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Cowardly Cuomo’s Capitulations & Closed by Patrick McAuliffeConferences
Cowardly Cuomo’s Capitulations By Patrick McAuliffe & Closed Conferences
Despite my own southern European heritage and the continuation of the Gagliano dynasty (congrats on being elected EIC for next year, Matt), Binghamton Review is not a safe space for Italian people. More specifically, the Review is not a safe space for one Italian man. My animosity for Governor Andrew Cuomo is old news, but the news on Big Fredo seems to change every day. He continues to be hostile to the press in new and impressive, albeit cowardly, ways; he likes to invent pissing contests with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio; he stands his ground and denies any wrongdoing in the THREE separate investigations into his administration and conduct. What is simultaneously disgusting and relieving is that, as the walls close around him and his executive powers are subject to ever-growing oversight, Cuomo is lifting many of New York’s COVID restrictions, such as on the capacity of buildings and nighttime curfews. A broken, gaudy Rolex is right twice a day, and even though the Italian Stallion is finally coming around to matching the mandate policies of other, much freer states, his self-centered reasons for doing so are all too apparent.
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I’ll begin with a story, a tale of euphoric excitement that ultimately ended in tragic disappointment. On April 27th, at 12:09pm, the Governor’s office put out a press release, stating that he would be giving a speech at the Binghamton University Foundation on Gannett Street in Johnson City. The problem with this press release is that it listed the speech as happening an hour from when it was released (1:30pm), and over two hours from where the Governor had traditionally been giving his press briefings in Albany. The event was closed to the press, consistent with his weeks-long policy for previous press conferences after questions about his sexual harassment allegations have gained steam. I was Doordashing at the time, and upon seeing the press release on Capitol reporter Zach Williams’ Twitter, I was elated. I had no intention to cause trouble or heckle the Governor, but I suppose I wanted two things: to see whether Big Fredo would allow a lowly citizen of his own state to attend his speech, despite forbidding members of the press; and to see whether his apparent charisma carried over in person, instead of through my small phone-sized window into his near-daily proclamations. Nervous and excited, I parked my car at the park next to the Johnson City Walmart and approached the building.
Right away, I clocked four police SUVs, two of which were UPD cars. The parking lot was almost entirely blocked by cones, which supported a “DO NOT ENTER” sign. I crossed the street and walked around the parking lot side of the building for a bit, trying to find a public entrance (the normal BU Foundation front doors read “Entrance for Employees Only”). A woman in full desert camo walked into the building as I approached, and she ended up standing behind Cuomo during his speech. After inspecting the building to no avail (and seeing another State Trooper car further in the lot), I went to leave the parking lot and asked a UPD cop stationed in his car at the entrance if the Governor’s speech was open to the public. He was unsure but hypothesized that, since “they” (meaning UPD) were all there, it probably was a closed event. I thanked him and, as I left, a black Cadillac SUV driven by a man in a suit pulled in front of the cones. Neither the cop nor the SUV driver talked to me further, and I left in my own car with the same feelings one will often feel after leaving the Johnson City Walmart: disappointment, and sadness for the experience that one just had.
To be fair, I didn’t identify myself as a member of the student press corps at BU, despite my lack of identification that would back that up. It didn’t appear to be a press conference-style event, however, judging from what the local news stations live-streamed at 1:30pm. Cuomo announced that all state-run vaccination sites would now permit walk-in vaccinations for everyone ages 16 and up, and tried to reason with (while, admittedly, strawmanning) those that are vaccine-hesitant. The speech was just another opportunity for Big Fredo to project his strength, with military personnel and people in scrubs standing behind him, and lay into the help that the SUNY system provides the state in its continuing vaccination effort. He didn’t totally fool the Albany media, however, as Bernadette Hogan from the New York Post was able to make it down to Binghamton in time to ask for Cuomo’s comments on his current scandal-ridden administration after the speech.
According to the Washington Post, this is not the first time this has happened recently, nor is it something totally unexpected for the Albany-based press corps. Cuomo hasn’t been taking questions from the media in recent weeks, as he probably grew tired of the badgering about his sexual
harassment allegations and the nursing home death scandal. He drives out to Syracuse, Binghamton, and Buffalo for publicity events without giving members of the Albany press sufficient time to get to these events, usually about an hour and a half notice for trips taking several hours of driving. How Hogan was able to make it down to Binghamton to question the governor is also explained in the WP: while Cuomo’s location may not be revealed to reporters in Albany until it’s too late, he will usually tell local TV stations of
his plans to travel so that they can be the ones reporting on and live-streaming his events. The local stations then reach out to reporters that they have a relationship with, allowing them the foresight that Big Fredo tries to avoid.
Cuomo’s contentious relationship with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also become a cornerstone of his recent meteoric fall. Cuomo and de Blasio have been at each other’s throats for much of the pandemic, as the governor ordered top-down restrictions on NYC dining capacities and consistently tried to get credit for COVID precautions. According to the New York Times, Cuomo set up a separate publicity event from de Blasio to welcome the military hospital ship the U.S.N.S Comfort back to the city, and aggressively berated the regional FEMA administrator, Thomas Von Essen, who had acted on de Blasio’s orders to ship medical supplies, such as ambulances, throughout the region; Cuomo believed the supplies needed to be shipped throughout the state. According to the New York Post, de Blasio was furious that Cuomo moved up the date of a full reopening of New York City from July 1st to May 19th, saying that the earlier reopening will not provide ample time to watch trends in COVID transmission and take appropriate action.
Besides sticking it to de Blasio and taking credit for himself, as a narcissist is wont to do, Big Fredo most likely expedited NYC’s reopening because his house is crumbling around him. He has three separate investigations pending with NYS Attorney General Letitia James: his coverup of the true death toll in NY nursing homes; the more than ten accusations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct that began in December 2020 with Lindsay Boylan; and misuse of campaign funds to promote his COVID leadership book (which was published at a time when New York was only second to New Jersey for the highest death rate in the country). Naturally, like any good politician, Cuomo has put his head down and charged right through the public outrage and calls for resignation: he blames the miscounting of nursing home deaths on the “political Department of Justice” under President Trump, according to Fox News; he denies any wrongdoing or inappropriate touching in the workplace; and refuses to comment on the financial aspects of his book deal until his tax returns are released. This is a bad guy, right? His knee-jerk reaction is to shift blame away from himself, and only takes responsibility when something good happens, even if it’s someone else doing it. I’m not crazy?
The New York Times put out a stunning character study of Big Fredo called “The Rise and Fall of Andrew Cuomo”, updated on April 13th, 2021. I encourage every voting-age person in New York to take a look at it for themselves, because it details extensively just how many people in New York politics, including fellow Democrats, have such a disdain for the governor. Even his alleged threatening of NYS Assemblyman Ron Kim was so in line with something that he might do that his office’s denial of the bullying phone call was, for the most part, publicly ignored.
None of this even gets into how quickly Cuomo is reopening New York. His stranglehold on curfews and “food with drinks” rule at bars and restaurants is now suddenly gone. New York City, the site of a year-plus-long draconian lockdown and a place of so much COVID death, is suddenly losing all of its restrictions. Cuomo’s emergency executive powers were set to expire on April 30th, but a bill passed the NYS Assembly on March 5th that prevented him from passing any new executive orders, only permitting him to amend previous orders indefinitely with oversight from the state legislature. April was a rough month for Big Fredo; one can surmise that the full state reopening is a last-ditch effort to salvage any sizable chunk of public support before his gubernatorial term ends in 2022. Who knows whether he’ll run for governor again and try to beat his father’s three consecutive term record? All he seems to have in life is his governorship, but do New Yorkers really want this cowardly narcissist lording over us for any longer than necessary? I would hope, by now, the answer is a resounding “fuggedaboutit”.
How To Speedrun Life
By Matt Gagliano
This article is about how to speedrun life...and time! Hell yeah, that’s a new personal best: 3 seconds on my “writing an introduction for a Binghamton Review article” speedrun. As you can probably tell, I’ve been getting into speedruns lately. While I’m not good enough to actually speedrun any games myself, I still find it very entertaining to watch others effortlessly fly through a game in ways that don’t even seem possible. My original idea for this article was met with some opposition from the Editor-in-Chief; mayhaps it will finally see the light of day next year, when there’s a new Editor-in-Chief, who I have a strong feeling will support said idea. Anyway, in an attempt to come up with an alternative topic for me to write about, he mentioned something about speedruns, and much like when Newton got hit in the head with the apple, it hit me. Not an apple, that would be weird. Especially because I was inside when it happened. Like, where would the apple even come from? Is there some delinquent running around just chucking apples at people for no reason? What does this apple chucker stand to gain from this? Is he trying to be like Cupid, but instead of shooting arrows to make people fall in love, he throws apples at people to give them sudden bursts of inspiration? I suppose it doesn’t really matter; what does matter is that it was this new idea that hit me, not an apple. I should write a tutorial on how to speedrun the game that all of us are forced to play: life.
First things first, no, I’m not talking about the board game. Why the hell would I be talking about the board game? It’s literally not even possible to speedrun a board game; all your movement relies on the luck of a dice roll. No, I’m talking about speedrunning your very existence; from the moment you emerge from the womb to the moment you take your last breath. Now, in order to give you valid advice on how to speedrun life, we have to first establish the type of speedrun we plan to do. Some of the most common speedruns are the any-percent speedrun (typically written as “any%”) and the 100% speedrun. While there are a lot of other types of speedruns (some of my favorites being the “get laid%” in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and “nipple%” in Super Mario Odyssey), the any% and 100% runs are what people usually think of when they think of speedruns, so those are the runs that I’m going to discuss today. Also, we technically all hold the record for the nipple% speedrun of life, seeing as we were all born without a shirt. Well, at least I hope we were all born without a shirt. I’m looking at you, Baby Shirt Larry.
In an any% speedrun, the run is complete once you reach the end of the game. Typically there are no requirements as to how you get there, as long as you make it to the end. If you’re currently reading this, then I’m sorry, you’ve already failed the any% speedrun of life. Since the any% run only requires that you finish the game, the fact that you didn’t die immediately after being born means you’ve already lost. The current world record for the life any% run is .08 seconds. This was achieved by exploiting a famous glitch known as the “pussy clip”. If you press down and jump at the exact frame in which you emerge from the womb, you can actually clip through your mother and, with another frame perfect input, land at just the right angle to break your neck, killing you instantly. This clip can only be pulled off by some of the most talented life players, so don’t feel ashamed that you couldn’t do it first try. After all, if you really want your name in the life speedrunning hall of fame, there’s always the 100% run. As you can probably guess from the name, a 100% speedrun is complete only after you beat 100% of the game. This usually involves beating every level, completing all objectives, and pretty much just doing everything there is to do in a game. So, how does this apply to life? Well, if a 100% speedrun is completed once you finish all the objectives, then a 100% speedrun of life should be completed once you achieve everything you hope to achieve in life. For some, this involves getting a job, getting married, having kids, and other generic, boring, SLOW garbage like that. Only real, competitive life speedrunners know, if you want to shave precious seconds off of your life 100% run, you need to set the bar real low, and be ready to die as soon as you’ve hit it. The bar, I mean, not an apple. If you really want to optimize your run, you could have your only goal in life be to die, then utilize the pussy clip to get the world record for both the any% and 100% speedruns at the same time.
I think it’s about time to wrap this up; I’m already way off pace for the Binghamton Review article speedrun. While it may be fun to think about how speedrunning can be applied to things other than video games, it’s important to remember that life is not a race. There is no leaderboard for accomplishing certain things before everyone else. It may be really cool to see people beat games insanely fast, but ultimately it’s better to take your time and enjoy the game; you’ll have a lot more fun playing the game for 30 total hours than speedrunning it in 3. The same applies for life. Rather than counting the seconds, you should try and find a way to make every second count. Haha, just kidding, that’s what a SLOW LOSER would say! I’m going to invent time travel just so I can go back to before I was born and be the first person to complete a life speedrun with negative time! Smell you later, you turtle-adjacent idiots!
By Marc Anthony
For better or worse, the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, has approved or banned things “for people’s health”. A few of the things the FDA has banned include Haggis, flavored e-cigarettes, unpasteurized cheese, various colorant chemicals, oil of saffron, and tonka extract, citing their potential for harmful effects to the body as cause for their bans. However, I’m not writing an article to argue about how wonderful Haggis is and how we should all be eating it (I personally am not a fan of animal innards, but you do you). This article is about how the FDA has moved to ban the sale and production of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars to “significantly reduce disease and death.” While yes, it’s likely that this move will reduce the amount of smokers who smoke these products, it’s also incredibly likely that this will increase a fresh hell of racial injustice and over-policing, further driving a deeper wedge between communities of color and the government at a time when tensions are already high due to excessive force used by cops for arbitrary reasons.
Menthol is the last available cigarette flavor, after all others were banned in 2009. Flavors like cherry, chocolate, and various others were taken off the market because they appealed to minors and young adults, since the flavoring tends to mellow out the strong and harsh taste of pure tobacco. In 2014, the FDA polled a group of 12-17 year olds and 18-25 year olds, and found that 80 percent and 75 percent respectively reported that the first tobacco product that they tried was flavored. In another poll, the FDA noted that 85% of black smokers prefer menthol products, compared to 30% of white and 35% of Hispanic smokers. This is understandable, since for many years Big Tobacco aggressively marketed menthol cigarettes to the black community.
In the United States, around 39% of all cigarette smokers use menthol. Similar to flavored cigarettes, the appeal is that the cooling mint flavor masks the abrasive taste and allows for deeper inhalation since the pain receptors in the mouth and throat are blocked by the cooling effect. According to a 2018 study by the University of North Carolina, despite this sensory illusion, only seven percent of people who smoke menthol cigarettes actually believe that their brand is better for them than regular unflavored cigarettes. The vast majority know that their cigarettes are just as toxic as any other kind; it comes down to a matter of preference, especially in communities of color. to barge in, shut it down, confiscate the offending minty plant, and arrest people. As seen in many past situations (or basically anything involving cops, really), this is going to be enforced with excessive brutality. Another negative inevitability is that police will crack down on the sale of loose cigarettes, under the guise of “safety” to make sure that menthols don’t reach the lips of any innocent person. We’ve seen this already happen in the case of Eric Garner, who in 2014 was murdered by police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes without a tax stamp. Since the black community reports that they use menthols more than any other group, this really seems like just another excuse that police can use to target them. Police are going to use the ban as an excuse to burst into black and minority-owned stores to make sure nobody is selling menthols and stop black people on the street to make sure they aren’t smoking any minty bois, at a much higher rate than they will for white people and white-owned businesses.
Menthol cigarettes were banned in Canada nationwide in 2018, so there is already evidence as to what will happen if, and when, the ban goes into effect in the United States. A study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that a menthol ban didn’t have a great impact, because many people just switched to non-menthol, or purchased their menthols from Native Canadian reserves, because they were exempt from the ban. In short, the ban on menthol didn’t really do much; people still found a way to get what they wanted to get. I imagine the same sort of situation will occur in the United States. The ban will be for naught, at the expense of the black community. If the FDA truly wanted to help people to be healthier, they would speak to the communities plagued by the issue and work with them to find a solution instead of a catch-all ban that has the strong potential to cause more harm than good.
The FDA has come out with a statement saying that the ban will only directly impact manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, importers, and retailers; they will “work to make sure that any unlawful tobacco products do not make it onto the market.” That’s all well and good, but you know which country didn’t ban menthol cigarettes? Mexico. The demand will still be there after they’re banned, and people will either travel to Mexico if they live close by, or participate in the inevitable black market right here at home. In a similar way, this has already been proven true: New York banned the sale of flavored e-liquids for vapes, and people either go to Pennsylvania to buy them or they have them imported (here’s looking at you, gas stations selling mint Juul pods in French). Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and people will always find a way to get what they want: in this case it’s that sweet, sweet chilly taste of minty death sticks.
Regardless of the ban, there’s still going to be a demand for this type of cigarette. Maybe a little corner store imports them and keeps selling them to cater to their customer base; what are the cops going to do? They’re going
