Letters

In Greek tragedy, hubris (arrogant, blinding pride) always brings down the king/hero and with it the terrible consequences of earthly loss, and the bitterness of reflection and regret. The Bible kept the ancient world’s concept and made it into a sin — “Pride goeth before a fall” — extending it to infinity by adding eternal damnation in hell. Dante considered pride the first sin, and Shakespeare had a lot to say as well.

Suffice to say here that Andrew Cuomo is surely guilty of pride and lack of judgment. But quoting Gilbert and Sullivan: “My object all sublime, I will achieve in time: to make the punishment fit the crime …”

Given that the torments imagined by the Greeks, and the eternal damnation dictated by the Bible, seem inadequate to assuage the “crimes” and torments suffered by the “dis-staff” working with Cuomo, they want (with the overly zealous media) to inflict — along with the earthly loss and reflection that the Greeks knew were punishment enough — Inquisitional, tribal retribution. They want to flay him alive, draw and quarter him, put his head on a pike, lay waste to his family, skewer his brother, exhume his father to attribute sorrow to him, and make the name a curse. As Bill Clinton said: “They didn’t want to just impeach me; they wanted me to commit suicide.”

Reflecting on the chorus of Accuss-ettes, and their victim-alia, it is clear that they do not know history, past or present, nor credit or honor the women whose shoulders they stand on who would have deplored their entitled sniveling. Moreover, that they are power and media driven is inescapable. Most despicable: Their comments and actions suck oxygen and credence from real victims suffering everywhere.

Whereas last year the self-identified “Cuomosexuals” were salivating on social media over the Governor-cum-hottie (much as Lewinsky did over Clinton before she made it to Washington), they now want him imprisoned and then some. They cannot and will not distinguish between style, seduction, sexism or sadism — check out the newly minted “sadistic flirtation.”

Feminist warriors manning the barricades unable to beat back a “come-on” or exercise their power to say, “No!”? Special state troopers who flutter and faint at a touch on their back? Stiff female competitors and predators with no moral compass distinguishable from their male oppressors? (Ever work for a woman?)

Ladies: Get woke to the personal convolutions of the lethal, stressful shrinking marketplace of late-stage capitalism, “the war of all against all” (Marx). And the killing fields of power and politics. It is no country for entitled sorority sisters and their fantasy-fed ideas of what “work” is. Both men and women suffer every imaginable indignity within it. Grow up.

Frances Genovese

Southampton