That's what I wrote on August 5th.
Today, I see "Melissa DeRosa, top aide to Cuomo, resigns in wake of state attorney general’s report" (WaPo):
She was known for her bare-knuckle and profane style and was disliked by many of her colleagues.... But... she said attacks on her were sexist. Throughout the attorney general’s report, DeRosa is mentioned by name 187 times — as much as Cuomo. She is portrayed as a constant force, taking part in an alleged effort to discredit one of his accusers, lining up women and elected officials to defend him....
DeRosa also tried to squelch a news story scrutinizing whether state rules were changed so an inexperienced female state trooper could join Cuomo’s detail, the attorney general’s report found. The trooper was repeatedly harassed by Cuomo, who touched her back and stomach, kissed her and made comments about her appearance, investigators said....
People who have spoken to DeRosa in the past week said she remained defiant....
ADDED: I'm reminded of all the many people — including many women — who facilitated Bill Clinton.
AND: Maureen Dowd's column, published on the 7th, aimed squarely at DeRosa:
Jeffrey Epstein could not have done it without Ghislaine Maxwell... Interestingly, Maxwell’s name surfaced several days ago in a recording that was featured in the bombshell New York attorney general’s report on Andrew Cuomo’s sexual misconduct.
Pushing back on a phone call with two journalists from The Times Union of Albany last March, Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s imperious top adviser, can be heard bristling at the suggestion that the governor’s office was set up so that he had attractive young women in his line of sight.
She rejected the idea that she was the friendly face who left Charlotte Bennett, a 25-year-old executive assistant, to endure Creepy Cuomo Time. “Am I Ghislaine Maxwell in this situation?” she demanded of the journalists, adding: “So then when you presented it as, like, Melissa Ghislaine DeRosa introduces herself to the poor innocent Charlotte Bennett as she walks through the door with the governor and the place is lined up to look at them. And there’s a predatory figure in Christian Louboutins saying, ‘Nice, I’m so glad you’re here.’”
DeRosa said it straight out, as if that's a way of making it not true.
... [A]s Ross Barkan, author of a new book on Cuomo, wrote in New York magazine, “At every turn, DeRosa and her colleagues enabled Cuomo’s predation.” Indeed, she helped lead efforts to discredit Lindsey Boylan, a former Cuomo aide and the first accuser to go public.
After Boylan tweeted that the governor was “one of the biggest abusers of all time,” DeRosa got Boylan’s confidential personnel file, which contained complaints against her, and sent it to reporters, including the two at The Times Union, who told her on that call that they didn’t want it.
Investigators called DeRosa’s move unlawful retaliation. The 165-page report — in which DeRosa is mentioned 187 times — makes clear that she enforced a culture of secrecy, loyalty, fear and retaliation....
At Cuomo’s request, DeRosa also tried unsuccessfully to get 50 women who had worked for him at some point to sign a statement describing him as “strong tough respectful inclusive and effective.”...
I read "tried... to get 50 women who had worked for him" and immediately wanted to dig up that old photo/video of President Bill Clinton with his female cabinet members and advisers arrayed behind him supporting him in the face of charges that he had engaged in sexual harassment. He was successful assembling those females to vouch for him, but I was not successful finding a photography of that historic event. Am I just terrible at Googling or is Google protecting him? (I've also tried DuckDuckGo and Bing.)
MORE: I found my photo by going to the front page of the NYT for the day in question. If you look at the text, you'll see this quote about Hillary Clinton: "She is strategic, she is savvy and she is a crisis manager... And she is in battle mode."
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19 comments:
She'll be given a cushy job somewhere. She served loyally, so she'll be protected and rewarded.
And the women's activists will learn nothing from this whole sordid mess.
The sins of party leadership will be laid upon her and she'll be sent into the wilderness.
Interesting that they picked a nanny goat and not a billy goat in this case.
"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
What comes next is the "it was an open secret that..." story. This being how someone says that they are not stupid and naïve, just duplicitous. Duplicitous isn't better than stupid and naïve.
Surely no one is surprised that Cuomo's top aide is a reflection of Cuomo himself? Character shows, all the time. In this case, it showed loud and clear for years, but people not only ignored it, they refused to push back, and instead offered up lavish praise, swoons, wistful wishes of intimacy (from both liberal men and women), a book deal, and an Emmy.
Trump is nuclear level narcissistic, but he's got more character and class- yes, class- than Cuomo could even pretend to have. Yet Trump was hounded for four years, then artificially removed (can I say that here?) from office, while Cuomo still resides in the New York State Executive Mansion. And everyone is wondering how to come clean with their previous public pronouncements on Cuomo's greatness. I mean, overseeing the death of thousands of seniors in nursing homes is one thing, but grabbing butts? How do we come to grips with that?
Seems like we've seen this show before with Democratic stars. Speaking of which, anyone catch Obama's maskless, crowded birthday bash? Just remember it when you are told to stay inside and wear your mask to talk to your kids.
DeRosa = Hillary.
The night is young, the skies are clear
So if you want to go walking, dear
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-Rosa
Just understand the reason why
Your allegation is left to die
It's spiteful, it's salacious, it’s de-Rosa
Yesterday Ann posted about how being in power circles can be an aphrodisiac. Power can also he a morally blinding agent. Think of the silence of those in the orbit of Clinton, Weinstein, Epstein and Cuomo.
Hell, I saw it first hand at Penn State during the pedo scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky and the football program. There were perhaps two dozen in the university and the community who either knew what was going on or knew enough to start asking some questions. But everyone kept their lips zipped. That's what proximity to power does to otherwise good people.
Rememeber the French Politican who supposedly raped a Maid in a NYC hotel room. He was a Socialist with a long history of doing this sort of thing to French women. None of the women came forth because they didn't want to help "the right wing". Cuomo has been protected for the same reason. Lefty women will take one for the team.
Is this the picture? President Clinton and Staff, 1993
But... she said attacks on her were sexist.
That’s been a problematic legacy of modern liberalism — valid criticism gets dismissed because the target of the criticism is gay (homophobia!), or black (white supremacy!), or Muslim (Islamophonia!), or any female (sexism!)
So, the DOJ refuses to prosecute Cuomo for the nursing home scandal, where thousands of New York’s elderly people died, but Cuomo will be impeached for feeling-up eleven women? The DOJ did not do its job with Cuomo because then they would have had to go after Whitmer of Michigan and Murphy of New Jersey…also democrats with a Covid nursing home problem. Cuomo is a terrible governor and the state of New York has suffered under his tenure. The DOJ has proven to be useless…unless your name is Trump or you are a Trump supporter. Finally, the name of the bridge that connects Westchester to Rockland county must be changed back to the Tappan Zee Bridge from the renamed Mario Cuomo Bridge.
Strange how she immediately recognized herself in the Ghislaine role. And it certainly appears to be so. I can understand a Hillary protecting her spouse. I don’t understand how people allow themselves to be used to prey on innocents as a job.
"lining up women and elected officials to defend him...."
Were their names placed in binders?
"Tell me about them"
rcocean already made the main point, and Althouse herself seems to imply it, but:
They were Dems, happy to do their part for the Party. Screw the women, forget #MeToo, power first.
Of course, the theater of accountability is also driven by politics: others want Cuomo's job, and getting rid of him may boost the party with "moderates."
I felt a great disturbance in the Twitter, as if millions of tweets suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly deleted in the great memory-holing of many a journolister's declaration of Cuomosexuality.
Eric above is correct- history will be completely rewritten as the inherently dishonest pretend to have always known about Cuomo's problems rather than just being complete morons.
And I write this as someone who isn't really convinced Cuomo is actually guilty of what the AG's report claims. The political interests of the people doing the investigating are too intertwined with taking Cuomo down. Cuomo should be impeached for the nursing home fiasco in New York State, but then the political motives of the AG suddenly are aligned with protecting Cuomo, so sexual harassment it had to be.
For many people, there is one over-arching political issue that dominates their view on who to support and who to oppose. In America, the most dominant issue is Abortion. People will lie, make false accusations, and even support a sexual assaulter, going so far as to offer to give him a blow job (Nina Burleigh). I wonder how strong a support of abortion rights Cuomo was.
Ghislaine was more of of a recruiter or maybe even an accomplice to Epstein's crimes rather than an enabler. DeRosa was an enabler, but she was enabling the harassment of grown women and not the rape of minors. I can see why she takes offense. ...People make dumb judgments in the pursuit of sex and dumb judgments on the judgment of those who pursue sex. Libertines and their enablers. Puritans and their enablers. It's very hard to stay balanced, especially when they keep moving the center point of the balance board.....I recently saw the biopic Chaplin, starring Robert Downey. It was directed by Richard Attenborough who also made the much praised Gandhi biopic. Cuomo has his faults, but, so far as is presently known, he never gave enemas to underage girls or got them pregnant as was the case with Gandhi and Chaplin respectively.
Glad you included Hillary, at the end, as a huge enabler / reputation-retaliator against any accuser, tho I thought you should have included her, earlier, like:
"I'm reminded of all the many people — including Hillary and many other women — who facilitated Bill Clinton".
Hillary, like Biden, was almost voted into the Presidency - because of neo-religious support for Abortion. Legal Abortion on demand remains the single most political and contentious policy in America.
Dem written history continues to hide the adulterous promiscuity of other famous Dems:
John F., Robert, & Ted Kennedy all come to mind as protected predators. And MLK (FBI illegally taped some 42 incidents), along with LBJ & even FDR & Ike (R). Some were "just affairs", others included harassment / pressured sessions.
Power and Fame and Money are such that, for some women, they allow the Big Man to "do anything".
("Anything?" ...)
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