Rachel Maddow reviews the utterly creepy history of bad men imploding in New York politics, yes, on "both sides" of the political spectrum. Why not just elect women to leadership?
August 11, 2021

This clip went viral Tuesday night and with good reason.

Rachel Maddow uses the resignation of Andrew Cuomo to teach a history lesson on a number of New York male politicians who were caught doing something awful. These men span the political spectrum. "...how Kathy Hochul got to this point in her career turns out to be a path paved with just an astonishing number of men behaving astonishingly badly, in power, getting caught, and thereby being forced out of offices they would have otherwise preferred to hold on to," said Maddow.

Rachel started her list with Mark Foley, who resigned his Florida Congressional seat over his sexual overtures to underage pages in the House. That scandal was tied in with New York Congressman Chris Lee, the guy who sent shirtless photos to a gal he met on Craigslist.

Who took over for Chris Lee when he resigned? Kathy Hochul, the upcoming Governor of New York. It's a Republican district, though, and after one term Kathy is replaced by...

Republican Chris Collins, insider trader convicted, sentenced and then pardoned by Trump.

Rachel continues the saga with Kathy Hochul running for Lieutenant Governor as Andrew Cuomo's running mate.

Before Cuomo there was Elliot Spitzer, who resigned after he was caught using the services of prostitutes.

Spitzer was replaced by his Lieutenant Governor David Patterson, who allegedly protected an aide charged with domestic violence. Patterson decided in the midst of that scandal to not seek re-election, paving the way for Cuomo.

Cuomo, who ran against Republican Carl Paladino, famous for emailing horse porn and n-word "jokes" to a wide variety of colleagues, and whose excuse at one time was "Look, I'm in construction."

Then there was this interesting tidbit. Maddow noted the impact Carl Palladino had on The Rachel Maddow Show protocol. "I will tell you just from a personal perspective, sort of pulling back the curtain here a little bit: the Carl Palladino pornography email list scandal in that governor's race, actually led us on this show to set up a whole new set of rules internally that we still use, for how to handle the reporting and broadcasting of stuff that is both newsworthy and so wildly, wildly offensive that it cannot even be described at a staff news meeting without all of us getting referred to HR, and it can't be accessed on work computers without them getting seized by the company."

Rachel then notes that New York Attorneys General, usually quite flashy, include Spitzer and Cuomo and Eric Schneiderman, who resigned after four women accused him of "non-consensual physical violence" during sex.

Nice guys!

Since then women have held the Attorney General job, and shock, Barbara Underwood and Tish James aren't sending topless photos to Craigslist acquaintances or beating up their sex partners, or grab assing in the office. Go figure.

Then Rachel Maddow breaks into song. (Kidding. But maybe somebody should set this to music.)

RACHEL MADDOW: ...On one hand, it is cause for some kind of celebration that New York finally has its first woman governor and an able and well-respected one at that. But maybe to get the next one shouldn't take a

prostitution scandal,
a child sex abuse scandal,
a domestic violence scandal,
a bizarre online sex solicitation scandal,
a bizarre unsolicited pornography scandal,
a sexual abuse scandal,
and a serious sexual harassment scandal
to make this possible.

Maybe that shouldn't have to be the path to women having power.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon