Ted Cruz’s decision to take a vacation to Cancun while his home state of Texas was still trying to dig out from a devastating winter storm was a major political blunder. After offering up silly excuses, Cruz displayed a measure of remorse, which was necessary for a story primarily driven by social media.
Given the breadth of coverage, however, one might conclude someone managed to prove Cruz is, in fact, the Zodiac killer. The pearl-clutching, manufactured outrage, and wide-ranging coverage (including going to Cruz’s home to see what happened with his dog) took place with the knowledge of the limitations about what Cruz could do if he stayed put in Houston.
In short, it was a story about optics. While the optics were poor, jetting off to Cancun didn’t directly affect Texas residents. Juxtapose that with what already seems like fading coverage of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Unlike Cruz, Cuomo’s actions did get his constituents, particularly people in nursing homes, killed. Cuomo then fudged the real numbers, hiding nursing home deaths by not counting those who caught COVID but later died in a hospital. He then tried to cover it up, and when caught, he lied about it.
The Associated Press reported the fudging of the numbers last August that pushed the death toll at nursing homes in New York from 6,000 to as many as 11,000. Unfortunately, most of the press and punditry couldn’t be bothered to pay attention as it would get in the way of their breathless praise for Cuomo, hailed as a conquering hero in the world of COVID.
His best-selling book, a self-effacing tale of his supposed extraordinary leadership, shot to the top of bestseller lists. A month after the book release was the more audacious announcement The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences decided to award Cuomo with an Emmy for his COVID briefings.
It took New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, to pull the plug on Cuomo’s facade when her office confirmed the nursing home death undercount, now reported as high as 15,000.
Did the governor show any contrition? Did he apologize or take responsibility for his actions? Not at first. He blamed everyone else, including nursing home staff, families of nursing home residents, the CDC, and of course, Donald Trump. When he finally did show any scintilla of regret for his actions, Cuomo only made it more execrable, foisting it off on politics, “skepticism, and cynicism, and conspiracy theories which furthered the confusion.”
Right. It was all “confusion,” governor.
Despite the reports that Cuomo faces a possible FBI investigation, CNN and MSNBC devoted three minutes of prime-time coverage to that ever-growing actual scandal while giving Cruz’s faux pas nearly 46 minutes of prime-time coverage. Currently, both the Washington Post and New York Times digital front pages don’t mention Cuomo.
In the larger scheme of things, the disparity has more to do with our political culture’s increased banality than anything else. A story that’s almost entirely about political optics garnered comprehensive coverage over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s falsification of COVID nursing home deaths received a collective yawn when first reported last summer and radio silence until five months later, and the press could no longer ignore it.
No more extraordinary case exists for the absurdity of the outrage directed at Cruz than the phalanx of memes spreading across social media at light speed. Admittedly, many of them are funny. People are treating it as a joke, and they should, because what happened is not a scandal.
On the other hand, it’s hard to make humorous, shareable memes about the death of 15,000 New York nursing home residents. It’s time to forget the trivial and focus on the real scandal.
