Among the multiple allegations of sexual harassment against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, one of the more bizarre is that of Valerie Bauman, who claims that, when she was a 25-year-old reporter, then-attorney general Cuomo “made unwavering eye contact” with her during a press conference.
After that, things got even worse: “He took my hand, entered my personal space and looked into my eyes as he announced, ‘Hello, I’m Andrew Cuomo.’”
But the horrors that Ms. Bauman had to experience did not end there. Later, when covering the attorney general’s office, Cuomo “would sometimes pick up the phone himself,” and “would greet me in a booming voice, repeating my name frequently.”
At what point does all this start to resemble a medieval witch trial? Bauman stops just short of accusing Cuomo of cursing her with his “evil eye.”
That is not to say that Bauman’s assessment of Cuomo’s intentions was incorrect. She was probably right in concluding that he was attempting to flirt with her. All the same, when the minor subtleties of a man’s body language can be used to make a case against him, then we are entering concerning territory indeed.
This standard will not hurt the Cuomos of the world, who have always skated above moral accountability. It will, however, lead to the railroading of a great many ordinary men far lower in the societal hierarchy than Cuomo, who commit the crime of being mildly awkward around a woman. It will create a world in which men will have to live in perpetual fear that a slight glitch in their body language, a split-second glance in the wrong direction or a voice modulated too loudly, will lead to their lives and careers being irreparably ruined.
At worst, this could lead to a world of what George Orwell termed Facecrime: “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide.”
This quote, some may recall, was circulated on social media in the wake of the 2019 Covington Catholic controversy, in which 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann became the object of public demonization for the crime of smiling awkwardly as a grown man pounded a drum in his face. This sort of standard is not one to which we should hold anyone.
The same goes for allegations of “unwanted advances.” At its broadest, this rather vague phrase could be used to criminalize any form of flirtation between men and women. In the gleeful words of feminist Ezra Klein, men “need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.” That is the ultimate goal of all this, even if most feminists would not be so forthright in stating their intentions, and a blanket ban on “unwanted advances,” arbitrarily enforced (as it would necessarily have to be), will bring us closer to just such a glorious future.
There is also a certain absurdity to the disproportionate weight that has been placed on these allegations, when compared to Cuomo’s other misconduct. The disgraced governor, let us remember, stands accused of forcing COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes, potentially killing tens of thousands of elderly New Yorkers, and then falsifying public data to cover this up. He also stands accused of making a dozen or more women uncomfortable. In the current era, which places sexual offenses against women ahead of virtually all other wrongs, the last of these is given the brunt of public attention. This is clearly absurd, and it sends the message that the only way to rid ourselves of corrupt politicians is to inquire as to their sexual conduct.
Conservatives have taken a great deal of glee in Cuomo’s downfall, and this is understandable: he is an unpleasant bully by all accounts, wrongly held up by an adulating media as the face of pandemic competence, while more sensible governors like Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis were vilified.
And yet getting rid of Cuomo will not hurt Democrats. They care nothing for him. He has outlived his political usefulness, and they are happy to throw him under the bus. Bringing down Cuomo on the grounds of prolonged eye contact and a loud voice, however, will accelerate the downward spiral into a world where a negative hunch carries the weight of a conviction.
In his 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked the Senate, and the general public, to “judge me by the standard you would want applied to your father, your husband, your brother, or your son.” We should ask ourselves the same question here. Hate Cuomo all you want. But hate him for the right reasons.