In August of last year, it was announced that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had written a book about his response to the coronavirus pandemic and how great it was. According to the book’s description, Cuomo “undertook the impossible” and “unified people to rise to the challenge and was relentless in his pursuit of scientific facts and data.” According to this laughable description, Cuomo “quelled fear while implementing an extraordinary plan for flattening the curve of infection,” even though New York had the worst record of any state. The description from the publisher also claimed “He and his team worked day and night to protect the people of New York, despite roadblocks presented by a president incapable of leadership and addicted to transactional politics.”
The Washington Post called the book “an impressive road map to dealing with a crisis as serious as any we have faced.” Entertainment Weekly called Cuomo “the hero that America never realized it needed until he was on our television screens every night” and lauded the fact that he had “taken his talents to the page.”
Finally, after months of conservative media pointing out that Cuomo had been responsible for a deadly policy forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients, and that the true number of deaths caused by the policy had been covered up, this scandal is finally starting to get the attention it deserves.
Despite the scandal, the hardcover edition of the book ranks at 20,397 on Amazon.
Since Seuss’s publisher decided they would no longer publish a handful of offending books, if you want to buy a copy of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, or The Cat’s Quizzler on Amazon, you can’t without paying hundreds of dollars via a third-party seller—though it likely won’t be long before even they won’t be able to sell them. In fact, if you have copies of any of those “canceled” books, eBay won’t even let you sell them on their platform.
Despite Cuomo’s scandals, his publisher hasn’t pulled his book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, nor have retailers stopped selling them.
Apparently, if you’re a corrupt governor whose deadly nursing home policy resulted in the deaths of thousands of nursing home patients during the pandemic, and then tried to cover it up so you could write a book about how great your leadership during the pandemic was, that’s just fine for Amazon and eBay. In fact, as recently as this week, Amazon had the book labeled as an “Editor’s Pick.”
In case anyone is wondering, Andrew Cuomo’s book is still listed as “Editor’s pick” by @amazon. This helps Cuomo sell more books than it would without the “Editor’s pick” designation, which results in more money paid to Cuomo from his book deal. pic.twitter.com/sqZVM4PXhi
— Tim Cameron (@TimCameron) March 2, 2021
That label appears to no longer be there… thankfully. But how is it possible that beloved books many decades old are suddenly not appropriate to sell or buy on Amazon or eBay, but Cuomo’s fraudulent book touting his pandemic leadership remains available to consumers? Isn’t causing the deaths of thousands of elderly New York residents more offensive than outmoded depictions of certain groups?
Publishing industry insiders tell PJMedia that Cuomo’s book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, has sold just under 46,000 print copies since it was published in October—a paltry number given the incredible amount of publicity Cuomo received, though it did make the New York Times Best Sellers list in its first week.
It seems unfathomable that consumers are not deemed capable of deciding whether to purchase classic Dr. Seuss books, but none of Cuomo’s scandals has merited his book being pulled from any platform.
Rest assured, I am not advocating that it should be. Anyone who purchased Cuomo’s book has to live with the fact they bought a book of lies written by the governor with the worst record against COVID in the country, who is also facing multiple accusations of sexual harassment. Those still buying Cuomo’s book (and it appears there still are) have every right to do so, just as those who reject the notion that Dr. Seuss’s books are racist are well within their rights to buy copies of his books.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter, Gab, Facebook, MeWe, Heroes, Rumble, and CloutHub.
