Quixotic indeed

I enjoy reading things written by people who are smarter than me because I tend to learn something.

Many years ago, I was enthralled by a TV show called The West Wing because it was written by the fabulously talented Aaron Sorkin. Before the very first episode ever aired, I saw Sorkin being interviewed and he was asked how accurate the show was to events in a real White House and he said, “My verson of the West Wing is a bit quixotic.”

The interviewer didn’t ask him to explain the term, so I had to look it up, and I learned that it means an overly idealistic view of things. Put simple, Sorkin was painting our politicians and the people who work at their side, as being better than we the voters usually get.

That’s probably why so many of us loved the show, it made us feel good about the people in charge.

Whatever you felt about Donald Trump, even his most adoring followers had to cringe at his childish behavior sometimes. I’ll go to my grave, forever stunned, that we allow the leader of the free world to wake up at 4 a.m. and tweet out whatever crosses their minds.

I was always under the impression a president couldn’t make a phone call without someone placing it for him or her and then there would be people standing three feet away making sure the president didn’t say or promise something stupid.

I thought of that term “quixotic” this week sitting through 90 minutes of the governor’s briefing on the latest scandal with the nursing home deaths. I understand there is politics in everything that involves politicians, but it became clear, at least to me, that he is convinced right down to his bones that he never made a single mistake.

I thought for sure after the Attorney General’s report and the leaked phone call involving his secretary, that he’d have a, come to Jesus’, moment and ask us to understand he made mistakes and forgive them. That was obviously quixotic of me.

For those who want to blame everything on the governor, that is grossly unfair. I’m not going to play the role of his flack here, but he didn’t invent the virus or bring it here to New York. He also has done many of the things he has done, with the absolute blessing of the state legislature.

They handed him the hammer and he used it.

The governor pointed out that there is not a single action he has taken that lawmakers could not have reversed if they wanted.

The truth is, most of them were all too happy to sit there and collect a six-figure salary and let the man at the top do what he wanted without debate. So, in those terms, we got exactly what we deserved.

I think what shocked me the most was how he so easily blamed the virus getting in the nursing homes on the front line, essential workers, he was praising only months ago. He blamed it on the nursing home staff and the delivery drivers and anyone walking into a home. And he may be right, some of the spread likely did come from that, but all of it?

Are we to believe not a single infected elderly person who was sent back into those homes, didn’t spread Covid? That strains credulity.

When state lawmakers and the media were asking for an honest account of nursing home patient deaths, in or out of the hospital, they should have been given. To plead guilty, not of hiding the numbers, but of creating some fictious “void” makes one’s eyes roll out of their head. God forgive me, but it made me think of someone who is accused of an affair saying, “I don’t admit to the actual affair, but I did create a void in our marriage that allowed my affair to take place and that’s on me.”

What? Was that English you just spoke?

I never understood writing a book about how well you did in stopping the pandemic, while we were still in the middle of a pandemic. I never understood going on a cable news program and joking with your brother, while people were still dying. I don’t understand the New York City reporter who got a chance to ask a hard question at a critical time, thanking the governor for his vaccine shot.

I guess we know why he got called on to ask a question.

This pandemic is unprecedented and I never, for a second, expected every leader from the county, to state, to the feds, to play error free ball. All I can hope, as a citizen and voter, is when you make a mistake you are adult enough to admit it. Humans have an unparalleled capacity to forgive, if you ask for it.

But, it appears, you don’t ask for forgiveness when you’ve done nothing wrong.

If you did lose someone to this virus, my heart aches for you. Just know, even in their last breath, the person you lost knew you loved them. That’s not me being quixotic. That’s me being hopeful that there is a heaven, and you’ll see each other again.