The Wall Street Journal editorial board nailed it on the head Wednesday in an editorial on "Scrubbing Cuomo's Emmy." Last November, the Emmy Award people gave a special award to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his coronavirus press conferences, for his "masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world." (That's no doubt enabled by his family connections to CNN. which ran him live almost every time he met the press.)
But now that Mr. Cuomo has been run out of office over sexual-harassment allegations, the International Academy that bestows the celebrity prizes wants to pretend its partisan sycophancy never happened. On Tuesday it rescinded the award granted only nine months ago, replacing the announcement page on its website with a notice that Mr. Cuomo’s “name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.”
The Journal writers especially embarrassed actor Ben Stiller for his "cringeworthy" comment at the award presentation that Cuomo might get "more dates than votes," and the governor joked Stiller was "testing the boundaries of decorum." Stiller looked about as smart on that occasion as his comic male-model character Derek Zoolander.
At the ceremony, Emmy president and CEO Bruce Paisner gushed over Cuomo:
Last spring, when the virus was new and out of control, and the people of New York City were frightened at its relentless spread, one man took it upon himself to use technology to spread reliable information [!] and tell citizens what to do. Governor Cuomo's daily press conferences were a whole new dimension of public education.
As we were reminded again today, Cuomo mangled information to make New York's death numbers artificially low. The academy's bland statement reversing the award makes no mention of Cuomo's mishandling of information, just the sexual-harassment findings The Journal continued:
The supposed majesty of Mr. Cuomo’s press conferences wouldn’t be diminished even if the sexual-harassment allegations against him are true. The Academy is confessing its motive by rescinding the award only after Mr. Cuomo’s support among Democrats collapsed.
America’s entertainment elite fawned over a liberal politician. Now they want to pretend they’re holding him accountable for sexual harassment. In fact, they’re trying to escape accountability for their own bad judgment. And they wonder why Americans are losing trust in institutions.
One of those pretenders is CNN's Brian Stelter. Back in November, Stelter's newsletter avoided mentioning the Andrew Cuomo Emmy, but in Tuesday night's edition, Stelter tried to get on the other side of Cuomo by highlighting his last Democrat opponent Cynthia Nixon, a celebrated actor on HBO's Sex and the City, who cracked she still retains her two Emmy awards:
A check of my emails reveals: CNN's 'Reliable Sources' newsletter did NOT mention Andrew Cuomo's Emmy when it was announced in November. https://t.co/Ow5WG6gdzm
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) August 25, 2021
This is a little sad, since Stelter starred in our Bill D'Agostino's roundup of Andrew Cuomo gushing last year:
