest known number to be the sum of two primes in exactly two different ways: 68 = 7 + 61 = 31 + 37.” Now THAT is exciting. Isn’t it?

“68 is the atomic number of erbium, a lanthanide.” What?
“In the restaurant industry, 68 may be used as a code meaning ‘put back on the menu’, being the opposite of 86 which means ‘remove from the menu'”. I had never heard that.
“The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament has involved 68 teams in each edition since 2011 when the First Four round was introduced.” And I’ve always hated those play-in games, especially the 11th seeds.

The photo, taken by my daughter on her phone, was for her Environmental Science course. Apparently, it takes 170 gallons of water to create that 750 ml bottle of wine.

Anyway, I don’t blog on my birthday. See you manana.

Month: March 2021