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Cuomitis

JANUARY 23, 1986

 

Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York, seems to be saying that there is so much anti-Italian prejudice in America he has no choice but to contend with it by running for president and getting elected. Oh, yes, and if he runs for president and isn’t elected, why, that means he was right the whole time, there’s a huge anti-Italian prejudice out there.

It’s an odd thing to talk about anti-Italian prejudice in the most influential state of the Union in which the governor is of Italian descent and a Democrat, and one of the two senators is of Italian descent and a Republican. The second senator is of Irish descent.

Ah, Mario would say, but New York is different. To which observation the balance of the country would no doubt say, Thank God. But in fact New York State is two demographic realities: New York City and upstate. And Mr. Cuomo did well in both regions. If he were nominated for president by the Democratic Party, the following is a pretty safe bet, namely that more voters would vote for him merely because he is of Italian descent than would vote against him because he is of Italian descent.

Mario Cuomo’s sensitivity is something of a phenomenon. Sensitivity is in many respects an admirable human trait, but it can paralyze one’s judgment. A fine example of this is the now famous statement by Mr. Cuomo that there is no such thing as the Mafia. To suggest that there is, is to engage in anti-Italian defamation. Presumably all those people who shoot each other and get electrocuted simply adopted Italian names to confuse us. Mr. Cuomo sometimes seems to be implying that to concede the existence of a Mafia, membership in which is predominantly Italian-American, is the same thing as suggesting that all Italian-Americans are members of the Mafia.

His hypersensitivity causes the governor to make gross gestures every now and then. Joseph Sobran, the syndicated columnist, last spring stoutly defended President Reagan’s decision to go to the cemetery at Bitburg. This defense caused a cartoonist in Albany to depict Sobran as a Gestapo guard at a Nazi concentration camp, a vile act of polemical aggression. Because Governor Cuomo had smelled anti-Italian prejudice in one of Sobran’s columns, he picked up the telephone and congratulated the cartoonist. Last week, after Governor Cuomo had courageously recommended clemency for a thoroughly reformed convict who has served eighteen years for a crime he might well not even have committed, the governor ran into protesters, one of whom carried a banner, KILL A COP, GET PAROLED BY THE WOP. One hopes no public official will think to call that protester to congratulate him on his eloquence.

“His is a classic case of St. Mario’s paranoia,” commented Roger Ailes, the bright Republican media consultant. “I think he’s quite a disturbed man. It’s beyond being thin-skinned. He always has to invent a moral crusade to justify his out-of-control ambition to be president. We’re all heathens and his job on earth is to save us, and that’s what he’s doing here.”

One hopes Mr. Cuomo will not now accuse Mr. Ailes of anti-Italian prejudice. If he does, he will need simultaneously to account for the fact that Mr. Ailes is right now managing the reelection campaign of Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who is not a member of the Mafia, who supported President Reagan’s visit to Bitburg but is not pro-Nazi. All these things need to get said nowadays if the mere mention of the Mafia as primarily an Italian-American organization induces the governor to tell you that a) the Mafia doesn’t exist, and anyway, b) it isn’t primarily Italian-American.

Granted, it is easy to be called a racist. Such black leaders as Benjamin Hooks and Jesse Jackson regularly say it of the President of the United States. At a trial a few weeks ago, a cuckoo lawyer turned to me and asked darkly whether in using the term “a white lie” I had intended anti-black insinuations. One can’t deny that there is ethnic prejudice, but it tends, in America, more and more to manifest itself fraternally, rather than inimically. More Italians, as I have suggested, tend to vote for the Italian candidate than Irish or Jewish or Hispanic tend to vote against a candidate because of his Italian ancestry.

If Mr. Cuomo runs for president, I shall pray that he will be defeated, but in doing so I shall conceal from Providence the knowledge that he is an Italian-American. God’s anti-Italianism, as we know, has reached such limits that he had to go all the way to Poland to find a pope.