LOL at violent assault
It would be nice if irresponsible social media posts from elected officials were infrequent enough to be notable when they showed up. Alas, they are as thick on the ground as leaves in late October — which is when David Depape broke into former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home and used a hammer to assault her husband just before Mr. Depape was tackled by police officers responding to Paul Pelosi’s 911 call. We also wish that U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney was even halfway responsible in her use of social media, but we’ve been disappointed on that front, too. Even so, one tweet from Ms. Tenney, R-canandaigua, deserves a deeper look, as it reflects the conspiracy mongering and per format ive cruelty that’s becoming a depressing brand for a growing number of fringe politicians.
On the evening of Oct. 28 — about 15 hours after the 82-year-old Mr. Pelosi was attacked, and as he was recovering from surgery on his fractured skull — Ms. Tenney retweeted a homophobic meme that showed a group of young men milling outside a house under a gay pride flag while holding cartoonishly oversized hammers. The image seemed to chime in with loony conspiracy theories that the attack was some sort of assignation gone wrong, as opposed to a break-in by a deranged individual who had been living on a steady diet of, you guessed it, loony conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi.
“LOL,” Ms. Tenney wrote. Assault with a deadly weapon used to be the kind of crime that Republicans would decry instead of lulzing — when the victims aren’t married to legislative leaders they’ve demonized, that is. But rather than do the right thing and delete the tweet when commenters appropriately called her out on it, she switched off replies on the post, which the journalist Aaron Ruper noted piled the lawmaker's cowardice on top of her preexisting ugliness.
It took several more days for Ms. Tenney to delete the tweet; she doesn’t appear to have ever offered up apology or explanation. With the recent release of video footage showing Mr. Depape bashing his way into the Pelosis’ home, such a gesture is about three months too late.
Telling a true story
Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his ex-staffers are once again loudly decrying the suggestion that state resources were used in the production of his COVID memoir “American Crisis.” There is abundant evidence to the contrary, as summarized by this newspaper’s reporting as well as the state Assembly’s impeachment report.
The former governor’s camp insists those reports were unfair and politically motivated, which is their line on virtually all efforts to hold Mr. Cuomo accountable for the alleged abuses of power that led to his downfall.
All the more reason, then, for the newborn state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government to conduct a fresh investigation to lay out exactly who did what and when to bring “American Crisis” to market, reaping more than $5 million for Mr. Cuomo. Surely everyone involved — including the staffers who allegedly volunteered to help stuff the ex-governor’s wallet — would leap at the chance to tell the story behind this literary work under oath.