Re: Assholes & Fascists
Warning: I am going to cuss much more than normal for this issue.
Chris Cuomo is an asshole. While it probably strikes most people as obvious, there is actually good reason to dissect a few of the many ways in which Cuomo is an asshole. For those that may be unfamiliar, Cuomo is a now former CNN news anchor and the brother of former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Chris and Andrew are the sons of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. The Cuomos are a powerful family in New York, but their political strength does not stop at the borders of New York state by any means.
Before we get to Chris, Andrew is an asshole, too, and of this we can be certain. The disgraced former Governor resigned after an avalanche of credible accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment, and that is not even to mention the decades of political bullying and craven, power hungry manipulation of supposedly liberal politics. Andrew lied about the number of people who died of Covid in nursing homes, which is a crime. He provided special access to Covid tests to his family when they were in short supply for the public, which is a corrupt abuse of power and morally depraved. He wrote a book about guiding his state out of the pandemic during the pandemic, which is fucking stupid. Andrew is most certainly an asshole.
Chris is a slightly different brand of asshole, and it matters that they are not the same. Chris is the younger brother. By the time he was developing his own career, he had already long lived in the shadow of his powerful father and older brother. With the comically on brand audacity powered by white privilege, Chris created an image for himself as a hard-hitting journalist. Even though it is impossible to disentangle Chris’s access to power and privilege from his journalism career, Chris’s work as a journalist was almost always devoid of any such attribution.
To be fair, Chris covered some really important stories. He did some really good work. He was a journalist for many years. Now, Chris has been fired by CNN for using his resources and platform to protect his brother, Andrew, from serious allegations of sexual harassment. In retrospect, Chris’s career probably began to unravel when he became more brazen than normal in flaunting his disregard for journalism in favor of family nepotism and political power moves.
In the early months of Covid, Chris covered his brother, which was a clear conflict of interest. By no means do journalists need to be objective robots, but there was never any acknowledgment that Chris was not well suited to cover his brother’s administration critically, especially in a time of crisis. The fluff coverage Andrew received from Chris on one of the most watched television platforms on Earth remains staggering. Then, Chris’s audacity reached new heights when he actively participated in his brother’s attempts to cover up and squash the investigations into his sexual conduct. Masquerading as a journalist, Chris was just another henchman for Andrew. For these reasons, Chris is an asshole. He is a different flavor of asshole than Andrew but an asshole nonetheless. The Cuomo brothers are full-fledged assholes.
There are plenty of things the Cuomo brothers are not, though, of course. They are not murderers. They are not pedophiles. Also, and importantly, they are not fascists.
We do ourselves a disservice in identifying and combating the enemies of democracy and human rights when we are not precise with our language. There is extreme reticence in this country, in and out of the confines of the political journalism world, to clearly identify domestic fascism. The Republican Party, both on the national level and in state legislatures and county governments across the country, has fully embraced white nationalism as its cultural platform and fascism as its governmental vehicle for societal dominance.
Long since passed are the days of early warning signs of fascism in the conservative movement. No. It is here, and the Republicans have made decision after decision to embrace it. Yet, the news media struggle mightily or outright refuse to report accurately and consistently on this political reality, which the Republicans themselves often proclaim out loud. Why? What accounts for this failure? Well, it is nearly impossible to describe something for which folks refuse to accept the definition.
The national political journalist world refuses to acknowledge the definition of fascism. Instead, the behavior of fascists is whitewashed with the language of family values, economic anxiety, and conservative ideology. However, it is not just journalists who fail to identify fascism. Even those who would stand in opposition to the Republicans’ bigotry often stop short of using the right words. Instead, the behavior is described in the language of personality. The Republicans are assholes.
This is true, yes, but it misses the mark. The Republicans are assholes, yes. But so are the Cuomo brothers. Chris and Andrew both have a laundry list of transgressions for which it is totally fair to call them assholes and power hungry and lots of other bad things. Unlike the Republicans, though, the Cuomo brothers are not fascists. They are not working to overturn democracy and destroy the republic by way of a coup.
It is not enough to label fascists as assholes and bigots. Undoubtedly, it is safe to say most if not all fascists are assholes and bigots. But all assholes and bigots are not fascists. Just like the Cuomo brothers are sexist assholes, but they are not fascists or insurrectionists. To make it even more clear, this is not about the Cuomo brothers at all. They suck. They are assholes. But in the conversation of preserving whatever democratic infrastructure exists in this (deeply and systemically flawed) republic, the Cuomo brothers do not really matter.
The only capacity in which they do matter in this regard is insofar as assholes like them – and the way we perceive and describe them – make it even more difficult to reckon with people like fascists. The fascists are assholes, too, of course. But it is not what makes them an existential threat to democracy.
Lastly, this exploration of precise language is all well and good, but what does it mean in practical terms? It means we need to develop a skill to adapt to this current political reality. The skill is to zoom in and out, as necessary, in our evaluation of political problems and the news of the day. We need to hone our ability to differentiate and delineate between different types of assholes in politics and the news because frankly there are too many assholes to lump them all together.
This skill is not easy, and it takes practice. I find myself often lapsing and needing to catch myself while scrolling on Twitter or reading articles about political problems in the world. It is easy and understandable to throw all the assholes in the same basket. I try, though, to remember that all assholes are NOT created equal, and we need precision and resolve to defeat those who want to replace the republic with a fascist dictatorship in the guise of representative democracy.
The Cuomo brothers are not good people. Chris is a fraud, and Andrew is a sexual harasser, among many other things. And – not but – neither Chris nor Andrew are trying to subvert the Constitution and incite a violent insurrection. To fight those who are, it helps to make that clear for our own sake.
As always, be you be great.
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