Cuomo’s Emmy revoked after AIM campaign
August 24, 2021
It only took 251,850 emails to board members, hundreds of phone calls, a roving mobile billboard, a report by the New York Attorney General and 11 sexual harassment complaints, but the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences finally did what Accuracy in Media demanded.
The Academy revoked Andrew Cuomo’s Emmy Award.
“The International Academy announced today that in light of the New York Attorney General’s report, and Andrew Cuomo’s subsequent resignation as Governor, it is rescinding his special 2020 International Emmy Award,” the organization said in a statement to Deadline. “His name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.”
Unfortunately, it also took more than 15,000 New Yorkers who died in nursing homes last year, people who died because Cuomo put COVID patients into nursing homes in New York, creating an epidemic within an epidemic with the most vulnerable of American citizens, the elderly.
And while the revocation of the Cuomo Emmy is a step in the right direction, it’s not nearly enough who paid for the Emmy with their lives.
“If he [Cuomo] committed a crime, just because he resigns those investigations are not going to go away,” Assembly member Ron Kim, a Democrat from Queens, whose uncle died in a nursing home told the Associated Press. “Justice for the women is the first step. Getting justice for the families who lost loved ones is a longer journey because it involves a whole ecosystem.”
Here’s why this matters: Award shows have gotten increasingly political in the last few years, but actually creating a new award specifically for a politician was a massive step in the wrong direction and it set a horrible precedent.
And as we saw with the nursing home scandal, it helps politicians prop up their bad behavior, at least in the mind of the voters. Cuomo currently is under investigation for manipulating data to minimize the number of COVID deaths in New York nursing homes.
At the very least the investigation will reveal incompetence. At the worst, a criminal act.
Despite this, theInternational Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, decided to award the Emmy well after the investigation into the nursing home scandal began.
Cuomo thought he could get away with everything because the media — and Hollywood — had his back. They were so desperate to create a foil to Trump that they built up Andrew Cuomo as some kind of national hero.
Essentially, they served as Cuomo’s enabler. He ran a one-party state where no one dared criticize him.
It was no surprise that someone who thinks he can “get away with anything” almost got away with it through the help of a media complex that gives and takes away without much thought besides what it can get away with.
This should serve as a lesson to other award shows that they need to focus on art rather than politics.
It’s important to remember that Cuomo’s victims weren’t just those who were sexually harassed. His victims also died in nursing homes because of his horrible policy, which he later covered up. And that has yet to be reckoned with fully.
Cuomo lied and thousands died.
And the media gave him an award for it. But taking the award away is a good first step.