Mario Cuomo's 1984 Convention Speech

[cal04]

[annabanana]

1. Apple fell pretty far from THAT tree. . . .n/t

[msongs]

2. unlike current dems who say this stuff it's my contention that he actually believed what he said nt

[forest444]

3. Witty and brilliant, almost beyond belief.

Even that intellectual powerhouse of the GOP, Dan Quayle, had to admit Bush would have had a real problem with a "Mario scenario," as he put it.

It also goes without saying that Mr. Potatoehead was making a thinly-disguised appeal to Republican bigotry with that. It's hard to deny that Cuomo's heritage was a liability in many parts of the country, though - at least in those days. I've often wondered if history might have been different if his name had been something like Matt Connolly.

God speed, Governor Cuomo.

[Bonobo]

4. I was 18, just starting my adulthood and that had a massive influence on me.

And to this day, I will NOT abandon the principals and ideals contained within this great speech. I will NEVER succumb to the lesser of two evils trick designed to shove shit down our throats until we begin to think it is steak.

[appalachiablue]

8. Good for you, this is wonderful to hear especially in these times. He was a true liberal with a

great sense of social justice and morality. What a president he would have made, and the country would be better off, but this was not to be.

[rurallib]

5. Still quite relevant, isn't it?

[90-percent]

6. I think this is the speech that really reasonated with Frank Zappa

http://www.afka.net/articles/1988-04_Register-Pajaronian.htm

From the article;

New York Gov. Mario Cuomo is the man Zappa would like to see in the White House. "I think we need somebody with brains in that office," he said. "Mario is the only one of those guys I can see sitting across from Gorbachev."

I was at the Albany Show, the first of his 1988 World Tour, an the first time I had seen him live in perhaps four years. And he was very political on this tour, arranging for the League of Women Voters to register audience members in the lobby. I think this practice has been outlawed or curtailed, because, the last thing the POWERS THAT BE of today want is for more people to vote!

I forget the song, but during Tour 88 Frank did sing about Mario running for President, as well as blasting televangelists like Jimmy Swaggert, where Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds lyrics were replaced with "Lousiana Hooker with herpes".

-90% Jimmy

[PotatoChip]

7. Transcript...

Mario Matthew Cuomo
June 15, 1932- January 1, 2015

1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

The full transcript can be found at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariocuomo1984dnc.htm

/snip

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.


But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -- Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe -- Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

RIP Governor Coumo

[Omaha Steve]

9. K&R!