So, Andy wants to name a bridge after his dad?
How about the bridge over Schoharie Creek? That’s the bridge I think of when I think of Mario Cuomo.
A bridge – like hundreds of others across this state – neglected for years on end, decaying and diminishing and, in the case of Schoharie Creek, tragically collapsing.
Ten people died that day, on Mario Cuomo’s watch, driving over Mario Cuomo’s bridge.
That’s Mario Cuomo’s bridge.
The Tappan Zee Bridge is the people’s bridge.
It is used by them, it is being rebuilt by them, it will be paid for by them. It is theirs. And any midnight trick to name it after Andy’s daddy is despicable.
In a secret move in the very last hours of a six-month legislative session, the governor’s office bent and waived rules to try to ramrod through a piece of legislation renaming the Governor Malcolm Wilson Tappan Zee Bridge the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
The Senate bought it.
In an impressive feat of ankle grabbing, it unanimously passed – Democrat and Republican alike – without a voice or vote of opposition.
Each senator voted “baaa,” like the sheep he is.
The governor immediately waived the three-day public-scrutiny period required by state law and the bill bounced over to the Assembly.
Where the speaker said it wasn’t on the agenda.
Which means: They haven’t been bought off nearly enough.
That leaves the bill in limbo until an inevitable special session when, the Assembly by then having been properly bought off, it will pass like crap through a goose.
No matter how stupid an idea it is. No matter how much people protest.
Because that’s how business is done in Andy’s New York.
Which will be chagrining to the family and fans of Gov. Malcolm Wilson. Actually, nobody ever knew it was the Wilson bridge, and nobody ever called it that, and nobody even remembers who he was, so that’s no skin off anybody’s nose.
It will be kind of jarring to the history of the Tappan people, however. The Tappans were among the River Indians first encountered by Dutch settlers at the mouth of the Hudson. Their close cousins and neighborsincluded the Hackensack and the Manhattan. They probably today have no descendants.
But their memory lingers in the name Tappan Zee – the Dutch phrase for the wide stretch of the Hudson River around which they lived. The bridge’s name – the Tappan Zee – is a last memorial to the people who lived in that area when the first white and black people arrived.
And Andy Cuomo wants to erase that from the public consciousness, just as the Tappan people were erased from that area three hundred years ago.
And he’s doing it all to honor his daddy.
He is using his power as governor, and disrespecting the memory of a Native American people, to do a favor for his late father’s legacy. Certainly, his father was a three-term governor in his own right. But he was a man who was ultimately so unpopular that he was beaten by George Pataki.
George Mother Frigging Dull As Drying Paint Pataki.
When the people have to drag you kicking and screaming out of the Governor’s Mansion, maybe things didn’t go that well for you.
And maybe you’ve got enough monuments already.
Maybe the spattering of depressing prisons across upstate is monument enough. Or the various financial tricks that indebted New Yorkers and hobbled their economy. If the state is fundamentally broken, and you and your daddy broke it, maybe you ought to go easy on naming things after yourselves.
Maybe you should have the humility and class to know that honors you heap upon yourself – or your family – are hollow and self-serving. Such honors are reminders not of honor and glory, but of nepotism and self-interest.
We have suffered under the House of Cuomo long enough, and shall yet suffer more. But need the oppression be made permanent with the self-aggrandizing naming of massive public works after the Beloved Leader and his father? Does the cult of personality require us to build this modern pyramid for the new Ramses?
(Historical note: Turns out that’s not just a brand of condoms.)
And how dare this governor and this legislature focus on bridge names when neglecting bridge repairs? There is a new billion-dollar baby being constructed over the Tappan Zee, yes, but all across the state bridges rust and rot and drop pieces of themselves on cars passing below.
Neglecting bridges is New York’s official sport.
The next Schoharie Creek is just around the corner.
And the Albany river rats – the politicians, not the hockey players – leave your family and mine endangered while they make nice for Andy’s family.
It is ridiculous and wrong, vain and self-serving.
And the signs will be up by Labor Day.
TARRYTOWN, NY - MAY 14: In front of the Tappan Zee Bridge, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo introduces U.S. President Barack Obama during a political event to talk about U.S. infrastructure at the Washington Irving Boat Club on May 14, 2014 in Tarrytown, New York.. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)