Andrew Scales The Lofty Heights of Mt Cuomo
Presented without further comment, because I’m sure you folks will do plenty of that:
“I love history, I love poster art,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday. He also loves deploying a mountain analogy to describe New York’s fight against COVID-19 and his and the state’s efforts to flatten the curve of new infections. He declared that New York was “on the other side of the mountain” during one of his then-daily coronavirus press conferences in early May. Then, at the end of June, after COVID-19 infections began spiking throughout much of the rest of the country, Cuomo shockingly unveiled a huge model of an actual mountain during another press conference to physically illustrate the analogy again, even using his hand to demonstrate New York’s journey up and over the metaphorical pandemic mountain:
While Cuomo has not yet held a coronavirus press event using the Catskills, on Monday he unveiled, for the second time this year, an old-timey campaign poster devoted to himself depicting not only his pandemic mountain but illustrating numerous other elements related to both New York’s fight against the coronavirus and the quirky asides the governor liked to make across his more than 100 daily pressers during the outbreak.
Both posters have been based on Cuomo’s own sketches and painted in a style inspired by a 1900s campaign illustration for a Nebraska politician named William Jennings Bryan. The first poster, released in January, depicted Cuomo’s accomplishments as governor utilizing a ship as a metaphor for the state.
The poster, available from the State of New York for the low, low prince of $14.50 plus shipping and handling:
This morning as we were walking the dogs we saw a woman strolling down the sidewalk wearing a tinfoil hat. No, I mean a literal hat made of aluminum foil with some sort of pointy thing at the top.
Had I been aware of this poster I would have asked her to interpret it.Report
Seriously, this is some next level weird shit.Report
In my neighborhood, we call it “Tuesday”.Report
In your neighborhood is it issued by the state government? Wait you’re in Cali aren’t you, maybe it is.Report
If you’ve never read it, you should read the study a handful of MIT students did to test how well tinfoil hats work.
The conclusion they reached was, here… let me cut and paste the first sentence from the conclusion:
“The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz.”Report
I just finished watching “The Righteous Gemstones” and at the end of the first season Baby Billy Freeman, played by the inimitable Walton Goggins, is struck by lightning and revived. The final scenes show him traveling around in a revival tent hawking posters depicting what he saw in heaven, during those brief moments he was dead, for $59.99.
Life continues to imitate art at such a rate that I doubt comedy writers will be able to keep up.Report
Signs and portents of the post-truth world.Report
I’m too weak to predict that the Dems will manage to lose the election (unpossible)… but if they do, I’m gonna 20/20 the shit out of this, The LETTER, and the Bari Weiss resignation.
Dibs.Report
DIdn’t you already dibs the George Floyd/ BLM protests? There’s already quite a list to choose from. 🙂Report
I prefer the niche artisanal 20/20 takes, leaving the industrial takes to everyone else.Report
I’ll do a 20/20 take based on a prediction: Hillary Clinton will tweet something just downright deplorable between now and election day which will change the outcome in important and overlooked swing states causing the Dems to lose, again!, the most important elections in US history.
{{If Dems lose, I think I’m on pretty solid ground here.}}Report
Well, that would be… something. Can’t say it even crossed my mind…
Dang, now I can’t stop thinking about what HRC could possibly tweet between now and November that would lose some swing states… and which are the overlooked ones?
Of course, that’s why Biden will pick Michelle Obama for VP… she neutralizes legacy Clinton dust.
I feel like we should wait until after the conventions before we kick this level of pre-sight-hind-sight into gear.Report
Ahh, that’s a lack of imagination on your part. If the Dems lose, it will 100% be HRC’s fault. It’s like rain in springtime.
You’ll see.
That’s why I’m predicting it!Report
Ah, I see now… sometimes in Bocce you just lay one ball close enough to win when all the crack shots are done. Shrewd.Report
I’m just a village idiot but if the Democrats lose in 2020 I will bet my entire life savings against yours that they will blame Bernie no matter what he does. the only way things get worse is if Joe Biden is revealed to be an animatronic robot run by an HRCReport
Just saw this:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
I don’t even know what anything means any more.Report
Well hopefully it means he writes somewhere else. Oh maybe he’ll reactivate the Dish!Report
Gonna opine likes it’s 2008 all over again.Report
Though … I agree that a Michelle Obama VP pick insulates Biden and the Dems from the HRC Upsidedown Effect to some extent. Nevertheless, I’ll stick with the prediction!Report
Yeah, the guy who mandated nursing homes take covid 19 cases or be sued. That’s some bullshit he’s trying to peddle.Report
Seems to me that what you’re talking about – that he signed a bill waiving liability for nursing homes then mandated that they take Covid patients – ought to be prosecutable.Report
I don’t see any takers lining up to do that though.Report
Weiss out at the New York Times, self-expelled in protest of Le Affair Bennet:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ay47q/bari-weiss-is-leaving-the-new-york-timesReport
“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
-Martin NiemöllerReport
Nope. This is overwrought. She has been corrected numerous times by her own colleagues for false representations of NY Times conflicts and has published things that would fail fact check for a normal reporter as opposed to an op-ed columnist like claiming Australia has no racism.
Her primary grift was to be a youngish person at the Times who complained about “woke” people her age and younger to assuage the feelings of older people in the throws of what is wrong with young people. This is a grift, not the heights of martyered free speech. She will probably take it to Fox News.Report
First they came for the communists…Report
Can you explain to me how Bari Weiss *quitting* her job is equivalent to forced detention in a concentration camp?Report
Did you read the resignation? I’ll give you an important part:
If you cannot see the similarities I cannot help you.Report
She voluntarily quit her job, Aaron.
If you can’t see the *dissimilarities*…Report
One by one they are removing, by means fair and foul, all dissent of thought. And when it is pointed out to people such as you and Saul, Greg and Chip, it is shrugged off. They had only gotten rid of ones you didn’t like.
They are moving onto the jews now, and yet you say nothing.Report
They are moving onto the jews now, and yet you say nothing.
So, Weiss self-canceled because she’s anti-Semitic? Very interesting….
Add: I get confused between conflicting facts here, Aaron. On the one hand progressive cancel-culture is a Jewish-backed conspiracy to silence conservatives while on the other it’s just anti-Semitism run amok. I just can’t square that circle…Report
Are there any other sides to the story? Do any other NYT columnists get called vile names?Report
Virtually everyone of any prominence gets attacked by irrational Twitter mobs. They all get death threats. They all get bogus emails to their bosses. It’s an epidemic of irrational nonsense.
It sucks for everyone. However, I think we can separate out the Twitter mobs from the rational critique, should we want to explore the difference.Report
That doesn’t sound like forced detention. Plus, “wrongthink” is such a weasel word. That alone puts her into the “unserious person” bin.Report
The average commenter here at OT is subjected to far worse criticism than Bari Weiss, but you don’t see us flouncing off and doing a Joan of Arc impression.Report
I’ve seen these screenshots before, but here they are collected: https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1283154190148100096?s=19
Perhaps all of those people were lying, or perhaps Weiss was misrepresenting the meeting. I suspect the latter is true. Thus, this is not a case of a respected editor trusted by her colleagues. It seems she was divisive and attention seeking. Moreover, she wasn’t objective. She decided she was being attacked by the “wokes” and ignored what was actually said.
This, of course, would be on brand for a right leaning grifter hoping to gain money and status from the anti-woke crew — basically people like you. If she really is courting attention for an endeavor with Sully, then I’d say case closed.
Whinge about the woke — get famous and rich.
There is no attack on free expression here. She quit. She wasn’t forced out. She’s using this to hog the spotlight. She’ll no doubt get wealth and fame. You’re falling for it, because of course you are.Report
The Saudi’s litterly killed a WAPO columnist. Who were the only people that tried to make a thing of that? The big news orgs. The trump gov did shite. That seems like a far far more serious “cancelling” then things we are talking about. Weiss herself has a fairly long history of trying to get people fired for views she didn’t find proper.Report
Do you have specific examples of her trying to get journalists fired?
I know of the case where she Tweeted at some freelancers boss for, evidently, using profanity. However, she didn’t say they should be fired. She only asked, “Is this okay with you?”
That’s definitely passive aggressive bullshit. It certainly borders on “trying to get someone fired,” but it’s not a clear case. I’d say it reflects poorly on her. It certainly helps explain why so many other journalists thought she sucked. That said, I’m not sure if it fully ticks the “trying to get someone fired” box.
Do you have any other examples? I’d love to hear them.Report
This is interesting. On Feb 4, 2018 Anna Merlen tweeted:
Weiss responded:
The weird part is that Weiss apparently deleted the initial tweet which contained the alleged attempts to get the woman fired from her freelance gigs, leaving only her denial as evidence that she didn’t do so.
Why did she delete that tweet? Stillwater wonders quietly to himself….Report
Well come on. Quitting a job is the same as being persecuted. She will certainly move on to a high paying gig or set of gigs forever. Being criticized is the same as being persecuted. It’s not like every other NYT columnist doesn’t get raked over the coals for everything. It’s only her.Report
is extremely funny considering the beri is the person that tried to get College professors fired for being pro-Palestinian and as far as I know has never said huh that would be a fucked-up thing to do even while she’s declaring that anybody who disagrees with her too strenuously is silencing herReport
“Turned Me Into A Newt!!!”
“got better…”Report
From the Vice article, is it true that she,
If so, that would explain much of the hostility against her.
She makes it sound as if she was being “bullied” by colleagues. Perhaps she was. On the other hand, perhaps her colleagues found her legitimately odious. Myself, from what little I know, I always got a grifter vibe from her, as if she was a narcissist playing the role of “beleaguered truth teller” rather than “self absorbed freakshow.”
However, I don’t know. My impressions are only impressions. That said, I do have pretty good narcissist-dar. I’ve dated a couple and worked for others. They trigger certain senses in me.
Anyway, epistemic status: meh.
Evidently she recently quoted from a fake “antifa” conspiracy site set up by alt-right trolls. Good job there chief editor!
I know journalists make mistakes, and fact checkers sometimes miss things, but that seems pretty egregious. Like, everyone I know already knew that site was fake. It was glaringly obvious. So she writes about the “out of control left,” but she doesn’t even know the most basic things about us. For example, she could have asked literally anyone on leftist Twitter about that site. We would have told her.
I suppose she can say, “We reached out to no one for comment, but took this at face value, despite the fact it is transparently absurd, but it confirmed my priors, so…”
In other words, she doesn’t write about the left. She writes about an imagined boogieman. Moreover, she conflates dysfunctional institutional infighting as a political thing, despite the fact that dysfunctional infighting happens in many places regardless of politics. Moreover, if she is indeed a narcissist, then of course her team is going to meltdown. Her type wants nothing more than drama, and dammit she’ll get it.
I wonder if she and Sully will manage to play nice. I bet there will be drama.Report
The problem is that negative partisanship is asymmetric (though the gap is closing). There is a larger audience among the right and libertarians for apostates and heretics than on the left side of the equation. I am generally fond of Jennifer Rubin and her columns against the GOP. But a lot of people on the left cannot get over that she used to be a Republican, they think she will go back to being a Romney fangirl as soon as Trump is gone. There is something on liberal-left psychology that hates “johnny come latelys.” I think this is a mistake but it is what it is.
On the other hand, the right-wing and libertarians lap up Weiss’ schtick and the Quilette grift and do so again and again. They love “I’m a moderate/liberal but….” They love the contrarian nature of Weiss falsely claiming that the Cotton saga was a fight between “woke” under 40s and older staffers who understand “free speech.” They stick to this even though Weiss was corrected.
It is also clear to me that there are lots of guys out there who hate the Democratic Party with all the scorn normally reserved for ex-lovers.Report
dupeReport
Welp this clarifies the Bari Weiss thing. Andrew Sullivan just tweeted he is leaving the NY mag. They will be starting a project together. This quitting is the loud prelude to gin up energy for their new thing. Nothing announced yet but if this isnt’ what happens i’ll eat my pixels. It will be the freest thinking thing ever with a possible extensive look at The Bell Curve.Report
Well that certainly clears things up.
It must suck to be “silenced.”Report
“In
SovietUS Gulag, prisoners live where they wish, get pay for work produced.”ReportYup, nobody more victimized then those working the PR machine for a new gig.Report
The first thing I read about Bari Weiss’s self-cancel from the NYT was a (cynical) tweet that she wouldn’t have quit unless she had another gig already lined up. And sure enough….Report
So the Twitter rumor mill is reporting that Ben Shapiro also quit his job today. Anyone want to take odds he joins Weiss and Sully to produce a black hole of grievance grift?
Someone also accused them of performing “poutrage,” which is too clever not to share.Report
Sullivan self-flounces as well!! Blowhards are going down!!
https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1283100440683479043Report
Cancel Culture?
I got yer Cancel Culture right here!
Former Atomwaffen Division Leader Pleads Guilty to Swatting Conspiracy
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former leader of the white supremacist group Atomwaffen Division pleaded guilty today to charges related to his role in a conspiracy that conducted multiple swatting events targeting journalists, a Virginia university, a historic Virginia church, and a former cabinet official.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/former-atomwaffen-division-leader-pleads-guilty-swatting-conspiracy
Maybe not as bad as saying mean things about Bari Weiss on Twitter, but few things are I guess.Report
That’s totally different because he’s not a leftist. “Canceling” is only bad when leftists do it. In particular, it’s extra bad when it opposes bigotry. Since Atomwaffen is manifestly pro-bigotry (and how), they are above criticism. They cannot cancel only be canceled. Obviously.
In fact, you’re only furthering cancel culture by trying to cancel him. As a white supremacist, he should be free to act without consequence. If he did anything wrong, he only did it because antifa forced him to. So you see, it’s really the left that is the problem, as always, axiomatically.
(I wonder if Quillette will hire me now.)Report
Maybe someone who’s internet savvy can help figure this stuff out but my first experience with the term “cancel culture” had revolved around right wing (white nationalists and gamers and others) doxxing and twitter-mobbing (y’all remember the phrase “conservatives pounce” right?) folks in an effort to compel silence from their ideological opponents. Currently, at least by my understanding of how people use it, the term is limited to the tactics used by lefty-prog groupthinkers to silence *their* critics. (Alsotoo, when lefties do it, Free Speech is on the line, but when righties do it it’s, apparently, just what we would expect so s’all good.) Finally, just the other day I read that the term “cancel” originated in what the writer called “black twitter” and referred to people like R Kelly and others being rejected from polite (black) society after their bad behavior had been exposed.
In any event, the term is all over the map, seems to me, up to and including people referring to Bari Weiss as having been cancelled by meanies on Slack.Report
The Atomwaffen is hard core revolutionary socialist group that supports Jihadists and weird occult Satanic “kollectivs”, burns the Constitution, and wants to overthrow the US government. They use terms like “comrades” just like socialists everywhere. Don’t overlook the fact that white supremacy is a progressive idea, advanced by progressive Democrats like Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson. They just think the welfare state should be for whites only.Report
There must be a Word template:
“[Insert disgraced entity here] are hard core atheist Satanic communists who support Islamic Jihad, the designated hitter rule, and man-on-dog sex!”Report
And yet the do, except I have no idea about their opinion on the no-hitter rule. It probably depends on if the player is black, white, Hispanic, or Asian. Neo-Nazis are a weird bunch because once the start digging into their heroes believes, they find socialism, socialism, and more socialism. That’s one of the reasons David Duke recruits at left-wing protests, because people who are extremely anti-Semitic tend to agree with enough of his points to get hooked in with the rest of it. And of course anti-Semitism goes hand in hand with BLM. Just yesterday a group of protesters was alternating between anti-Zionist slogans and BLM slogans, not that there’s much difference since BLM is wildly anti-Semitic, frequently tweeting “Free Palestine!” and pushing for the destruction of the Jewish state, which it says is based on genocide.Report
What you’re touching on is the wedge in American conservatism between the free market champions and the white supremacists.
Trump exploited this to beat his rivals by refusing to bang the drum for free markets, but instead pressed hard on racial resentment.
At this point there are almost no advocates of Reagan/ Thatcher free markets left anywhere in any party.
Trumpists generally are perfectly fine with socialism, so long as it is herrenvolk socialism.Report
Atomwaffen sounds like Atom Waffles, which would be a good name for a breakfast joint.Report
Well now it wouldn’t. Fash ruins everything.Report
Back in my punk days I liked a band called Elvis Hitler, a mashup of southern fried rockabilly with goth overtones.
I’m thinking of them playing in a retro breakfast joint like the burger place in Pulp Fiction.
Ridin’ along in my big Mercedes
Havin’ fun, impressin’ the ladies
From the Berlin Wall to the Mason-Dixon
Drinkin’ beer and
Cotton pickin’
Its a long way from Berlin to MemphisReport
I learned today that there’s a Waffle House less than two miles from the new place we’ll be moving to in a couple of months. Not that I’ve ever been, or have any particular interest in going. Of course, it’s a college town so there’s going to be all sorts of odd things there.Report
With a combo decor of 1950s Diner meets punk rock dive barReport