John Podhoretz called it. The editor of Commentary magazine and New York City resident, whose favorite governor is most certainly not his own, criticized Andrew Cuomo for his Thanksgiving COVID-19 hawkishness last Thursday. “You think Andrew Cuomo’s not going to have Thanksgiving with his family? You’re goddamn right he’s going to have Thanksgiving with his family,” Podhoretz said on a podcast.
Sure enough, four days later, the frequently self-congratulatory and not-self-aware Cuomo, who said that a proper demonstration of love this holiday season means foregoing family visits, actually told Albany’s WAMC that his mother and two of his daughters would be joining him for Thanksgiving. What?
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been similarly strict about the coronavirus, though he gave himself a dispensation from the letter and spirit of his own rules when he gathered for a fancy dinner in the Napa Valley.
He became sorry. “I want to apologize to you because I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice, and I’ve done my best to do that,” Newsom said. “We’re all human. We all fall short sometimes.”
Cuomo himself has since canceled his holiday plans, which is sad. Or rather, he now claims never really to have had them at all. This is from the New York Times: “By Monday evening, Mr. Cuomo had rethought his Thanksgiving plans. His office described Mr. Cuomo’s initial words as a well-meaning fib told — via the radio — to his mother, noting that had he couched his statement by saying ‘plans change.’” Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, said, “Given the current circumstances with COVID, [Cuomo] will have to work through Thanksgiving and will not be seeing them.” He continued, “Don’t tell his mom — she doesn’t know yet,” as if to bolster the claim that he was telling a white lie.
Watching domineering and condescending politicos eat crow can be viciously satisfying, but that doesn’t do anybody any good. It would be exponentially better if the pushback to Cuomo and Newsom had inspired some reflection and led to a realization that what they did, or planned to do, reflects a deep need for human fellowship and should have been considered morally licit for the general population all along. It would have been better for Newsom to consider changing what he preaches than just practicing it.
Cuomo’s interviewer, Alan Chartock, described the enduring misery that would be imposed if Cuomo, Newsom, and other executives could snap their fingers and ensure 100% enforcement of their rules. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Chartock asked Cuomo. “You going to sit around — poor Andrew Cuomo sitting around a table, looking down, knife and a fork in each hand, looking down at a piece of turkey and no one else there — I mean, what’s the story here?”
More loneliness is what so many people are desperate to avoid after some eight months of it. That likely was at least a motivating factor for Cuomo and Newsom. You can hardly blame them, and they should hardly blame anyone else.
