Cuomosexual Misconduct II: 2 Chris 2 Cuomosexual
Chris Cuomo was accused of grabbing his former (lady) boss’s ass
It looks like Andrew Cuomo may not be the only Italianx American with too much love to give in his family. Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor and younger brother of the ex-governor, has also been accused of sexual harassment. Shelley Ross, a former television journalist who was previously Cuomo’s boss at ABC News’s Primetime Live, alleges in a New York Times op-ed that Cuomo grabbed her ass in greeting during a colleague’s going-away party one night in 2005.
Ross, who was no longer Cuomo’s executive producer at that point, writes of the encounter:
When Mr. Cuomo entered the Upper West Side bar, he walked toward me and greeted me with a strong bear hug while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock.
“I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss,” he said to me with a kind of cocky arrogance. “No you can’t,” I said, pushing him off me at the chest while stepping back, revealing my husband, who had seen the entire episode at close range. We quickly left.
But what may be even more insane is the email that Cuomo allegedly sent Ross one hour after the incident, with the unfortunately relatable subject line “now that i think about it…i am ashamed…”
though my hearty greeting was a function of being glad to see you…
…christian slater got arrested for a (kind of) similar act (though borne of an alleged negative intent, unlike my own)…and as a husband i can empathize with not liking to see my wife patted as such…
so pass along my apology to your very good and noble husband…and i apologize to you as well, for even putting you in such a position…
next time, i will remember the lesson, no matter how happy i am to see you…
Including the subject line, that’s EIGHT ellipses in just 101 words, which is at least six ellipses too many. But the excessive “...” usage may just be a way to distract from the even more egregious part, which is Cuomo apologizing to Ross’s husband for sexually harassing his wife before apologizing to Ross herself. The chokehold the “bros before hoes” ideology had on our culture in 2005 cannot be overstated.
The Cuomo Prime Time star has faced scrutiny for his role in his brother’s multi-allegation sexual misconduct scandal. In March, he recused himself from covering the allegations on air on grounds of being the accused’s brother — despite that not having stopped him from having Gov. Cuomo on as a frequent guest early on in the pandemic — and said that he “always cared very deeply about these issues, and profoundly so” without naming what the issues were. In May, the Washington Post reported that Cuomo had advised the governor and aides to respond to the allegations by taking a defiant stance and refusing to bend to “cancel culture.” Cuomo apologized on his show, but he was not disciplined by CNN. He apologized on air again in August after the governor’s resignation, saying that as a “brother,” he had urged Gov. Cuomo to step down “when the time came.”
When reached for comment in the Times piece, Cuomo responded, “As Shelley acknowledges, our interaction” — that would be firmly squeezing her ass at a work party — “was not sexual in nature. It happened 16 years ago in a public setting when she was a top executive at ABC. I apologized to her then, and I meant it.” It appears that in the last 20 years he has made the switch from ellipses to periods in his apology emails. Maybe people do change after all. We just hope Ross’s husband was cc’d.
