MAUREEN DOWD: Cuomo discovers #MeToo means #HimToo
Sunday, March 7, 2021 -- First, he married a Kennedy. Then he behaved like one. Like his idol Bill Clinton -- he still cherishes the cigar humidor Clinton gave him -- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not seem to realize times had changed.
Posted — UpdatedFirst, he married a Kennedy. Then he behaved like one.
Back in 1998, when the story broke about the affair with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton aides whined to reporters that they should read biographies of President Kennedy. JFK did stuff like that all the time, they said. So did FDR! Yes, reporters explained, but that was then.
Clinton thought he could survive the scandal by hiding behind his circle of accomplished women, who filed before the cameras to repeat the president’s cowardly denials about “that woman.”
He believed that his progressive actions for women would be a shield against his retrogressive behavior.
As I wrote about Clinton, and I’ll say again about Cuomo, the power differential between a young aide or intern and a much older boss always makes things dicey. Throw in the fact that it’s a president or governor we’re talking about, and it’s most certainly an abuse of power.
In an ideal world, women would channel Barbara Stanwyck and snappily put the boss in his place. But this is a world where women had to stifle their inner blech for centuries for economic security. When your boss transgresses, your response could very well determine whether you keep your job, get the best assignments, or pay next month’s rent.
Charlotte Bennett, 25, a former aide to Cuomo who has accused him of inappropriate conversation — asking whether she had trouble with intimacy after surviving sexual assault, saying how lonely he was during COVID and how he would date women over 22 — said she thought he was hitting on her.
Republicans simply deny it and hoist harassers to victory. Donald Trump’s assaults and antediluvian behavior toward women? No problem.
Many older Democrats have what one calls “virtue exhaustion.” (Several women, bearing harassment battle scars themselves, privately dismissed Cuomo’s accusers to me as “snowflakes.”)
Facebook and Twitter echoed with fears of being “Frankened” again. Cuomo might be a jerk, many Democrats said, but at least he’s not a fascist.
“Probably enough Democrats feel it no longer makes sense to hold your own side to serious ethical standards if Republicans won’t, so it’s possible to tough out things like this,” Ron Brownstein, a senior editor of The Atlantic, told me. “I wouldn’t look at this as evidence that #MeToo is losing momentum; it’s more the sense that a red-blue cold war is gaining momentum. I think there’s less and less willingness to unilaterally punish your own side. Why take your own piece off the board if they won’t?”
To show what a confused state we’re in, remember that a Democrat who had to defend himself for nuzzling women in rope lines and got hit with a sexual harassment complaint is now a president with broad approval among Democrats.
Because despite being drenched in the lessons of #MeToo, a society does not change instantly. The reason Shakespeare is still the greatest playwright is humans have the same tragic flaws, century after century. Cuomo was nicknamed the “human bulldozer’’ for his arrogance and maniacal zeal in pushing people and obstacles out of his way.
He improved his reputation at the start of COVID because frightened New Yorkers craved elevated testosterone in a leader at that moment: not a bully like Trump who was downplaying the threat; one like Cuomo who would confront COVID head-on and engage in combat to wrestle medical equipment and vaccines for New York.
When he claimed obliviousness about how he was making these women feel, he excused himself by saying that, like his father before him, he has a kissy-huggy political style with men and women.
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