A scathing opinion piece has accused Governor Andrew Cuomo of being a villain of the Covid-19 outbreak in New York, not a hero as most media outlets have depicted him. Where it appeared will come as a surprise to many.
Cuomo “should be one of the most loathed officials in America right now,” says Wednesday’s opinion piece by Lyta Gold and Nathan Robinson. They proceed to offer a thickly-sourced argument as to why the governor was at fault for New York leading the nation in the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths alike.
As one particularly stunning visual example, they bring up the “mask mural,” a wall of handmade cloth masks Cuomo showed off to reporters on April 29 as “a monument to himself,” they say, rather than distributing them to New Yorkers in need, even as he had the NYPD violently arrest residents who didn’t have them.
It might come as a surprise that this article did not appear on the site of Breitbart or Fox News, but the Guardian – a UK-based publication that has largely toed the mainstream US line in celebrating the New York governor as a hero and contrasting him favorably to President Donald Trump.
Andrew Cuomo should be the most loathed politician in America. Why isn’t he? | Lyta Gold and Nathan Robinson https://t.co/tFptKZimv6
Gold and Robinson even bring this up, noting that the press has focused on “Cuomo’s aesthetic presentation: his poise during press conferences, his dramatic statements about ‘taking responsibility’ (even when he obviously hasn’t), and his invisible good looks.”
This last bit might even be a reference to a particularly infamous TV segment earlier this month, when Governor Cuomo was interviewed – not for the first time – by his younger brother and CNN host Chris, not about the pandemic but about being “single and ready to mingle.”
So far, however, almost all of the criticism directed at Cuomo in US media has appeared in the more conservative-leaning and independent outlets. The liberal-leaning mainstream has been entirely mum on things like the Democrat governor’s order to send Covid-19 patients into nursing homes, where thousands died as a result.
“The last time anyone from @CNN asked @NYGovCuomo a question pertaining to nursing homes was all the way back on March 10 – 2 wks before the governor’s order that forced nursing homes to accept patients who tested positive for coronavirus. https://t.co/YaQ8JFDwon
To be fair, Gold and Robinson omit this from their article as well, but it still represents one of the most substantial criticisms of Cuomo ever to appear on the mainstream side of things.
One of the reasons for this might be that Robinson is credited as “a Guardian US columnist.” Another might be that this criticism of the governor comes from the left. Robinson is also the founder of the outspokenly progressive web magazine Current Affairs, while Gold is its managing editor.
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