ROGER KIMBALL: Cuomo’s COVID Carnage.

[T]he governor’s approval ratings continue to soar. How is this possible? As Stephen L. Miller noted in these pages a few days back, ‘there is something deeply unsettling about the way Cuomo’s handling of the epidemic has been lionized by the national media, and treated as a reality show by his brother’s network; especially when it’s viewed in tandem with attempts to delegitimize governors in other states who have competently faced down similar challenges.’

Miller hints that the media sycophancy, and, hence, the high poll ratings are in anticipation of a last-minute Cuomo run for the presidency. Perhaps that is so. It would be no surprise if the Democrats, nervous about being stuck with an increasingly senile apparatchik who was handsy to boot, suddenly decided to cashier Joe and put their money behind a popular governor with nationwide name recognition. We’ll see as the summer progresses. There is also H.L. Mencken’s observation that ‘nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people’ to contend with. Moreover, even if the governor does not have nipple piercings, influential people thought he might. Celebrity operates by its own devices, independent of such pedestrian considerations as the truth.

Flashback to one of Glenn’s posts from 2011: UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee. The professor is Tim Groseclose, author of Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.