One feels no sympathy for Andrew Cuomo, but he's being hounded by the Left for awkward flirting. Sure, stealing a kiss can be construed as "crossing the line," but how many first kisses have been stolen over the centuries, not just by the rich and powerful, but by ordinary joes?

It might even be that most first kisses throughout history were stolen, even celebrated. Certainly a public record has been built up that is nothing short of iconic. There’s that famous VJ Day photo of the sailor on Times Square stealing a kiss from a nurse. We’ve seen athletes steal kisses from their female interviewers, in front of God and everybody, on TV. So far as I’m aware, none of the affronted interviewers have tried to deep-six the offender.

Not yet, anyway. Must not be enough money in it. Yet.

Or maybe big-time pro athletes kiss better than politicians? The explanation for that probably lies in the respective backgrounds. Politicians were politicians even in high school when they were class president and such. Meanwhile, athletes were honing their skills on the football field and behind the bleachers.

This isn’t a defense of kiss-stealing, especially if it’s forceful and against a clearly resisting kissee. It’s a call for some common sense. The line in relations between the sexes has always been and always will be in question, partly because it’s different for each woman and partly because women so commonly play hard to get and just need a little push. As Camille Paglia has noted, so much of the seduction ritual is about overcoming (female) resistance. Of course it’s about sex; between men and women nearly everything is about sex, as Paglia has thoroughly documented and argued over the decades.

Some of the lines don’t require emphasizing for anybody to know they’re not to be crossed. Shoving your hand under a woman’s dress -- that is sexual harassment. It’s also sexual assault. Who do we know who’s been accused of that? We can even talk about a president who joked about such a thing and then another president who actually did it.

Andrew Cuomo is a first-class creep. The mob going after him is creepier. 

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