OPINION:
The disgraced governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, left a string of victims in his wake, snarling, “Whadda ya gonna do about it?” By refusing to hang the official portrait he craves in the state capitol, the Assembly has an opportunity to answer that question and finally deliver a measure of the justice denied his victims.
The Predator Portrait Prevention Act, authored by Assemblyman Doug Smith, Republican of Long Island, aims to prevent this travesty. Mr. Cuomo rages that holding him accountable amounts to “cancel culture,” but this is exactly how a democracy rights wrongs.
No place will show tomorrow’s New Yorkers who we were more than the Hall of Governors. As future leaders stroll through on field trips, they can aspire to be a Van Buren, Smith, Dewey — even a Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt.
But what mom hopes her son grows up to be Mr. Cuomo, or what dad hopes his daughter catches a sleaze’s gimlet eye? The Gooch, who tormented Arnold Jackson in “Diff’rent Strokes,” would be less detestable, and at least we never had to see that fictional Empire State bully’s face.
The man who won the governorship before Mr. Cuomo, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, was caught sex trafficking and cavorting with hookers. Client No. 9 found no spot in that august corridor, so why should Andrew the Icky? Surely Democrats who tweeted #MeToo about Mr. Cuomo see the value in this concrete rebuke. Still, it’s a testimony to his reign of terror that no one has been brave enough to publicly support Mr. Smith’s legislation.
Unlike the people (one dressed as the Incredible Hulk) who keep destroying former President Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or those who knock down statues, the PPP Act will tell future generations something about us right now not wait 100 years to serve a symbolic rebuke.
As far back as the Revolution, we’ve edited people who betrayed our values out of the American story. At West Point, Benedict Arnold offered to help the British cut the chain slung across the Hudson River, freeing the Royal Navy to slice our young republic in two.
Plaques in the Old Cadet Chapel honor all Continental generals, but his reads only “Major General. Born 1740.” While his portrait hangs at the ’76 House restaurant in Tappan, New York, where Gen. George Washington learned of his betrayal, it’s upside down, just as the first president flipped it in dishonor.
Mr. Arnold won a victory grander than any Mr. Cuomo delivered at Saratoga. Still, the accomplishment is represented there today by a nameless stone boot, commemorating his injury but denying him immortality.
In Tappan, locals chafe at Andrew’s vanity in naming a different sort of steel link across the Hudson for his controversial father, Mario. Even the case for renaming that bridge finds a parallel in the founding generation, who removed the headstones of the traitor’s relatives also named “Benedict Arnold.”
To post Mr. Cuomo’s scowling countenance in Albany would send a very different message about betraying the public trust: “A powerful man could do whatever he wished in the 2020s, and we’d immortalize him in oils. #MeToo but not for you.”
It would also give a shot in the arm to Mr. Cuomo’s comeback, which he’s been plotting in his bunker ever since the armies of righteousness closed in around him, driving him to bite down on political cyanide.
Indeed, Mr. Cuomo now says he regrets resigning and wants to be the comeback rat as attorney general, which radio host Clay Travis predicted after hearing Mr. Cuomo’s apology-free final speech. A portrait would validate this delusion.
In addition to allegations of sexual assault, Mr. Cuomo also sentenced thousands to death by stuffing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes. Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim’s uncle died in one, and so too did Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean’s mother- and father-in-law.
What can New Yorkers like them tell their children when the man responsible for empty seats at the dinner table points to a painting and claims exoneration, with all the piggish arrogance of Boss Hogg and none of his charm?
Symbolic though it is, the punishment fits. Mr. Cuomo, in a fit of spite, moved former Gov. George Pataki’s portrait near the bathroom. Mr. Pataki had done nothing more than beat Cuomo the Elder in a free election. He was also, notably, the last governor not to slink away in shame.
New York’s Assembly may not rise to the occasion, but we can hope it says with a bipartisan voice that blocking a predator’s likeness isn’t cancel culture; it’s justice and that Mr. Cuomo’s portrait should never dangle on a wall.
Unless it’s hanging upside down in disgrace.
• Dean Karayanis @HistoryDean is a producer for the “Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show,” longtime “Rush Limbaugh” staffer, and host of the “History Author Show” on iHeartRadio.
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