By George Capsis
The ultimate and fatal flaw in women is their emotions and in men it is their egos.
A woman sees “truth” through her emotions and a man through his ego, and the larger his ego the more reality is distorted. Cuomo apparently has a very big ego—I mean BIG—and hence Cuomo’s ego has made handsome, six-foot-five, super-progressive-liberal Bill de Blasio its blind and unreasoning enemy.
When de Blasio suggested building a platform over the train yards in Queens to create acres of low cost housing, Cuomo had a spokesperson say, “They were not available.”
When de Blasio wanted to continue city education control, Cuomo gave him only a year.
Oddly de Blasio seemed to eat the slights month after month—until an interview on June 30th when he let it all out and accused the Governor of “game playing” and having a desire for “revenge” for imagined slights.
What is interesting is not the careful, fairly temperate adjectives that de Blasio used to describe Cuomo’s sometimes silly, self-triggered ego tussles, but the exhaustive search for explosive adjectives the press and commentators have used starting with Michael Grynbaum of the Times who call de Blasio’s measured comments “searing words”.
Other papers followed with heavy reliance on Roget’s Thesaurus to fan the flames and Channel 1 hosted the 2nd-in-commands for three previous mayors to reminisce about former feuds—Rockefeller was going to come down and take over from Lindsey during the ten day garbage strike.
I have to confess I am prejudiced against Cuomo for small things like his New York accent (his father did not have it as bad) and when I see him defending himself on TV his eyes go wide and he curls up the corner of his mouth in an unconscious snarl.
Now I wrote this on the morning of June 8th and then later that evening in an interview, Cuomo was asked directly about the gauntlet words from de Blasio. A new relaxed, smiling and articulate Cuomo appeared and cataloged all of his legislative achievements—some of which de Blasio supports like pre K education—a different Cuomo, a very different Cuomo.
Perhaps de Blasio’s complaints were a good thing—it allowed the press to spell out Cuomo’s one up-man-ship. Anyway he certainly will be conscious of it from now on. And if he is not—
the press will remind him.
