The weird gets weirder.
An obscure city agency has lifted its artistic brush to mock and meme-fy Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s nutty, cephalopod-filled 2020 poster.
The new version of Cuomo’s State of the State souvenir — tweeted from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board — asks, “New York City, how are we not the capital?” and replaces the governor’s portrait with that of Marvin, an ethics-loving meerkat.
Above a sea of potential conflicts of interests, the rainbowed “arc of the moral universe” is swapped with “the more you know,” riffing off of NBC’s famed 1980s-era public service announcements.
And that leads right to the original poster’s confounding three scales of justice: “That doesn’t even work,” it reads.
Cuomo’s poster — inspired by nineteen century political cartoons, a Leonard Cohen line and designed by the governor himself — became the most polarizing element of his 2020 State of the State speech, openly mocked and praised for its peculiar details.
COIB, the independent agency enforcing the City’s conflicts of interest law, is known for having a cheeky, hyper-referential official twitter account. It playfully extolls the virtues of good governance while also posting memes like a “bingo card” for dating city government nerds.
The agency redubbed Cuomo’s “steps to progress” island cliff with landings to prevent potential conflicts for government workers, like the annual $50 gift limit and moonlighting waivers.
It swapped Cuomo’s “Sea of Division” with a “Sea of Corruption,” which routinely make waves in Albany.
And a “Squall of Parking Violations — seemingly referencing government workers’ taste for illegal parking — now threatens the poster’s central ship navigating ethically questionable temptations.
The vessel carries the banners “COIB RULEZ.”
Matt Davies, Newsday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist, gets a shout as well with a mock quote punctuating the work of art.
“This is technically a public service,” Davies says.
