Gov. Andrew Cuomo has officially named August 3 “Tony Bennett Day.” The reason for the date is that Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on August 3, 1926, not that it is also the day New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report from the independent investigation on Cuomo’s misconduct allegations which concludes that he “did sexually harass multiple women.” Gov. Cuomo is celebrating an inimitable Italian American figure.
Tony Bennett, who is 95, has “had an immeasurable impact on our nation and the world in a career spanning eight decades,” Cuomo wrote in a press release announcing “Tony Bennett Day.” One of those impacts was recording the song “Danny Boy” in 1964 with Herbie Hancock — a song Gov. Cuomo may have loved because one woman told investigators he asked her to memorize the lyrics and sing them on command:
[She] recalled that the Governor had a copy of the lyrics with him that he handed to her as he asked her to memorize the lyrics. [She] spent much of the day trying to memorize the lyrics to the song, and the Governor occasionally “would pop out” of the side door to his office that opened to [her] cubicle and ask her to start singing the song. That same day, [she] sent a text message to a friend detailing the interaction. She wrote, “was with Gov when you texted… He’s making me learn the lyrics to Danny Boy. And keeps coming out to quiz me and I’ve failed every time.”
This wasn’t related to Tony Bennett Day though, because Cuomo denied ever asking the woman to sing “Danny Boy.” He said he never sang to her either, especially not The Contours’ song “Do You Love Me?,” even though a recorded phone call from 2019 “begins with the Governor singing the chorus to that song several times” to this woman.
According to Cuomo, Tony Bennett’s “reach and influence as an artist, performer, and humanitarian has been truly global.” But Bennett’s artistic production has been limited in at least one way. He cannot birth children and will never be a single mother, unlike two women who worked for Cuomo whom he allegedly called “Mingle Mamas:”
On another occasion..the Governor asked [one woman] whether she planned to “mingle” with men on a planned trip to Florida with [the other woman] and called the two women “mingle mamas” for the remainder of the day.
Cuomo admitted saying this, but claimed it was innocent — just like the cigar box Bill Clinton gave him, which he keeps in his office and shows off to everyone, not just women on his payroll. It also has nothing to do with Monica Lewinsky.
Ultimately, Tony Bennett is very old — so old his upcoming tour with Lady Gaga is called “One Last Time.” He deserves a day of his own, especially considering that the man was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2016 and yet still must tour with the world’s premiere Italian-American pop star. Bennett’s exact age is 95, far too old to get challenged to a pushup contest, a ritual Cuomo reportedly reserved for one of his employees. After all, Gov. Cuomo is sensitive to the ravages of time. When he asked two staffers to help him find a girlfriend, he asked that she be “over 22” — not too far over though, because he told another woman she was “too old for [him],” She was in her late 20s.
But like Tony Bennett, Cuomo is reasonable. When one staffer recommended he date someone “probably older than [his] daughters,” Cuomo resigned to “date someone in her late 30s or early 40s due to concerns about how dating someone younger might look to the public.”
Tony Bennett looks handsome for his 95 years, not like one of Cuomo’s aides whom he compared to “the alien from Predator.” Bennett has grown more gracefully, like the other staffer Cuomo reportedly said “‘looked good for [her] age and [for] being a mother’ (she is in her early 30s)” This is similar to Tony Bennett, except for being a mother.
