Perspective: An innate grasp of stagecraft and subtext have made Cuomo the unlikely star of the pandemic
star, with his daily appearances in Albany’s magisterial state Capitol serving as vectors for numbers and statistics — diagnoses, hospitalizations, fatalities — and badly needed check-ins for the worried well. Usually dressed in an impeccable blue suit , Cuomo has projected competence, reassurance and outrage as needed, such as his ire on Monday after New Yorkers took advantage of the season’s first warm days to defy his stay-at-home order and get out of the house.
Monday’s briefing was commanding and compulsively watchable, like most of Cuomo’s appearances; his combination of grandeur and naturalism have coalesced into a performance for the ages, with man and material meeting their moment to create something bigger than the component parts. One reason for his instinctive appeal might be that Cuomo cuts such a familiar iconographic figure. With vocal cadences that recall his Italian American roots in Queens, Cuomo could be a character immortalized by Martin Scorsese — a guy who slices garlic thin with a razor, so it liquefies in the pan with just a little oil, but who also happens to know his way around ventilators and personal protection equipment.
Of course, glib comparisons to “Goodfellas” and its Cosa Nostra archetypes are lazily, unforgivably offensive. That makes it all the more exhilarating to watch Cuomo turn those cliches on their heads, much as his father, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, did at his most scholarly and statesmanlike.
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