Hearing the jeremiads from the Albany Democrats’ caucus rooms and Twitter feeds, Claude Rains is smiling somewhere. The great actor is best known for his performance as Casablanca’s Vichy authority, the slick Captain Louis Renault — and for one particularly enduring scene. Ordered by Major Strasser to shut down Rick’s Café, he quickly improvises the excuse: He is shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is happening here . . . Clear the premises (and enter the croupier, with the Captain’s nightly winnings).
Such studio-set hypocrisy and contrived outrage would be very much at home in New York’s capital, or at least over the Zoom meetings connecting those Democratic legislators who, nominally, rule the Empire State, of late a wholly owned subsidiary of their very progressive party.
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