January 6, 2015
Something about Mario Cuomo
The first great speech I ever heard as it was being delivered was the keynote address of Governor Frank Clement [D-Tenn] at the Democratic Convention in 1956. It was from the Southern style of Baptist tub thumping, stem winding oratory – N.B. the use of clichés - that you learn to appreciate if not for the content but for the delivery. It made page 1 of the New York Times
“It was said of Pericles that when he spoke men said “How well he speaks”. It was said of Demosthenes that when he spoke men said “Let us march”.

His speech led the convention to re-nominate Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. [It must be noted for the record that Senator Kefauver, unlike Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, the Vice Presidential candidate of 1952, was not a stone-cold racist who spent his entire adult public life trying to keep little Black boys from going to school with little White girls

2 other things of note:

A – The recently released movie “Selma” has President Lyndon Johnson as the villain in the civil rights political dust ups of the ‘60s. Whatever else he was, and damn him for the 2 wars he started, neither of which he was prepared to win, one of which had 2,000,000 men in Vietnam and a wall in Washington with 58, 643 names on it, and the other, the one on poverty, that is still ongoing, he was no racist, secret or otherwise. The legislative villains in the piece were the Southern Democratic Senators who responded to the whip of the Klan. That shouldn’t be surprising since one of them – Robert Byrd [D-WVA] – was a Deputy Grand Kleagle in charge of out of town lynchings, He later became the Senate Majority Leader.

B – I remember an interview with Senator John Kennedy – [D-MA] after he lost in his bid to become the Vice Presidential candidate. I, as an Irish-Catholic, rooted for him, as did all my lanschmen. He said that while he was sorry he had lost he had learned an important lesson. He learned how to win. 4 years later, with help from his father’s tin box and a long count in Chicago, he won.

Governor Clement’s speech, the one that borrowed heavily on Cicero’s denunciations of Cataline, led to President Eisenhower being re-elected by a landslide. It even led to a Republican being elected to the House in the 13th district of New Jersey.
Bayonne and Jersey City were places where Republicans were not welcome after sundown and “Men Working” signs were regarded as GOP propaganda. He was unelected in 1958.

1958 was the beginning of the mantra “missile gap” and “Let’s get the country moving again”. Sliding down the modern American Liberal memory hole, a device without which they cannot live, are Quemoy and Matsu and whether or not the United States should go to war over them. Senator Kennedy said that any place is defensible if “free men chose to defend it”.

Sometimes great speeches don’t lead to great things. Sometimes they make us look more closely at the speaker

I was going to apply the rule of “de morituis” to the death of Governor Mario Cuomo. Then I read the New York Times obituary of him written by Adam Nagourney. You may recall that some 15 years ago that Dick Cheney, the sainted former Vice President, called him an “asshole”. Nothing in the last decade and a half has happened to change that personal assessment.

As to the New York Times, it is always owed to the record to recall that they wanted a cease fire with the South that would have preserved slavery. Considering that they acquiesced in calling Abraham Lincoln a “baboon” that would have been a Logical step. The Times can move their offices to Mars but they will not be able to escape the moral ordure of Walter Duranty A case can be made for him being the reason for World War 2 and its subsequent slaughters. That he was a bought and paid for boot-licking butt boy for the KGB and Stalin is/was bad enough. Their refusal, fast approaching a century, to acknowledge this journalistic infamy, is beyond contempt.

Whatever else Herbert Matthews did at the Times, his work to get Fidel Castro full time employment in Cuba worked very well

In the winter/spring of 2003, with the United States preparing for war, the Times saw fit to devote more page 1 content to the sad fact that there were too many urinals in the locker rooms of the Augusta national Golf Club. Perhaps a bra burning on the 18th green would have made them concentrate on other matters. Perhaps not.

Thus, when I got to the obituary of Cuomo I was both forewarned and forearmed. I’ll say this about the Times. It never lets you down.

“tinged by Roman Catholicism”

As a RC, alas, in my case perhaps Retried Catholic may be a better use of the initials, I am still deeply offended by the term. If I were a feral bomb tosser and a serial hater I could claim it was a hate crime and would have the dreaded Word Police on my side.

How can one be “tinged” with Roman Catholicism?
You either are or you aren’t.
The biopsy sample is malignant or it isn’t
You are either pregnant or you are not.

Is being “tinged by Roman Catholicism” the same as being tinged by Ebola?

Governor Cuomo gave a speech at Notre Dame University on abortion. It was very well received by press. Of course, the modern American Liberal press would praise Jack the Ripper if it turned out that any of the women he hacked to death was pregnant.

He tried to, forgive me, cut the baby in half.

He said that as a Roman Catholic, presumably one still “tinged” by it, he was “personally opposed” to abortion. The other shoe, one the size of a 7 League boot, came flying in quickly. He said that as Governor of New York he had no choice but to uphold Roe v Wade, it being the law of the land.

I wrote to him in the pre-WORD age meaning that no copy is available. I asked him if he had been Governor of New York and Dred Scott had been captured in Greenwich Village would he have signed the writ putting him on the midnight train to Georgia.

I am no longer waiting for an answer.

As to his oratorical skills…

I remember when Governor Nelson Rockefeller [D-NY] appointed him to mediate a dispute, racial in nature, over public housing. He talked so much that everybody forgot what they were yelling about. That propelled him to run for Governor. In the Democratic Primary his opponent was Mayor Ed Koch. Cuomo’s money line was “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo”. Who knows if it worked but he became Governor.

He gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco in 1984. His speech was wildly applauded. The New York Times praised it in tumescent terms. The next November the Mondale-FerraroZaccaroFelliniZuchini ticket lost 49 states to the Great Reagan. The country realized that, yes, “there was a bear in the woods” and that giving him honey in the morning and salmon in the afternoon was no way to make him behave.

[I must add that when fellow Eye-Tie Antonin Scalia was nominated to the Supreme Court Cuomo said he would campaign against any Senator who opposed him. Scalia was approved unanimously. The lesson is obvious. Don’t fool around with overachieving Italian-Americans from Queens.

Governor Cuomo, of late and happy memory for it must be said that he was a good and decent man, went to a Roman Catholic grammar school, a Roman Catholic high school, a Roman Catholic college, and a Roman Catholic Law School. The New York Times and the uber-liberal upper West side Democrats had no problem with these credentials. When Rudy Giuliani presented himself to the electorate, even though he went to NYU Law School, absolutely a non-Roman Catholic institution, the bed wetting gravity defiers, rang the alarm bell. “Too Catholic” was what NYC Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, now Mrs. Jimmy Breslin, said of him. She too has failed to respond to a request to explain the difference.

I guess that while all Catholics are equal some Catholics are more equal than others.

I know that by now the differences between private beliefs and public actions and why giving up one for the sake of the other has been made clear to him. Giving up one to pursue the other leads to a “short road to chaos”. That road ends at the entrance to Avernus.

Alas, he can’t share this new found moral clarity with us.

The Divine Comedy, the Hound of Heaven, and A Man for all Seasons are best learned while living.




Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET