Originally published at: American media always knew Rudy Giuliani was a corrupt, racist creep. They loved him and wanted you to love him too. - Boing Boing
…
8 Likes
“Barrett’s account is complemented b Newfield’s analysis in The Full Rudy , which traced Giuliani’s racism to his bitterness at his 1989 loss in the mayoral race to David Dinkins, New York’s first Black mayor. Newfield reports that in a 1992 conversation, Giuliani said, “They stole that election from me. They stole votes in the black parts of Brooklyn, and in Washington Heights. Illegal Dominican immigrants were allowed to vote in Washington Heights.” This type of unfounded conspiracy theory about stolen elections, of course, is the very same thinking that led to Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race.”
… Oh wow.
32 Likes
He was always crooked and racist. I’m not sure he was always this cartoonishly inept.
24 Likes
I lived in NYC before 9/11. I remember when Giuliani moved the terrorism response center to the World Trade Center. Even at the time, so many New Yorkers knew that was a bad idea. It was the one NY building that had already been attacked and almost brought down before.
I can understand intellectually how things happen, but I don’t think I’ll ever emotionally get how someone could be in a place where they would look at Giuliani and see “competent trustworthy executive”.
20 Likes
I kind of agree. I do recall people trying to point out his racism in the early aughts. But while he may have seemed like a shady racist asshole authoritarian soaking up the limelight for power and profit, he didn’t really come across like a DC villain in some gritty intensely color-graded exploration of assholism and self-destruction the way he does now.
I think this is what happens when you feed them after midnight or something.
22 Likes
What sort of person is at the head of leadership of any division of the media in the capitalist world? This is largely why assertions of a ‘liberal media bias’ is rightfully viewed with sad disdain. It’s actually amazing that some specific corners of the media remain mostly progressive. So yes, media efforts to ‘reform’ entitled rich white scummy guys will continue as long as that tends to reflect large media leadership. And/or it takes a whole lot of musk-like behavior before musk-like behavior is consistently reported.
12 Likes
those suggesting that something went wrong only recently
Most generously, someone could say that things went truly wrong with him (in going down to cray-cray town) after he was denied a then-prohibited third term as NYC mayor; however, two decades is well outside the scope of “recently”. The truth, as Jeet Heer says, is that his vindictive bitterness at not being venerated and authoritarian tendencies go back a lot longer than that.
journalists who might have found him incorrigible but generally treated him as a necessity to control an out-of-control city
Especially journalists from the Murdoch press, but more centrist ones like those from the NYT city desk too. I’ve read later analyses that show convincingly that Dinkins laid the groundwork for quality-of-life improvements in the city Rudy hogged the credit for. The combination of the same journalists’ hostility toward a Black mayor and Dinkins’ own haplessness in highlighting his accomplishments obscured that at the time.
I heard police officers who’d worked the 1993 WTC bombing saying it was a bad move. And they generally supported him.
12 Likes
You know the audio from 9/11 EMS bodycams and cab systems? A very distinctive aesthetic. Movies and docudramas fastidiously replicate it. Heroes trying hard, linked by technology. But a lot of it is just the warning beeping of misconfigued trunk-tracking radios. Anxiety vampire recharge mixtape material right there.
6 Likes
I was living in NYC when Giuliani instigated the police riots against Mayor Dinkins, a foreshadowing of Jan 6. Columnist Jimmy Breslin said 91u1iani was “A small man in search of a balcony.” I don’t think you can put it better than that.
19 Likes
It was literally irrational and made no actual sense.
It’s like, oh, someone might break into my house and try to kill me? I know what to do: put my entire phone system, internet and anything else I can use to call for help in a box on the front door and paint a bullseye on it.
But he wanted to be a big shot and have a reason to see his name in the same big building with all the other executives.
Fool.
7 Likes
This is a new favourite phase. Well done.
8 Likes
I remember reading somewhere that the move made it more convenient for Giuliani to visit his then-mistress, but I have no idea if that’s true. It has the right ring of stupidity, venality, and corruption, though.
7 Likes
Well that certainly tracks, also the same steps taken by his scumbag understudy Bernard Kerik.
An apartment in Battery Park City that former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik secured for his personal use after Sept. 11 was originally donated for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at ground zero…During his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an extramarital affair there, according to someone who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the relationship. Ms. Regan published his best-selling autobiography in 2001.
6 Likes
New Yorkers of a certain crowd knew back then.
https://www.discogs.com/release/7918270-Clockwork-Productions-Fuck-Giuliani-Concrete-Clean
One thing that really bothered me is that he’s given credit for bringing crime rates down, when they were going down before he took office, and were going down nationwide.
11 Likes
It’s just infuriating.
I do remember another bit from my time in NY, where New York magazine had a pretty funny ad run on Metro buses:
“New York magazine… Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for.”
And of course, Rudy’s brittle feelings were hurt so he actually tried to get the Metro to stop running the ads.
…I was so glad when Hillary Clinton so out-polled him for Senator, that Giuliani dropped out rather than be defeated.
15 Likes
He’s always been a slutty, cheating sex pest. Remember when his wife literally kicked him out of the official Mayor’s residence because he was such a shitbag? None of this is new.
11 Likes
I paid zero attention to the guy before 9/11, but when the media started lionizing him after it, I still had at least a vague sense that the guy was a creep, from the few half-remembered, barely perused news stories involving him that I accidentally ran across. It’s weird how the media love to push certain kinds of narratives, facts be damned. It feels like so much of what’s wrong right now is because of that - as evidenced by how Trump, Musk, Giuliani, etc. were treated in the media, allowing them to become the threats to society they became.
12 Likes
Two considerations:
- Cognitive decline’s a real thing. It’s entirely possible that he’s just less capable of making rational decisions.
- It may also be a factor of having less capable people to take credit from. As the party’s gone off the absolute deep-end, there’s very few people to talk any sense and give him something good to claim, so he’s just having his worse impulses unchecked.
I still can’t help but remember the GOP position paper written by the up-and-comers that suggested “Hey, maybe we should pivot our policies a bit and start championing publicly popular policies that could conceivably align with a conservative political position. It’s either that or… just double down on voter suppression.” Got a public response of ‘Oh, hey. That actually sounds like a rational approach.’ Naturally they fired those guys and retracted it within a week 
I don’t think those guys would even be in the room these days. Gotta purge that thought-crime early.
6 Likes
I came back to Mississippi to be closer to my father ailing from cancer and lived on the Gulf Coast when 9/11 happened. I had very little awareness of who Rudy was until he seemed to be the one voice of reason on the news that day. If we only knew.,
Being a life-long Democrat in the South has always been an experience, but even in my LA days I was surprised by how many older racist Reagan Republicans there seemed to be out there too.
I wish I had a video of the most surreal thing I ever saw which was Rudy coming to Pascagoula, MS to campaign for tHalley Barbour, 2003 or 2004.
Barbour threw this big rally were they gave away free food and I only needed to put on an old ball cap as camouflage to waltz right in. They had really grim faced enforcers at the gates wanting people coming in to sign-in which I joshed with asking “Gotta keep them Democrats out right?” which he replied “Damned straight!” and I signed in as Mickey J Mouse and a fake address. No one ever checks these things, even in the wake of 9/11 hilariously.
I went in and got a plate of some really good barbeque and waited until Rudy went on stage and he obviously wasn’t prepared for what he’d gotten himself into. There was country music blaring over the PA, all that ‘proud to be an American’ kinda crap and the impromptu outdoor stage was all these Confederate battle flags flapping in the wind coming in off the Gulf looking a lot like a NAZI rally frankly. He did that repetitive speech that he always did for years, peppering 9/11 into as many sentences as he could.
I’d pretended to be dumb making conversation with random strangers in the crowd and consensus seemed to be that many thought Giuliani was a Jewish name, but it was okay too if he was Jew for Trump. I wonder how much of the country’s MAGA denizens are still that confused about Rudy?
The rally was full of those sorts who would evolve into the Tea Party and later MAGA know-nothing, FOX watching sorts.
Googling I can’t find any pictures from that night. I wish I had a camera with me and kick myself for not taking one. It was an early prototype for what Trump rally’s have become.
Facts don’t matter to the initiated…
8 Likes
7 Likes
