Andrew Cuomo isn’t the problem, and everyone knows it
When Harvey Weinstein was accused by some 80 women of sexual abuse and assault in fall 2017, Hollywood and the corporate media were shocked and scandalized. How could Weinstein, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, have done this for so long while rubbing shoulders with political and media elites in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and no one said anything?
The Catholic world had a similar shock in summer 2018, when former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was credibly accused of sexual assault and resigned from the College of Cardinals. How could McCarrick, the most powerful prelate in the American Catholic Church and the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., have repeatedly sexually assaulted boys and seminarians for decades? How could no outsiders have known? Why did no one say anything?
A year later, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and the same melodrama played out. Epstein was friends with the most powerful people in the world. …
Now comes New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior toward at least 11 young women. Once again, everyone is shocked and scandalized. How could this celebrated Democratic governor, whom leftist media shamelessly elevated for the past year-and-a-half, who won an Emmy last year for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose name among leftist elites had become synonymous with competent leadership and even-handedness and political brilliance, have all along been this creepy, groping misogynist?
How indeed. The truth about Cuomo is much the same as the truth about Weinstein, McCarrick, and Epstein. Everyone knew. No one cared. No one said anything until forced to. Then the feigned shock and outrage, the concern about the treatment of women, the hand-wringing and Me Too-ing, the performances on social media. …
Why? Because none of these people really care. As long as sexual harassment, assault, abuse, even the sex trafficking of underage girls stays quiet, then they stay quiet, too.
They don’t even care about people dying. Cuomo should have been run out of office last year for his mishandling of the pandemic after he ordered COVID-positive seniors into nursing homes, causing the virus to spread among the most vulnerable and thousands to die. But no one in corporate media would so much as raise the issue without rolling their eyes and dismissing it as a political stunt by Republicans to smear the left’s favorite pandemic governor.
Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker made the same point after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke:
Since the truths about Weinstein have emerged, others have denounced him—only to be subsequently exposed for similar sins of their own. More and more women are emerging with accusations against more and more actors and industry leaders. But that’s not all. One former child star insists that sexual harassment of women in Hollywood is secondary to the greater problem of sexual harassment of children. His explosive charge was backed up by the 2015 documentary An Open Secret, which exposed the “pedophilia epidemic” inside the entertainment industry.
These are people with enormous social influence. These are people Americans subsidize and idolize. They shape society’s attitudes, change its standards, animate its dreams.
God calls America “an hypocritical nation” for good reason (Isaiah 10:6). Hollywood culture is intrinsically, undeniably and epically hypocritical. It masquerades as feminist and pro-women, while it treats women as sex objects—in private at parties and in public at the cinema. It rails against guns in the political arena but romanticizes gun violence on the silver screen. Its moral standards are as fake as its movie sets. This shouldn’t shock us. This industry’s business is playacting. Its product is image.
A lot of people are getting a self-righteous charge out of condemning one movie producer right now. The Motion Picture Academy booted him and said, “[T]he era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.” We’ll see. But don’t expect the product to change.
Romans 1 condemns those who reject God and take on a reprobate mind, becoming filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, maliciousness, deceit and malignity. But God doesn’t just condemn those who commit such things—He also condemns those who “have pleasure in them that do them.” That’s a whole lot of people in America today.
Can we then turn around and expect only blessings? “How shall I pardon thee for this?” God asks through one of His prophets (Jeremiah 5:7-9). “[T]hy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”
