The moral rot and intellectual hypocrisy of the media and Hollywood elites is on full, in your face, go freak yourself display
If you’ve ever wondered why conservatives believe the media and entertainment industries are rank cesspools of corruption, incompetence, and outright fraud, consider Cuomo’s Emmy nomination for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Yes, the International Emmy Awards announced on Friday night that the governor is receiving the Foundation Award “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.” The academy noted “his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world,” as they present this award to an individual or organization that “crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.”
“The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,” International Academy President and CEO, Bruce L. Paisner said in a statement. “People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”
To which I say: Please pass whatever their smoking, I heard it was just legalized in Oregon.
By any and all objective measures, Cuomo’s response to coronavirus ranks among the worst in the Western world, a unique combination of hubris, bullying, lies, and outright fraud.
First the numbers: With almost 630,000 cases and over 32,000 deaths, New York has suffered more than any other state in the country. For every million residents, New York has notched an astounding 1,759 deaths, second only to equally ignominious New Jersey. To put these numbers in perspective, deaths per million in California are less than one third of New York. In Texas and much maligned Florida, less than half.
This is the sad reality of Cuomo’s leadership, yet the very same people that regularly blame Donald Trump for every death in the United States fail to hold the Democrat governor equally accountable.
Also unlike Trump, they give Cuomo a complete pass on New York’s slow start. As late as March 10, Cuomo was claiming there was no cause for anxiety. “As the number of positive cases rises, I am urging all New Yorkers to remember the bottom line: We talk about all this stuff to keep the public informed — not to incite fear — and if you are not a member of the vulnerable population then there is no reason for excess anxiety.”
By March 17, he’d completely changed his tune after effectively shutting down the state a day earlier. All of a sudden, it was time to fear. “This is an extraordinary time in this nation’s history. It will go down in the history books as one of those moments of true crisis and confusion and chaos,” Cuomo said. “Everybody is afraid. Everybody is nervous…”
Things only got worse from there as Cuomo took to the podium daily, issuing ridiculous, fact-free demands.
On March 27: “All the predictions say you could have an apex needing 140,000 beds and about 40,000 ventilators,” Cuomo said Friday during a press briefing at Manhattan’s Javits Center. “I don’t have a crystal ball. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, but I don’t operate here on opinion. I operate on facts and on data and on numbers and on projections.”
Apparently, those facts, data, and numbers were all wrong.
By April 15, Cuomo was giving ventilators away, sending 100 of them to Michigan and 50 to Maryland. On April 16, he sent 100 to New Jersey. By May 1, they were dismantling the additional hospital beds, beds which were barely used including the 2,500 set up at the Javits center which treated less than a thousand patients, and the USS Comfort which sailed away after treating only a handful of patients.
Then there are the lies: New York was one of only a handful of states to require nursing homes to accept coronavirus positive patients. The policy was an absolute disaster, directly responsible for over 6,600 deaths (a figure that could be as high as 11,000 if you count nursing home residents who were then sent to hospitals).
Instead of accepting responsibility, Cuomo lied about it repeatedly, even claiming it never happened.
“We never needed nursing home beds because we always had hospital beds. So it just never happened in New York where we needed to say to a nursing home, ‘We need you to take this person even though they’re Covid-positive.’ It never happened.”
He went on to call it a “conspiracy,” but his own Department of Health reported that 6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to nursing home facilities in response to the governor’s own mandate.
Then there was the bizarre bragging, a poster, a book, and strange appearances with his brother on CNN. The poster speaks for itself:
The only real question here: Did New York do anything right?
The most cases, the most deaths, a stunning combination of lies, bragging, and hubris, and yet the man remains a hero in the world of entertainment and the media, worthy of an Emmy. We might as well get him a Grammy, an Oscar, and Tony while we’re at it.
As I said earlier, please pass whatever it is their smoking. We could use a little in the cheap seats.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 