Wait For The Facts

or

You're a Disgusting Ogre, You Musta Done SOMETHING ( Andrew Cuomo and the Plight of Every Man )

Pat Mellon

We can’t have an honest discussion about Andrew Cuomo and whether or not he should be removed from office until we address a few of society’s idiosyncrasies regarding gender roles. Cuomo has been accused of being overly flirtatious with several female staff members. He allegedly asked one to play strip poker. He told the nurse who administered his Covid test that she looked good in her scrubs. And today a picture that was seemingly snapped at the exact second he took a young woman’s face in his hands and asked permission to kiss her as she looked scared and shocked (I’m guessing it was a still made from a video) emerged and seemed to cement the imagery of a Man in Power creeping out the women close to him.

Every woman should be believed. Everyone’s on board with that. If you’re not, you’re part of the problem and you’re probably hiding something.

Cuomo isn’t married, so abandon all narrative that paints him as a philandering dick. He’s a man in a position of power and great influence who has a reputation for bullying adversaries. In other words, the target on his back for taking enemy fire (in this case: accusations of inappropriate behavior with ladies) is slightly bigger than the target other men wear. The ease with which a man’s reputation can be called into question, if not completely annihilated, by mere accusations is staggering.

I have a daughter, and if I ever thought someone had hurt her or acted inappropriately or disrespected her, I’d want to tear his throat out.

Even more upsetting, though, is the reason why- society enjoys being able to identify a fellow human as a monster; as the Boogyman, in part because it reinforces our own belief that we, ourselves, are good, or at least better than someone else. It’s easier, and frankly, more fun, to believe a horrible rumor than to wait for a full investigation and report of the incident. The media is partly to blame, sure, but it’s ultimately our own thirst for seeing others stumble. The Germans call it shadenfreud.  Richard Jewel is the Olympic Park Bomber? If you say so, the weird, overweight, scoundrel. Duke Lacrosse team raped a woman on campus? Sounds about right, the perverted, privileged jocks. Both cases were false. Reputations in ruins all around.

So, you see a story about a New York politician who allegedly mistreated some women and immediately he’s guilty. Wait for the facts. He’s a man in a position of power. He musta done SOMETHING. Wait for the facts. He’s rich and I hate New York. Wait for the facts. Of course he’s denying it. He’s minimalizing her worth. Wait for the oh who are we kidding? You’re not going to wait for the facts.

Every woman should be believed. Everyone’s on board with that. If you’re not, you’re part of the problem and you’re probably hiding something.

Everyone take a breath.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty still beats Every Woman Should Be Believed, I think, at least in actual court. The Court of Public Opinion and Twitter, not so much. Typically, men don’t want to appear insensitive to women lest they get branded a cad.

Part of the issue is that men are painted as predatory. When CNN contributor and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin was caught with his pants down during a Zoom call last year, he was accused of complete wrongdoing and shamed for being obscene. He wasn’t given the benefit of any doubt, and he certainly wasn’t shown sympathy for what any sane man would classify as embarrassing. It was automatically intentional and it was immediately perverse. And what’s crazy is if it had been a woman who took off her shirt or undressed within view of the camera, intentional or not, it would have been the men who may have seen her who would have taken the hit.

Men are predators. Right?

In some restaurants and bars in Florida, bartenders and servers are given training and authority to help any female patron who feels unsafe because of her (male) date. And without his knowledge. In the women’s restrooms in some establishments, there are signs that say, essentially IF YOU DON’T WANT TO STAY WITH YOUR DATE, ORDER A (randomly named fictitious drink) AND WE’LL DO THE REST. So, when the frightened girl says the magic phrase to the bartender, a series of events is put into motion that ultimately ends with her being removed to a safe area, and her possibly-abusive date being sent home or arrested. It’s got all of the ingredients of a clever scheme designed to protect women and punish assholes, at the expense of some guy’s right to a degree of respect and certainly the benefit of the doubt. But you’re in a bar, and a female is making an accusation, and you’re a big, ugly ogre, so you MUSTA done something. It’s the appearance of impropriety, and guys are on the losing end of it, most of the time. And by and large, it’s a practice accepted by most men because it makes them look good by comparison if you’re getting accused of bad behavior. It’s chivalry by proxy. But it’s reality. Men are predators. Right?

I’m not saying it to be glib or sarcastic. But all of these lessons are floating around the universe. Men like sex. It’s not ladylike to be open about sexuality. A woman is looking for one man to fulfill every one of her dreams; Men are looking for every woman to fulfill their one dream.

 But there are no absolutes. And everybody deserves, say it with me, the. benefit. of. the. doubt. Which takes us back to Cuomo. The video of him saying, “You make that gown look good” to the nurse sticking a swab into his nostril is real. It wasn’t secretly recorded. In fact, it appears to be somewhat staged, not in a bad way, like a photo op or a publicity shot. He’s obviously aware he’s being recorded and looks like he wants to say something clever to someone he doesn’t know who is about to insert something into his face: a somewhat personal interaction.

The accusations fly. He’s a predator because he gave her an unwanted compliment. Flimsy, to be sure, but when added to a list of other unsavory reports, a bit more believable.

The picture at the wedding of Cuomo with his hands on the woman’s face when he apparently asked if he could kiss her is on that list. There’s no audio (and if there were, I’m sure we’d have seen it by now if it substantiates the claim) and the woman does look somewhat surprised/terrified, but that one is more open to interpretation than the video with the swab. And again, on its own, iffy, in terms of condemning the Governor. The strip poker thing? Relatively benign, though ill-advised I’d say, on its own.

So how is it that these accusations A) appear all at once, and B) are enough to bring down any man, not to mention a mighty politician? Easy.

The precariously creaking rope bridge that links men to women in society is frayed and can’t sustain much more weight. 

It’s the societal branding I mentioned before- the predator thing. Most men walk around on eggshells, especially in the workplace, because once one of these accusations is made, it sticks and just gets bigger. Men step up to the plate with 2 strikes. Coexistence with women is such a fragile thing, especially in the #metoo era. No one is above the law of attraction, which apparently is JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE ATTRACTED DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE ATTRACTIVE. Not comedians like Louis CK or Aziz Ansari. Not Hollywood Directors like Harvey Weinstein. And not Politicians like Andrew Cuomo (don’t ask me how Donald Trump isn’t in jail. That’s some crazy unexplainable alien science fiction shit there. If that Access Hollywood tape shows us anything, it’s that just because you record someone saying some wildly misogynistic and somewhat vile things, it doesn’t mean his career is over. Although, I suppose you’d have to ask Al Franken or Roseanne if old media can make new problems.)

The difference, of course, is that Trump never apologized. Cuomo was on TV Wednesday morning and he apologized. A lot. Maybe too much, some might say. It had a degree of desperation that didn’t match the actions of which he’s been accused. It smacked of a scolded child awkwardly apologizing to his parents after taking the car and crashing into the neighbor’s mailbox. It just seemed wordy and misshapen.

Will Cuomo alter his social behavior now? Probably. Should he be removed from office? Maybe. But the precariously creaking rope bridge that links men to women in society is frayed and can’t sustain much more weight.

Wait for the facts.