Long before he became governor of New York, Mario Cuomo played minor league baseball in Bridgeport. He took his fair share of hard knocks in baseball and politics. Sam Roberts of The New York Times writes about Cuomo’s resistance to watching The Godfather because, he said, it stereotyped Italian Americans. The other day, prior to a film festival discussion at Fordham Law School, Cuomo watched the film classic. From Roberts:
… (Cuomo) added, though, that Italians and blacks were typically singled out for abuse in American movies and that those stereotypes had spilled over into politics. When he was first running for office, he recalled, “only 16 percent said they knew me. And 14 percent said they wouldn’t vote for me because of my relationship to bad criminals,” said Mr. Cuomo, who was governor from 1983 through 1994.
“When I didn’t run for president,” Mr. Cuomo later recalled, “there were two reasons people gave in their dark speculations: I must be in organized crime or have colon cancer. Nobody was saying I had a 28-year-old blonde girlfriend.”
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People talk about Bill Clinton and his ability to talk about issues. Well first there was Mario Cuomo. Mario said no and open the field to Bill.
*** Apparently an offer Cuomo could not refuse was made beforehand, no? ***