“I do hug and kiss people casually,” pleaded Gov. Andrew Cuomo in August 2021 amid allegations of sexual harassment. “I have done it all my life.”

Better known around Albany as the Kissing Bandit, the former luv gov curiously pinned his amorous behavior on his Italian family’s heritage. “I do kiss people on the forehead,” he went on. “I do kiss people on the cheek. I do kiss people on the hand. I do embrace people. I do hug people. [You better stop here, Andrew.] Men and women. I do on occasion say ‘ciao bella.’ On occasion, I do slip and say ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ or ‘honey.’”

Poor Andrew. If we only understood Italians better. Capisce?

But many fellow paisanos were not buying this big load of stronzate. 

“We’re very affectionate people,” conceded James Bari, co-owner of the Benito One restaurant in New York’s Little Italy section. “When we do kiss, we kiss family, we kiss good friends. The only difference is I don’t stick my hand up anybody’s blouse.” Referring to an allegation from Cuomo aide Brittany Commisso, Bari observed, “We’re not that affectionate to stick my hand up a girl’s blouse.”

Precisamente, Mr. Bari.

I strongly object to Andrew Cuomo yet again finding a way to disgrace Italian Americans, which he does quite easily, whether dispatching COVID patients to nursing homes, lighting up New York buildings to celebrate abortion, or feeling up a female staffer. I grew up in a thoroughly Italian environment on my mother’s side. Did we kiss a lot? Oh, yes. My grandmother and aunts would grab us by the face and plant wet smackers directly on our lips the instant they saw us, sometimes with spaghetti sauce on their chins (I’m not exaggerating). The first time they met my wife (then girlfriend), she received several such greetings: “Oh, Paulie, is this your girlfriend? Come here, sweetie!” Boom, right on the smacker. It was quite the culture shock to her.

My brother and cousins and I often ran from the sloppy kisses, though Andrew Cuomo seems to do just the opposite. And in his case, he’s not running toward his aunt Della but angling toward whatever attractive lady in a tight dress strikes his libido. As for my family, even with all the kissing conditioning, none of it instilled in my brother and I a perverse Cuomo-esque attitude that today has us pinching secretaries or forcing smooches on unsuspecting female colleagues. Please, Andrew. Enough. Basta!

Perhaps Andrew fancies himself a modern-day Manhattan Romeo, but that would be horribly unfair to the romantic Italian who inspired the great English bard. I actually just visited the famous spot in Verona, Italy, where an aching Romeo pledged his love to Juliet. It’s much classier than any image of Andrew in Albany. The lovely Giulietta chirping, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo” from her balcony is a much sweeter image than a scowling Andrew, reptilian-like, sauntering around in black suit eyeing up female office objects. (READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Postcard from Italy: How I Closed Pride Month)

What we have with Andrew Cuomo is an altogether different animal. Like his brother Chris, who in a previous column I called a “chooch” (a derivation of the Italian ciuccio, which means “jackass” but more directly translates into “baby-pacifier”), the real reason for Andrew’s behavior is not ancestry but arrogance. The scowling Andrew is not overly zealous; he’s entirely obnoxious. So is his brother, Chris. So was his insufferable father. One gets to thinking that if there were a Cuomo girl in the household, mamma mia!, what would she be like?

Well, thanks to the only article of value I’ve read in the New York Times in about three decades, we have an answer. And like Andrew, it isn’t pretty.

According to a disturbing Times piece titled, “The Secret Hand Behind the Women Who Stood by Cuomo? His Sister,” Ms. Madeline Cuomo, age 59, six years younger than Andrew, spent nearly two years conspiring with her brother’s stooges to smear his accusers. The Times piece opened: 

The menacing posts began cropping up on Twitter last September just hours after a former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York sued him over sexual harassment claims.

The tweets attacked the aide, Charlotte Bennett, in starkly personal terms. “Your life will be dissected like a frog in a HS science class,” read one of the most threatening, which also featured a photo of Ms. Bennett dancing at a bar in lingerie.

The post was part of a thread written by Anna Vavare, a leader of a small but devoted group of mostly older women who banded together online to defend Mr. Cuomo from a cascade of sexual misconduct claims that led to his resignation in August 2021. But it turns out, her tweets had secretly been ordered up by someone even closer to the former governor’s cause: Madeline Cuomo, his sister.

The Times uncovered a cabal of catty women conspiring to smear Andrew’s accusers. “In the hours before the posts went live that morning,” noted the Times, “Ms. Cuomo exchanged dozens of text messages with Ms. Vavare and another leader of the pro-Cuomo group We Decide New York, Inc., pushing the activists to target Ms. Bennett, one of the first women to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment. She appeared to invoke her brother’s wishes.” The Times quoted one of Signora Cuomo’s texts:

“Good Morning Just spoke and he thinks a distraction could be helpful today,” Ms. Cuomo wrote in the private texts reviewed by The New York Times. She suggested posting “photos of Charlotte In her sex kitten straddle” taken from Ms. Bennett’s Instagram account, potentially alongside more “austere, professional” ones of loyal Cuomo aides.

“No respectable woman would EVER pose like that,” Ms. Cuomo added.

She went on: “Bimbo photos.” “Really despicable.” “Unsophisticated girls.”

Far from an isolated episode, the unvarnished exchange is part of a trove of more than 4,000 text messages, emails and voice memos between leaders of the group and Ms. Cuomo shared with The Times this summer. Together, they provide unusual insight into how far members of one of America’s most storied political families were willing to go to rehabilitate a fallen Democratic scion and humiliate those they believed had wronged him.

Vavare was one of the fide donne to join Andrew’s sister’s sleaze brigade against fellow liberal women whom these feminists denounced as bimbos — akin to how the Clintons’ slime battalion attacked Bill’s cruel accusers in the 1990s. Did Monica and Paula and Gennifer Flowers and Kathleen Willey not realize that the innocent Boy Clinton was suffering from “sex addiction?” The poor man — known to Hillary as the “Hot Springs Heartthrob” — was just looking for some relief.

But let’s get back to the Cuomos.

The Times added:

Ms. Cuomo was adamant her role be hidden. She repeatedly asked her interlocutors to delete messages. And when a reporter for The Times called some leaders of the group for an earlier article, Ms. Cuomo instructed the women to falsely claim they had no contact with the Cuomos.

Madeline asserts that she was focused on “protecting my family” and that her brother was not involved. She insisted, “It’s not that I’m doing anything wrong.”

Right, Madeline. Who do you think we are? Chumps? Huh?

The lengthy piece went on with examples. All of which sparks this personal literary inspiration in your humble columnist:

In my previous column on la familia Cuomo, I compared Andrew to Michael Corleone and Chris Cuomo to Sonny Corleone, even as the late Rush Limbaugh famously dubbed Chris “Fredo,” invoking the “weaker brother” of Michael. Who would the Cuomo girl best be compared to, in light of the Times’ revelation?

Well, of course, the answer is so obvious that I’m almost embarrassed to even state it. Is there any other choice, dear readers, especially given the ruthlessness of her attacks on the girls that her brother targeted? Madeline is best compared to Connie Corleone.

Recall the moment when Connie, played by the wonderful actress Talia Shire (“Adrian” of Rocky fame), stares through binoculars at the opera and watches a gasping Don Altobello die from her poisoned cannoli. That’s what Don Altobello got for working against her brother!

Now for the record, dear reader, I am not accusing Signora Madeline of making bad cannoli! Nonetheless, la donna Cuomo appears to be the handmaiden to the stronger brother’s dirty work.

That said, I do feel a bit for Madeline. In one of her emails, she conceded of the interminably angry Andrew: “He also never admits vulnerability or expresses gratitude—or at least very rarely do you see that side of Andrew.” 

Indeed. No thank you from Andrew. Not even a peck on the cheek for the little sister from Albany’s intrepid Kissing Bandit. Niente!

Instead, the stronger brother lets the weaker sister take the hit. Classic Andrew Cuomo. Would we expect any better? What a chooch.