Via Instapundit, I’m getting the impression that Andrew Cuomo is apparently very good at turning small PR problems into bigger PR problems. Short version: guy in the state government (Mike Fayette) talks to the press (the Adirondack Daily Enterprise) when he apparently wasn’t supposed to. Fayette gets in trouble for it. Rather than get fired, he retires. So far, so… whatever, man. Only the Daily Enterprise on Wednesday published a story on the subject of Fayette’s forced retirement. And that’s when this story gets a little eyebrow-raising:

On Thursday, livid that an engineer in the Adirondacks was being portrayed as a victim of Mr. Cuomo’s penchant for control, a top aide to the governor, Howard B. Glaser, took to the airwaves. He read aloud Mr. Fayette’s disciplinary history, describing him as a troubled employee who had previously been penalized for having an improper relationship with a subordinate, misusing his work e-mail to send sexually explicit messages and using his state-assigned vehicle for personal errands.

I should note here that the Daily Enterprise has a circulation of 5,300; the New York Times claims one of 1.59 million daily. I should also note that the Daily Enterprise had mentioned Fayette’s past disciplinary problems as well, so this was not exactly new information. So I can only conclude that Howard Glaser apparently wanted the word to go out that Governor Cuomo is an incredibly thin-skinned politician who hates it when he doesn’t have absolute control over everything said about either him and/or his administration, and that Cuomo will lash out at anybody who dares cross him on that. Whether or not it actually gets the New York Times, of all things, to write even more unfavorable media pieces about him.

So noted – but, believe me: there are so many other things that we can and will talk about on a national level when it comes to Andrew Cuomo, should we have to. Starting with the magic words ‘adultery,’ ‘live-in girlfriend,’ and ‘Roman Catholic Church’…