The Sad Irony of Andrew Cuomo’s ‘Love Gov’ Persona

On Etsy and similar sites, you can purchase a mug bearing the smiling face of Andrew Cuomo and the coinage that summarized his fandom: Cuomosexual. You can buy a prayer candle featuring the New York governor in a beatific pose. Or a throw pillow. Or one of many T-shirts, some bearing images of him, one featuring a list:

☐ Single.
☐ Taken.
☑️  Mentally Dating Andrew Cuomo.

The objects read as relics of a time both recent and removed. They also read as mistaken. Last week, the New York giving more shape and evidence to the accusations that several current and former government employees had made against Cuomo: of harassment, of unwanted touches and kisses, of a culture of intimidation that implicated him and many of the people in his orbit. In response to the report, Melissa DeRosa, the senior aide who insulate Cuomo from earlier accountability—in part by attacking the credibility of one of his accusers—resigned. And now, though he continues to , Cuomo, too, is . The Cuomo administration is ending. Yet the merch remains, on an internet that never forgets, a chastening reminder of how easily politicians can find refuge in empty iconography.