...Which graphic to use. Do I Go With The LOLFinished?
...Or Perhaps The “Die Hard” Plunge From Nakitomi Tower?
...Or Maybe, The “You Just Got Knocked The Fuck Out” Jammie...
...To commemorate the ignominious, ass-dragging end to the 2008 Presidential aspirations of one Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Did I mention that a hot, teutonic blonde's copped a seat next to me? Just outta the blue. Platinum hair. Thick Dietrich-cum Garbo accent.
What's your name baby?
“Schadenfreude, dahlink. Schadenfreude”.
She and I are gonna get to know each other a little bit tonight. Yes, Indeedy.
Kick off our shoes, sip a fine Riesling, and watch some TV. Oh. Thenewsison:
Rudy Giuliani, finishing a disappointing third in the state he counted on winning to jump-start his presidential bid, strongly hinted tonight in Florida that he will withdraw from the Republican race.
“Elections are about fighting for a cause larger than ourselves,” he told supporters in Orlando. “Win or lose, our work is not done.”
“I'm proud we stayed positive,” he said. "You don't always win, but you can do it right."
Giuliani called his rivals “honorable people, honorable men.”
The former New York mayor pursued an unconventional strategy where he skipped the early voting states, including Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
“S-s-s-s-slurrrrrp!” Oh. Pardon me. It's the wine. Sippin' it a little fast tonight.
So, what to say?
This was pre-ordained. In the first week of this place's existence—on July 5th—The post was titled “Take A Number, Y'all...All 54,337 Of You”, and it dealt with the number of people laying in wait to wreck Rudy's Christmas-ornament fragile Presidential chances.
The bottom line? In spite of Giuliani's pundit-class angels--some of them quite powerful, like the Drudge-pimped pushers of anti-Hillary books, or yes, the "na-na" obsessed, psycho-sexually damaged ex-Altar Boys in the pundit class who love him so, (Wipe yer mouth, Tweety--you've got something on it. You too, L'il Russ.) there is a fucking legion of folks out there who would like nothing better than to forcibly ass-pound this campaign--dry and angrily. And then turn and point at it lying there ruined, while laughing "Yeah... I did that." It's nasty. But true.
We're looking, a year-and-a-half-out, at a campaign that could well die the classic "death of a thousand cuts"
Problem, though.
There's about fifty-thousand pissed-off, potential perps with knives...all waiting for a turn.
Ow.
Took a lot fewer than that. But God, it was still plenty, It died from cuts inflicted by axe-tosses from the Firefighters, the New York media, his kids, his book-cooking, his hubris, his churlishness, his inability to diversify his campaign, his laziness, his greed and most damningly, his Hindenburg-ian ego.
It will be remembered by many as perhaps the ultimate Potemkin campaign—a cardboard and papier-maché thing hung on a wet and bowing pipe-cleaner frame. And here in NYC, we are laughing our ever-loving asses off at the utter collapse of the rickety-assed thing. All I can say is that you had to be here to understand why we New Yorkers didn't want Rudy-style government visited upon the other 49 states and of course, any sovereign nation with a funny-sounding name that pissed him off.
Take the worst elements of Captain Queeg, Nellie Oleson, Stinky from Abbott & Costello, and an STD'd scorpion, bundle it into a man and put said man in charge of a complex, challenging city and you'll get what Rudy Giuliani was really all about. Tourists and outsiders didn't get him. They didn't have to live with him. They got the cathode-ray Bing Crosby of the pipe, red alpaca sweater and the Christmas specials. We lived with the drunken Bing swinging the extension cord and windmilling signet-ringed fists as he prowled the house looking for someone to fuck up.
Time won out, though, and it managed to utterly expose him. Quite honestly, Rudy was nearly as lazy and disinterested a candidate as Fred Thompson was—both of them lazy honoraria-grabbers swearing somebody owed 'em something because they thought they were somebody . And in the end, they can now go meet at Tree's Loser Lounge and swap notes on star-fucking and prosecutorial malfeasance.
Me? I'm gonna sit here with the icy blonde tonight, and get around town a bit later in the week. I'm sure I'll see a bunch of her doppelgangers out and about with my fellow revelers in town. But for now, the mind wanders.
What's Ol' Judith gonna do now? Cialis and dough is fine, but mama wanted more. Access to power was the drug. What new doll will she start crawling after in the “Valley of Delusions”?
The Aqua Velva's gone—along with the leathery, old-man skin. And now, so too is the “tough cop”—his precious Sipowicz. It's down to McCain for Tweety to toss the lettuce, tomatoes and ranch dressing for. Ick. I just threw up in my mouth. Not a little. A lot.
And the irony isn't lost on me that Rudy's final come-down is tomorrow in California—of all places, Simi Valley. Home of the Reagan Library, and home of the springboard for the police-brutality-fueled L.A. riots. Rudy should be right at fucking home.
Full circle. Bullshit's end. And please let the door hitcha' on the way out—and may there be a patch of ice right in front of the Goddamned door.
Hey, my lady friend wants to dance! Well...okay. Pick out a nice song, fraulein. Oh my...that one's goood!
(INSTALLMENT ONE OF A TWO PART SERIES—THE NY / D.C. POWER PLAY)
It was a particularly soul-deadening day at work a couple of weeks back—one of several in a row, and I took the better part of its evening catching up on clerical and household things I'd let slide over about ten days. In so doing, I gulped a heaping cup of coffee and wound up jumpily awake until an ungodly enough hour to catch the third (Why?) showing of Chris Matthews' “Hardball” program. Within minutes of viewing, a prediction I made earlier in the week pretty much came to pass—that Matthews would try to find a way during his broadcast to spin attention away from the burgeoning Giuliani/Kerik/Regan/FOX scandal and onto his own private “Moriarty”, Hillary Clinton. The barking little devil spent three-quarters of his show fuming and spitting at his guests in an obvious snit about where the day's news cycle was headed in spite of his anti-Clinton/Democratic dervishing. But much to his evident chagrin, he couldn't avoid dealing with the latent, newsworthy ugliness that the Giuliani “Hide-the-Moolah” story was building all by itself.
He had a panel on discussing the matter—on his terms, which ended up being a sneering “Is this a one day story?” bleat (Hope! Hope!! Hope!), and a huffy “Why does this matter?” (Answer: ”Because I'd rather it didn't—it might hurt Ruuuuuuuu-deeeeeeee!”)
The respondents featured the usual suspects—Salon's Joan Walsh, The Times's Bob Herbert, and one of the GOP's latest models off the pundit assembly line—from the compact, wet-behind-the-ears, dweeb-boy coupe series, one Matthew Continetti.
CONTINETTI: ...She won‘t say which executive made this threat to her. She won‘t say what‘s on those tapes, if these tapes really exist. On the other hand, it gives you a preview of what a Giuliani presidency may be like, because all of these characters are going to come out of the New York woodwork if he‘s president and it will be the soap opera that was New York while he was mayor, except transferred onto a national stage.
MATTHEWS: You mean he‘s consorting with the wrong types.
CONTINETTI: Well, those are the types that live in New York. Only in New York.
MATTHEWS: Come on.
WALSH: I grew up in New York. I‘m not going to let you do that.
MATTHEWS: You don‘t have to hang out with Bernie Kerik and Judith Regan.
WALSH: I didn‘t hang out with Bernie Kerik growing up. There are a lot of good New Yorkers, Matt. Come on.
HERBERT: Those are the types that consorted with Rudy Giuliani.
WALSH: I‘ll give you that.
Now, it's pretty clear what Continetti was trying to do there from the think-tank/hothouse perch he sits on in his crisp, little “John-John” suit. It was a bit of the “Villager” mentality leaping forth reflexively, where the natural defense mechanism is to whomp anyone from those 400 miles up I-95 as an out-of-the-mainstream crazy . He and many of his “Born-or-Bred-in -the-Beltway” types have a bit of an aversion to those pushy, honking Noo-Yawkahs big-footing around the ol' cherry blossoms down there. But the little wingnut “Waldo” look-alike did prompt a bit of a discussion on the show as it ended, and got me to thinking about that whole idea of “the New York woodwork”—“those types that live in New York”, and just how a bunch like Rudy Giuliani, Bernie Kerik and Judith Regan managed to come to power and then congeal as a “crew”—like some mid-lifed, ersatz “St. Elmo's Fire” clique.
It's a legitimate issue to consider...because as a lifelong New Yorker, of a certain age and “experience”—thinking about the ascension of a slime-coated local like Rudy, and by extension, his equally creepy peeps, is a chance to take a hard, clear look at how we got here—with this totally compromised troika of New Yorkers dominating so much of the political stage thanks to their back room low-jinks and chicanery. They are hardly the people we locals want starring in an “I Love New York” tourism ad. Proof of that lay in Rudy's polling in his own backyard as of today against a Republican opponent living 3000 miles away. Arizona Senator John McCain's kicks his veneers back into his gullet by 15 points.
Yet, here Rudy stands. Albeit round-heeled, wading into the swamps, beaches and velour mouse-ears of Florida. A corner-backed rat who's going to hiss and scratch til the rake finally comes down on his neck there or maybe a touch beyond. By the numbers, he shouldn't be a factor. But somehow he retains his propper-uppers and patrons—spinners and shills. People shrilly claiming “He hasn't been beaten yet!” A factor somehow still. Dragging Kerik and Regan along with him and the caca-stained mattress they share. Improbably...reppin' hard for the town in every slimy, barrel-bottomed way imaginable.
“How did we get here?” How did they manage to become our ugly, national ambassadors? Are they really...New York?
In a sad way...yes.
But there's a reason for it, and to understand that reason, a little bit of history is in order.
The New York of today is in no way related to the New York of a mere thirty years ago. The city today is a shimmering hologram of a place—candy-colored, sleek and buffed—hardly the sweet/savory stew of a town it was in the 70's. That New York was an amazing place. Brusque, bold, and bawdy. Bright, bewitching, and beautiful. It pulsed, no—it throbbed where it now whooshes. A crazyquilt mix of high and low and rich and poor that now seems quaint since the post-80's re-stratification of the populace. It was NOT all good. But God help me, the good of then would be the phenomenal of now. It was the beginning of the end of the era of Noblesse Oblige—where the old-school wealthy in the city felt obligated to give back in ways that actually helped out everyone. You had The Fresh Air Fund established for inner-city kids to go to summer camps featuring grass and trees instead of glass-flecked asphalt and lampposts. Local-bred athletes like the late tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis gave local children free tennis lessons for weeks at a time in city parks every year. Picked up a nice chopping forehand from him, I did. You had a spot called “The Box” on West 48th Street—a black walled, free music space in the heart of the musical instrument district where you could walk in off the street and catch Jaco Pastorius, a Kenny Burrell or Anthony Jackson, or if you really got lucky, a Miles Davis jamming—for no charge.
It was also the Disco era—where Black folks, White folks, Latin folks and anyone else who could halfway hit the two and the four could shake their asses together at the big clubs in town—54, Xenon, The Loft and The Red Parrot to name just a few. And a lot of the rich and connected found themselves shaking ass right next to the much-less rich, but effortlessly hip at places like these. Ultimately by osmosis, hip and cool became the coin of the realm. Damn near everybody had it. My man Ray G. who sold cheap-ass shoes at the old Flagg Brothers store on Jamaica Avenue was a Goddamned star at trendy Xenon when he strolled in sporting his black Quiana shirt and seamless french-cut bells from Benhil. He danced a wicked Latin Hustle with our crew, and with the women who rolled up in the tint-windowed Fleetwoods, swaddled in furs and reeking of old and sometimes ancient money. We partied with them...and everybody hung because they were cool. Cool with who they were, to be precise—a silky debutante from West End Avenue, a Latin dude from St. Albans who sold cheap shoes 'round the way, but was savvy and sharp and quick on his feet, or with a smile and a quip...or even an underage high-school kid from Hollis who could dance a little, and whose teacher knew a bartender there and somehow got him past the velvet rope.
It was a time and a place where it was fabulous and shady and so wonderfully unpredictable that sometimes it felt like your heart would just explode with anticipation while standing still on line to get in.
All you had to do to enjoy it was to simply be yourself and let go of all the silly shit. You worked or went to school all day, and then on the nights and weekends, you released and sampled the varied earthly delights laid out before you. It was a carnal, sensual place, with a million things to light your nerves as if they were fuses, and we reveled in every little “explosion” we could set off.
Well...not all of us, exactly. You see, there were those for whom “Fun City” was anything but. The ones who couldn't find “the two and the four” if you spotted them the one and the fucking three. An entire secondary culture of folks who were simply uncomfortable in their own skins and thanks to that, didn't get those “Fun City” outlets for release. They shook their heads ruefully at you on the trains on Saturday morning—you coming home from a night out and a diner breakfast in your sweat-loosened best gear, and they themselves headed into town to exchange those five pairs of Gold Toe socks, because horrors!—they got them home and realized they were more charcoal gray than heather gray. They didn't like seeing my boy Ray G. squinting in the blazing morning sun as he made his way down spoiled Jillian's steps on West End Avenue. “Fuck! That scone thing I just had was pretty good!”, he mused as he looked back at Jillian's steps—and laughed, “Ha!”, about the tasty orange juice she squeezed from the gleaming Oster juicer in that sun-dappled kitchen so Goddamned big that it echoed.
He “Ha!”-ed again as he went down the street, past “The Uncomfortables” who glared at him as they trundled on to doctor's visits or to trains to see elderly aunts and uncles just beyond the bridges and tunnels.
“The Uncomfortables”. They didn't like all that citified mingling and class-mixing. These were the boomers born from the late forties to the late fifties who hailed from insular little “Bunker-lands” all over town and it's outskirts, but didn't dig on the frenetic, big-city fun like some of their contemporaries who hung tough in town did. No, these were the folks who absorbed every slur, every stereotype and trope mom and dad would angrily spit at the TV during those sense-offending episodes of “I-Spy!” or “The Mod Squad”. These were the kids who didn't understand Woodstock because mom and dad had firmly inculcated in them that oh-so-sensible mantra “Who wants to get grass and mud stains on your new chinos from Alexanders anyway?” Giuliani, born in '44, Kerik in '55, and Regan in '53 are of that stock—Giuliani,a socially-malaldroit, outer borough dweeb reviled even by the local kids, Kerik,a bridge-and-tunneler of sketchy upbringing who just wanted out, and lastly Regan,another bridge-and-tunneler who never “got” the city and avoided it her entire adolescent and young adult life.
All three of 'em were in their twenties and early thirties during these halcyon days (and nights) of fun and expression in NYC. Most other folks their age were sipping the bacchanal wine and supping at the vibrant smorgasbord of city life. But not this un-merry band of outsiders. They didn't get it, they couldn't get it, and thus—didn't want it.
And the “not wanting it” didn't just go for themselves...but years later it was manifested in their mass bartending of frosty, cold hater-ade—for everybody.
So, they wonked around in their early jobs, immersing themselves as they didn't seem to have a lot of friends in general, and of course, even fewer with any semblance of that easy-in-one-own's-skin “cool”. Their crowd, what there was of it—didn't club, or for that matter even lightly sample the town's other, non-debaucherous charms. They played it safe—settling down as best they could with whoever they could, because misery doesn't just love love company—it thirsts for it.
And then...a miracle happened. For them that is. The 80's happened, to be precise. There was that sudden glut of easy money for little doings as ushered in by the patron saint of skating by—Ronald Wilson Reagan. Suddenly, that downpour of dough hit folks who weren't Astors and Vanderbilts by birth, but now aspired to be via superficial trappings. It was the age of Boesky, big, padded shoulders, and Bret Easton Ellis—whose “American Psycho” was misread as a cool book about a misunderstood guy by the boys and girls its characters mirrored, instead of as the scathing indictment of the viral amorality and nouveau-riche greed gone mad from the Battery to the “barrier” at 110th and Central Park South.
Oh, it went topsy-turvy and the outcasts looked on with glee, because they knew...Goddamn, how they knew, just what was coming.
Dropping like flies were the patrician Lindsey-ites—well-meaning but oftentimes muddled in the minutiae of governance in a difficult city. CUNY, the City University System went from free to fee-ed as a “fuck them, it's about me” vibe rippled through every aspect of what once made the city a more sharing, caring place to live. And as soon as the admission-eligible citizens became majority minority—mean...was in. The once-mighty, benevolent old-money powers would age out, and their heirs—what few there were—just didn't hold the same opinion of good, ol' “Noblesse Oblige”. They simply lived off grandmama's and grandpapa's stiill-considerable money and abdicated their thrones of altruism. It created a vacuum, and into it stepped the new-money outsiders. No more giving away of libraries and railroad terminals and the like. Now it was mints on every overpriced hotel pillow as some sort of twisted “charity” from the symbols of the city's new, ascendant, ugly power-elite—“The Queen of Mean”, hotelier Leona Helmsley. And right next to her, squeezed out in the same time-frame, her squalling, fraternal twin in gleeful, ostentatious bastardry, one Donald Trump.
Oh yes...wasn't that a time. Self-centered meanness swept the country like a consumptive, gas-sprayed wildfire. Who shot that scoundrel J.R. Ewing? It was now cool to care about an unrepentant, evil creep. The new paradigm was that we didn't want him gone. America wanted to see him BACK and wanted to continue reveling in watching him do people dirty. But the truth is that the New York distillation of the new, raging “mean” was a rare and potent bottling indeed—hard to the taste, and dry to the mouth. And it's giddy, newly-monied vintners stomped out huge vats of it—while also drinking it up and staggering about, acting the fool towards all they came across— from then until now. It was merely one of the most destructive power-benders ever seen in this country.
When the angry graffitti and its matching cry went up from many folks—“Die Yuppie Scum!”, it wasn't just about the class warfare issue those it was directed at simplified it into. It was a desperate yelp against a thuggish coarsening of relations in the city. All of that “money for nothing, and the chicks for free” affected its beneficiaries badly. Where once the old high and low co-existed somewhat, the new breed with their new money and status walled themselves off in an attempt to define a new class structure—a new high and low where the two would never meet. A new New York that would harken back to a “classic” version of the city seen through a distorted lens of nostalgia.
The lust was for the neat, and perfect New York of “The Thin Man”, and Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies—of luxé and the tux. Toney digs, exclusive parties, and throwback cocktails—and of course, a good cigar. The problem was, this crowd didn't want to ever inadvertently stumble across any examples of that annoying, real, old New York.
What to do? What to do?
Say hello to “The Outsiders”.
The enforcers—the thug-wonks who toiled quietly for years behind the scenes in the city's bureaucracy and on the periphery of the cultural landscape—the city's new shapers turned to these people who as noted, viscerally hated the live-wire New York that they didn't understand, to bring the place to heel.
Hard-core prosecutors like Rudy.
Head-busting cops like Bernie.
And on the cultural front, gatekeepers like the Reagan-worshipping Regan.
But these “Outsiders” had a personal agenda of their own, too. You see, where their yuppie enablers misread Ellis's “American Psycho” into seeing its protagonist as a conflicted hero, The “Outsiders” picked up on a different book—Robert Caro's The Power Broker. That book detailed the malevolent application of bureaucratic power (over a span of 40 years!) by New York's “Master Builder” Robert Moses, and his “my way or the highway” (pun unintentional) style in dealing with the most vulnerable and powerless of the populace. The “Outsiders” misread—or perhaps more likely, selectively read the book's indictment of Moses' ways as an administrative “how-to” primer on getting things done. Moses (Robert) was the great paterfamilia figure of governmental ruthlessness, exhibiting the same sneering disdain for those he didn't and didn't want to understand.
Get along. Get out. Fuck your feelings. Fuck protocol. IT'S OUR TIME!
And payback would be a bitch. The “Outsiders” would exact revenge, hyper-criminalizing everything. “Annoying” squeegee-man were jailed, protests against mayoral policy were effectively banned at City Hall, and street-vendors may as well have been knife-chucking assassins. But most telling were those nightclubs—those discos that The “Outsiders” could never fathom and thus hated, many of those places were not surprisingly legislated right out of existence. The vehicle for the smackdown? Merely the little-enforced noise abatement laws now-perfect for smiting those loud, raucous reminders of that painful time on the outs.
Giuliani was the vanguard of the number-crunching, fine-print scanning evil wonks bent on scorched-earthing all that was, and his enforcers on this were the likely suspects—his police commissioners, Howie Safir and Berniie Kerik—respectability-aspiring, blue-collar hammers for “the man”. But what sealed The “Outsiders” new lock on power was one, last, fatal spasming of the old guard's power—the election on New York's first, and only Black mayor David Dinkins. His election over Giuliani so polarized the city, and infuriated those outer-borough Bunker-lands (Staten Island, NY's whitest borough in fact enacted secession procedures from New York proper not long after Dinkins election) into hard political action against the old guard. Dinkins would have no second term, as Giuliani sniped, bitched, needled, and flung scat from the sidelines during Dinkins' entire term—with help from his new breed patrons on the media side, and swept into power on a pounding fist and a constant, yapping bark.
We've documented here more than once what “Giuliani Time” was like for those who didn't look like him or for those who wanted a basic modicum of fairness. But what also happened was a celebration of that evil dismissiveness of compassion. Fellow bitter outsiders were absorbed into the power circle now and got “the hook-ups”, finding themselves being plugged into the sparking outlets of power by their titular leader Rudy. It was now their party, “and you could fucking cry if you wanted to”—they didn't care. Lame as they were, they gamely play-acted their own stilted versions of Whit Stillman's party-fied New York. (And that's really saying something—playing stilted versions of Whit Stillman melodramas.)
But now that they had the “house to themselves for the weekend”—who to party with?
Certainly not the old money crowd they'd recently deposed. Aside from themselves, who else was there to clink glasses with over the glorious coup d'etat?
Why, merely the city's darker, below-the-radar forces for ill-gotten gain that the old guard had barely managed to keep at arm's distance. Their fellow Outsiders. REAL outcasts.That would show the elite! Thus we wound up with curious scenarios like the police commissioner consorting with gangsters, the Mayor jetting about on casino bosses Gulfstream jets, and book-cooking to hide the squiring of his latest “Goumada”. And you then see a patient cultural player like Regan, storm to the fore thanks to her shrewd, and crazed true-believer-ish promotion of the practitioners and pundits of the new cruelty. With that, the clique was complete. Dangerous demagogues, their P.R. people, and the scandalous, head-cracking rough fringe embraced to spite the patrician past and to stoke the the heady thrill of the dangerous. The long-belated “partying” they craved was on—and having no context for it, and waiting so late in life to “celebrate”—if you will, they went too Goddamned far.
Like kids denied sugar their entire lives and then left in a candy store over a weekend, they lost their minds—Giuliani worst of all, with his odd predilection for attention-getting via kooky dress-up, the ramping up of his Queegish paranoia and temper over anything that displeased him, and of course, his vain, personal excesses. A nonsensical, roundly-panned “Bunker In The Sky” that was little more than a government-subsidized fuck-pad and a bastardly, macho exhibitionism at the expense of family and personal reputation, just to name a couple of them.
Kerik bogarted about town as Rudy's “wingman”, covering for his peccadilloes, and racking up his own share while swaggering in bullet-headed glory as a brass-knuckled thug-cum-copper. Nabbed tables at Rao's next to the silver-haired “Dons” as if he was a connected fellow “operator”—instead of tossing 'em in the clink as his job denoted. Chickies, chickies, Chickies on the side. Pulled some strings and got a city jail named after himself—a fairly hubris-filled move for a still-living cop with so many other names to choose from of “killed in the line of duty” fellow officers, but hey...to da victah goes da spoilz..
Regan, the ultimate “Outsider” didn't even live in the city's Five Boroughs. She grew up off Exit 42 on the Southern State Parkway in Long Island, went from there to Poughkeepsie's Vassar College and didn't even come back to town until the mid-eighties—after a reporting job at The National Enquirer (!) in Boca Raton. Upon her return to NYC, she bulled her way into the city's china shop of a publishing industry—eschewing all the trappings of propriety and decorum therein. She injected a froth-mouthed WWE style into what was prestige-level publishing, raging at critics and hoarsely carny-barking to promote her freak-show line-up of tomes—like Jenna Jameson's cheesey How To Make Love Like A Porn Star, The Surrender, which dealt with the sexually explicit tales of a former Balanchine dancer ('In which she relates giving anal sex to two boyfriends. It’s a tract about her tract. “I wasn’t going to mention the anal thing,” said Bentley, “but Judith got very excited about it and insisted.”), the ugly, “fictional biography” of Mickey Mantle, and of finally, the camel's back -snapping O.J. tome “If I Did It”. She was a proud, unabashed jerk with no compunction about showing off her retrograde politics while clumsily stomping about the city she acted as if she owned—just like her co-horts in creepiness Giuliani and Kerik. So no one should be surprised that this terrible troika representing government, law, and culture would somehow find themselves linked together like a set of cheap magician's rings.
Rudy's campaign Mayoral manager was Roger Ailes, who would eventually run Fox News for Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch would hire Judith Regan at Fox holding Harper Collins. Rudy hires Bernie Kerik who chased ass with him and would then literally grab ass with Judith Regan at his own little 9-11 fuck-pad.
All three of these magnificent, malevolent “Outsiders” were ascendant immediately after the fall of the Twin Towers, their little boats lifted on the sea of stupid that overwhelmed America at the time. Rudy was hefted to “Man Of The Year” status and a prohibitive presidential favorite. His buddy Kerik was pushed by Rudy as “America's Cop” and very nearly the country's Homeland Security Chief. And the fabulous nutbar Regan would begin expanding her entertainment tentacles into a mini-television production empire.
This was their peak. It would never get better than this.
But it most certainly would get worse. Bernard Kerik presently sits under indictment and eventual trial for everything but eating a man's still-beating heart. They even took his name off the city jail. Judith Regan magnificently imploded her career with racist slurs and a jaw-droppingly stupid book, managing to be too batshit to work for Rupert Murdoch(!) and then capped the self-immolation by threatening to cripple Murdoch's precious network with a nasty, vengeful twist. And now, even she's been paid off to protect what little bit remains.
The last of the NYC Woodwork-spawned, BMOC/”Outsiders”.
Rudy.
Who as every day goes by sees his last chance, the Florida primary and pretty much his entire campaign seeping back into that rotten “woodwork.”
Drowning in the polls and worst of all, forced to cadge work from staffers the millionaire candidate can no longer afford to pay.
How ironic that the big-willie “Outsider” from within New York is now about to close the door on the brief era of his sort's dominance, while actual Outsiders, some would call “carpetbaggers” representing New York—Boston-born Mike Bloomberg, the city's Mayor, and the State's Senator, via D.C./Arkansas/Illinois, Hillary Clinton stand infinitely better chances today of being considered for President than Rudy.
The old town ain't what she used to be.
And somewhere in the city an old school DJ digs deep in the crates at home. His old club is long gone—thanks to Rudy. He flips a record onto the turntable and hits the start button. The bass kicks in loud. Horns. The guitars. Folks used to “hustle” to this jam.
I talked to my friend again today... This is what he had to say, You’re going up in smoke, going up in smoke, going up in smoke. And we ain’t got no hope, we’re going up in smoke
Lights up a ciggy and the smoke curlicues as he taps his foot to the beat. A neighbor pounds the wall.
“Quiet!”
He turns the music down a bit. 'Cause the days of “The Hustle” are done.
Money's Too Tight To Mention...But We're Mentioning It Anyway, Ruuudeeee!
It was a time of wild exuberance, twinkling eyes and lottery-hit dreams, those halcyon days of the late-90's / early 2000's “Dot-Com” era. Sock-puppet dogs promoted vapor-venture pet food businesses to sudden multi-million dollar status. A multitude of napkin-scrawled business plans burst to ballyhooed life and then flamed out as if alcohol-dipped and match lit. The snarky name of the “Dot-Com” era's death-spiral phenomenon?
“Dot-Bomb”.
I remember bars all over town filled for months on end with embittered, stunned people spending their small severances and railing about the “obvious” idiocy of the bosses and the “lameness” of the master plans. What a time it was—sudden, pseudo-success followed by crushing, soul-sapping failure. But even now, the memories of it have faded somewhat. In some cases intentionally because of the pain memories it conjures up, but in other cases simply because folks weren't in close enough proximity to feel it.
“What was it like?”, those people will ask one day. “What does a Dot-Bomb sound like when it detonates?”
And the answer is, “It's not a detonation really”. That would indicate a spark of some sort and a radiating outward of energy. No, a Dot-Bomb's end is much more of an im-plosion rather than an ex-plosion.
It starts with a quivering of doubt, and then hiss of deception, high and almost beyond the frequency to hear, but the way it unnerves the atmosphere jangles the senses on an almost unconscious level. You feel it more than hear it. Then, it cracks a bit under the weight of scrutiny and the hiss becomes a whine of panic, as common sense, trust, dreams and the investment of time come rushing inward with a giant sucking sound.
The Christmas ornament-fragile shell gives next, collapsing under a sparkly, but thin veneer of confidence, and then...then, it's on. It's a pocket “black hole” taking everything nearby into it's entropic core. Big things that wouldn't seem able to fit are sucked in effortlessly and at light speed. Grand, stupid ideas. Reputations. And money....lord God, the money, it whooshes down and away like grains of rice against an ocean whirlpool's pull. It's rushing now, this macabre reverse of the “big bang”, a faux universe coming to a sad, diminutive end. There's a final howl as there's little else to consume but air—nothing tangible. A vacuum consuming itself now. And a then, final “pop”. All gone save for memories, hype and bruised feelings.
“Pop!”
But a “Dot-Bomb” has a toll beyond the mere torching of dreams and ideas. The truest sign of a “fucked company's” final days is when the money gets tight and paychecks either start bouncing, or are deferred. People working for said company stop getting paid.
CNN has learned that top staff members of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign were asked to work without pay for the month of January, and perhaps longer, so that campaign resources could be focused on the Florida Republican presidential primary.
Two sources in the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted the campaign was not in dire financial straits. A third campaign source, however, said "things are starting to get tight" and that "it was more telling than asking" the senior staff to forgo paychecks beginning the first of the year.
Another source disagreed, saying it was a "voluntary" move by senior staff members "so all of our resources could be targeted toward Florida...Our campaign is not living hand to mouth right now..."
The officials did not immediately provide a number of staffers who were subject to the new policy. Nor would campaign officials disclose the amount of money the campaign had in the bank.
“And in the end...the Post-Its and office supplies you take, aren't e-e-e-e-equal tooooo the dough....you'd make...”
I suppose it's kind of ironic that the imploding Giuliani candidacy at it's death-rattle moment so devastatingly mirrors the “Dot-Bomb” era that kicked countless New Yorkers in the teeth and out of the up-chucking Silicon Alley that Rudy presided over during his second, bed-shit term as Mayor.
But irony may not be the correct term here. Poetic Justice is I think a better one. Giuliani presided here in New York during the “Dot-Com” inflation and subsequent “Dot-Com” bust and during his time as Mayor rode those waves tighter than Swayze in “Point Break”. It just stands to reason that he would in effect pattern his presidential campaign on the snake-oil selling so prevalent during in his tenure in town.
Point A: Overhype a so-called need or demand for the public. (the need for an abusive “daddy” figure in a push-marketed 9-11 bogeyman-crazed country.)
Point B: Offer a bogus magic bullet that only you can provide that will meet this alleged desperate need of the people.
Point C: Garner buzz for said magic bullet via wild claims and over-the-top testimonials of shills and cronies.
Point D: Value of bullet soars to stratospheric levels thanks to “buzz”. Heat is generated. You become “the next big thing”.
Point E: Soon thereafter, people want to see just what the magic bullet is. They want details. Proof. All that is offered is more and more hype and selling of the “need”, which wears on the consumer.
Point F.: (as in fucked) With no “product” people's scrutiny increases and it is revealed that the person behind the hype is a shady charlatan with little more to him than bluster. The “company” is exposed as a scam, funding disappears and the low men on the totem pole who threw in their lot and busted their asses end up not getting paid.
Of course, as per the “Dot-Bomb” construct, the big boss plays the whole venture like a gambler, banking to the last on “that one big sale”, or “that one big presentation” he's spending every remaining dollar on to save the company's ass with all the futility of a Sin City loser madly chucking his last quarters from the cheap paper bucket, down into the slots' maw,...“because man..he just knows he's gonna hit now!” He's GOTTA hit now!
That “one big presentation”? Mmmmm...something tells me the ol' PowerPoint show better be in 3-D and have Industrial Light and Magic-grade effects in it. And an army of slick-handed “spokesmodels” administering special...“favors” to anyone he's trying to sell on this, 'cause well...damn...
Giuliani Sinks To Fourth In Florida
A new Datamar poll in Florida finds Mike Huckabee leading the Republican presidential primary race with 24% support, followed by Mitt Romney at 20%, Sen. John McCain at 18% and Rudy Giuliani now back in fourth place at 16%.
Two months ago, Giuliani led the GOP race. With little chance of winning the other early states, he has been campaigning nearly non-stop in Florida for several weeks.
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The Florida primary is on January 29.
Oooh! We'll give out personalized “crank” radios!—that only get AM! Really cool 128 MB WMA-only music players with a glow-in-the-dark “RudyCo” printed on the side! Magenta fleece tops with “RudyCo” embroidered on 'em. In acid green! We'll give those out as “gifts” and swing people back to looking at RudyCo as...deep breath now—“The market driver in supra-incremental governance at the macro and micro interest points, filling the post mega-saster, adrena-critical, leadership void in the 21st Century marketplace. LLC” Gasp!
The Post has done a poll with a likely voter screen the last three times, this month, early last month and in early November. In early November Rudy was at 34%. A month later he was at 25%. Today he's at 15%. The Times meanwhile has Rudy dropping from 22% to 10% over the last month among Republican primary voters.
Every hallmark of a ”Dot-Bomb” implosion is present as we watch, many of us with popcorn—the “Pets.com-ming of the Giuliani campaign. Steve, God rest him, made his first mark writing about the idiocies of that painted-ballon-meets-diamond-needle era, and in going back through his writings, his words on companies doing the shitter-swirl ring so Goddamned true about these final chapters of RudyCo that it's just plain scary. Particularly when you think of Giuliani's staffers “voluntarily foregoing” (Shit! I just be-spittled my monitor again) their salaries. On that kind of worker “dedication”, Steve was terse and blunt.
“Loyalty is fine. But it has its limits, usually at the loss of your paycheck.”
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Loyalty is a two-way street and always has been. Self-sacrifice is for the desperate and the dumb. No one should demand more of you than they are willing to ask of themselves.
Any boss which uses his position to play God and screw with you is not worthy of your labor.
So, let's get down and dirty with it, shall we? Rudy's people are not the “True Believers” of the fervent variety that man say...the Huckabee and Obama campaigns. A charismatic leader draws a different sort of worker. Rudy ain't charismatic. In fact, if you put him in a glass tank full of vipers and scorpions you'd still have trouble picking out which creature therein was “the charismatic one”. No, Rudy's people are pragmatic, misanthropic number-cruncher types directly reflecting their master. These people didn't fucking volunteer to eat Ramen and Fla-vor-aid for a month because of Giuliani's inspirational message. Dollars to donuts (something those staffers could use a bit of now) he dictated the terms and let it be known with the usual Giuliani blunt-force-trauma threat of career destruction that anyone mouthing off on the down-low about campaign troubles would be trashed forever. Remember what Rudy's company Giuliani Partners is into—Corporate Security Consulting. Do you think for so much as a second that his right-hand people—the ones still getting paid—aren't monitoring the calls and e-mails from the staffers reduced to Snickers™-bar lunches? Please.
But human nature is something you can't stop. As with any failing venture, be reasonably certain that there is talk amongst the rank-and-file about the upper-level's fuck-ups. They'll sit around and discuss it after hours over a couple of sixes of Pabst Blue Ribbon—as the Coronas and Stellas are now locked in a file cabinet in the campaign manager's office.
The talk will turn to “what bullshit this all was”. Suds'll flow and somebody'll interrupt the din of grousing with a “Hol' up, hol' up, hol' up, hol'...UP!”
“I just thought a' something. How the fuck can we be broke if we really didn't campaign anywhere yet? Huh? If we didn't compete in Iowa, and-and in New-fucking-Hampshire...and we're not gonna fuck with South Carolina...How the fuck can we possibly be broke?”
There will be knowing looks, a couple of “Yeahs” and then, someone else will bust the whole thing wide open.
“It's one of two things! We either never really had the money, which means the boss is a fuggin' liar...or...or, you're gonna love this—he spent it all on expensive, unnecessary BULLSHIT! Which would make him...”
That's what can be deduced by looking through Giuliani's campaign spending report, which shows the former New York mayor has routinely stayed in posh hotels while on the road, and seems to lack confidence in the quality of commercial air carriers.
Whether it was $2,010 at the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, $4,034 at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., or $5,370 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, the former mayor found himself top-notch lodging. -----------------------------------------
Water views seem to be a prized asset for Giuliani -- during an early trip to New Hampshire, the former new york mayor stayed at the Wentworth by the Sea resort, a AAA Four-diamond resort that advertises "postcard-perfect views of the waterfront" in Portsmouth.
He also spent more than $565,000 reimbursing various corporate supporters for private jet travel. The biggest chunk of those flights came via Elliott Asset Management, a New York hedge fund known by some as a "vulture fund," so-named because they buy debt cheaply from cash-starved countries, and then sue them for the full repayment. The head of the firm, Paul Singer, is in charge of Northeastern fundraising for Giuliani.
Giuliani spent another $800,000 on charter jet travel.
Around the office of Giuliani Partners, it is said, Sunny Mindel, Giuliani's communications director, spoke of the need for providing an entire plane seat for Judith's "Baby Louis"—a reference to her Louis Vuitton handbag, which sits in solitary splendor on her travels.
People know that ain't a fucking coach seat.
And I'm fairly certain Rudy's people can read the papers too, so they're well aware of the reports of his shady-assed profligacy at the expense of others during his mayoralty.
“At the expense of others.”
Oh, I don't think I'm terribly off the mark in laying out that late-night bull session of Rudy staffers. I've seen it a million times myself. Experienced it, too. And if you haven't, you know someone who has.
A chair'll be kicked around. Someone will start to cry and have to be consoled. The IT guy present will offer to burn copies of Vista for anyone who needs it as a stick-it-to-the-man gift to everyone. They'll ask for XP instead—thanks. That which cannot be nailed down and traced will be “liberated”. Someone'll invariably jam the printer with a resumé after hours and damage the Goddamned machine trying to remove the incriminating paper. Fun, fun-fuckety-fun-fun-fun.
Now, some have in recent weeks suggested that I stop knee-dropping Rudy in the ribs while he's down. I will not. Years ago as a kid I studied self defense for three years. The one thing our instructor kept telling us about being caught up in a confrontation was that “there are no rules, no ring and no bell”. The object when in a fight is to disable your opponent to where he is no longer a threat. If he's still moving, you knee-drop him in the ribs. You take a fall ending with an elbow smash to his jaw.
“You don't knock him down. You knock him out.”
I think of my old instructor's words when dealing with the barely-twitching Rudy Giuliani campaign circa-January '08.
No twitching. No mercy. Only sweet, crumpled unconsciousness will do. We're going after all of the creepy wingnut candidates here...but Giuliani doesn't get a mercy breather...ever. We will chronicle and aid every nudge towards the end for his campaign because based on the evil he's already done—he richly deserves it, and for the sake of this country, we deserve to be spared from him.
So, dancing on his difficulties—you're damned right I will. Celebrate his slide into the sewer? Absolutely! Mercilessly mock his money woes? Hell yes—with every media mention it gets.
'Cause in spite of what the song says, “Money Ain't Too Tight To Mention”.
A little ways downpage, in the post titled “Mirror, Mirror”, dealing with Mike Huckabee's being the “Mirror Universe” version of Bill Clinton—both Arkansas governors with weight issues, out-the-door pardon issues, musically inclined, and polar opposites on the smarts scale—I used the following picture and caption:
“You Should Thank Me For Not Photoshopping The Mirror Universe's Giuliani. Seriously.”
Well, a few of you in comments asked for the extra “something”—that “cherry” on top...
"You should thank me for not photoshopping the Mirror Universe's Giuliani. SERIOUSLY." I double-triple-ATOMIC-dog dare ya to do it.
Teh Horror! Ivory Bill Woodpecker | 01.04.08 - 2:32 am |
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Now that you've mentioned it, I want to see a Mirror, Mirror Giuliani. Seriously. PurpleGirl | 01.04.08 - 8:44 am |
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Wouldn't mirror Guiliani be a mild mannered public defender with a penchant for ferrets? anabasis | 01.04.08 - 4:24 pm |
Well...ask and ye shall receive. I proudly, (and while throwing up a little in my mouth) give you...
I figured, in the “Mirror Universe” Rudy would probably be that which he truly despises—his sworn enemy. The choices? Make him a Black dude, or...a weaselly, little animal he's on record as really hating. Being a brotha's too good for him...thus, Lieutenant Ferret.
“Hey, Maybe This'll Revitalize Things A Little Bi—Ohhhh...Fuuuuhhhck.”
If you, the regular readers of this blog haven't guessed it by now, or if you are a casual “click-by” visitor and don't know me (LowerManhattanite) and “how I roll“, let me lay a hard truth out here right now. I happen to utterly despise the “man”—and I use that term loosely—named Rudolph W. Giuliani. Now, it's not that I have decided to simply single his rabid ass out from the rest of the GOP jackal pack as a personal punching bag or something—oh no! Me and Rudy have “history”. Me and about 8, 149, 999 other New Yorkers to be precise. As a born and bred Gothamite, I was here during Giuliani's spittle-flecked reign of two terms as Mayor. Two terms where he and his lackeys in the guise of making the city a better place—for tourists primarily—collectively nut-kicked people of color, the poor, and the vocally progressive.
I got my two “stop n' frisks” during his reign. And others got more. Others beyond that group sometimes got dead. Grossly, unjustifiably dead—because of this little psychotic's policies. Poll this town—his hometown and you'll find surprisingly short support for his ass. Telegenic, bullshit mid-September walks walks up a dust-clouded Church Street notwithstanding.
Steve (God rest him) was on this clown's ass three years ago, and yeah, I've proudly accepted the baton from him and swung it at Rudy like I was LAPD Officer Stacey Koon stopping off in Crenshaw on my way home from a losing softball game. From jump, we've been relentless in analyzing,sharing, and exposing Giuliani's most infamous and most-desired-to-be-hidden escapades.
In the first Rudy post, during that first week of this place's being “open”, I noted the following:
We're looking, a year-and-a-half-out, at a campaign that could well die the classic “death of a thousand cuts.”
Well, here we are less than a year away, and it's only taken a few nicks to set him hemhorraging like the proverbial stuck pig.
And the ex-wifey ain't even palmed the shank outta her cuff yet. Damn.
I'm proud to say that I've been hard as times in '29 on Giuliani, but sometimes, you have to vary the palette—work a different groove to keep sharp, dontchaknow?
'Cause Rudy just gives you so Goddamned much fuel for the fire. Trouble is, as predicted—he's fucked up and set himself ablaze, with fireworks, black powder and two bottles of kerosene in his pockets to boot.
And when he did that—with his poll numbers cratering (still as we speak), I opted to mock instead of maul. The mocking met with good response, but some felt I could have busted out the whuppin' stick a little harder...
“Steve would have crushed the bastard. LM, I think you might be too nice.”—Melanie
She's right. I could have crushed him. But I've got to admit, just batting the mouse around and letting him run a second or two, only to pounce on his wounded ass again is well worth it.
And then? Sometimes that mouse gets so beat up, so discombobulated he'll run himself smack onto the trigger of a Victor mouse trap, and “PYOOOOWWWW!” You step back and go, “You dumb son-of-a-bitch.” And you just have to laugh.
Rudy gave us one such moment yesterday with his “What-the-fuck-were-you-thinking?” grade Christmas ad for the Iowa caucuses.
It wasn't a “Jump the Shark” moment.
It was a “Jump the Shark—but miss and land dead in the hungry bastard's serrated grille.” moment.
If you didn't see it, here it go. Try not to do the “Producers” first act audience jaw-drop when it's done, okay?
See, you went and did the jaw drop anyway! Okay, while you're re-hinging the ol' mandible, dig on the “WTF?”real-time critique when the abomination was first shown on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” program:
Joe Scarborough and his co-hosts reacted to the ad with incredulity. “Ohhh. He did not do that,” moaned Mika Brzezinski, as Scarborough held his head in his hand.
“That was actually an SNL sketch,” Willie Geist chimed in hopefully. “Do we have the real ad?”
“I want names and I want them now, Mr. Mayor,” demanded Scarborough. “Who put you in that red vest? Who told you this was a commercial that would help you in Iowa? My god, who put the Klieg lights on your forehead while Mike Huckabee had the soft Barbara Walters vaseline-smeared-on-the-lens glow?”
“You know, it's almost like he's spoofing,” suggested Geist again. “Maybe that was a spoof?”
“They need a statement and they need to put it out right now that says this is a parody,” agreed Scarborough.
But no such statement was forthcoming. That shit was real, baby. How weird was that “ad”? Mike Gravel saw it and probably said “What the fuck was that about?” Who signed off on dressing Giuliani like a Loews Theatre usher? What lunatic thought to put a man so ill at ease in his own skin that his temperament resembles that of Vincent D'Onofrio's “Edgar” in “Men In Black”—that of a giant cockroach in a “human suit”?—in a clothing item so jarringly “off”that it unintentionally appears comedic? The “Morning Joe” staff, and virtually everyone else who saw it registered the same “This can't be real!” response.
It came off like a creepy, “Twin Peaks”-ish set up for next-scene craziness. I kept expecting for the camera to pull back to reveal him sitting there in a tub full of severed limbs and blood. That's how disturbingly forced the “joviality” was. This is a motherfucker who's got some serious problems Dig. Up. His. Yard. Now.
What's the old saying? “When your enemy's drowning, throw him an anvil”? Well, what if before you can get the anvil unloaded he decides to grab the boat's spinning propeller with his teeth? I mean...Goddamn!
But then I stopped and thought to myself...what does this ad remind me of? Something skeevy, dark, and disturbing—yet eerily similar, and then...then I remembered!
If you're a hardcore SCTV fan, you probably remember the show's batshit insane, many times institutionalized politico, Mayor Tommy Shanks, as played by a “do-not-turn-your-back-on-this-dude” John Candy. Here is that sick fraternal twin to Rudy's Christmas ad...
Melonville Mayor Tommy Shanks' Christmas message ad to the townfolk. Brrrrrrrrr!
Kind of hard to tell which one's the real spoof isn't it? And that for damn sure ain't the kind of thing a down-at-its-knees campaign wants to hear. So yes...I'm laughing. Laughing my natural, black ass off, because sometimes you have to sit back and just go, “Damn!” when your enemy somehow manages to kick himself dead in the nuts.
Even in spite of Rudy's real ad channeling SCTV's spoof one and effectively killing irony's ass D-E-A-D.
You know what? Maybe digging up Rudy's yard for Irony's body parts wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.
There's more...
In a sign that his campaign in New Hampshire could be flagging, Rudy Giuliani has been significantly scaling back his ad buys in the state. Records show that numerous ad buys in the Boston TV stations have either been cut by more than half, or cancelled entirely.
The campaign has kept up its buys in the much cheaper WMUR in Manchester, where Rudy has a strong base of support thanks in part to the mayor's endorsement — so Rudy might be going trying for a decent second or third through a strong, concentrated showing there. And the campaign is shifting its resources to Florida, where Rudy is also sinking fast.
As Giuliani plummets to the ghetto of single digit-ville support in Iowa, backslides to third place in South Carolina (where he led until a week or so ago) and now has fallen behind in Florida, in spite of heavily-touted northeastern “snowbird” support, there are many out there who seem surprised at his seemingly sudden “Man Who Fell To Earth” routine.
If you read this blog, you shouldn't be amongst that group. Giuliani's over-stuffed American Touristers full of campaign-killing dirty-dealing were going to be a huge problem for him the moment the press' equivalent of airport X-rays got through looking at him even a little bit. And a mere hard week's worth of digging on their parts was that little bit—albeit way too much for Rudy's glass Xmas ornament-tough campaign to handle.
He is merely the most morally and ethically compromised candidate of ALL of the GOP's choices—and that's one hell of a thing when you consider how damaaged they all are. Giuliani was living on borrowed time to begin with. In choosing between the lessers, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Lucifer, and The Anti-Christ, Giuliani's P.R. savvy Satan got a bit of a free ride for a while. But as the saying goes, “The devil is in the details.“. Rudy's details, oozing from within, and showing on his very skin like sweat are slimy and putrid indeed.
And no matter how tough, or how hardcore you may appear , no one wants to be around you when you sweat and smell.
“What's the agenda for the Giuliani presidency? So I think he made it all about himself, about his record, but when you make it about yourself, it's also about other aspects of your past—and that stuff's emerged that much more, and I think a lot of Republicans look up and say 'Look he's a good mayor, he did well on 9-11, but why should we make him President?”
When FOX News'—“The Official Network of Rudy 'Razor-Lips' Giuliani”—main Sunday pundit puts pennies on Rudy's eyes...kiddies...he's a free-fallin' in a major way.
"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."—Satchel Paige
“The past lies upon the present like a giant's dead body”—Nathaniel Hawthorne (House of the Seven Gables)
MR. BURNS: Quick Smithers. Bring the mind eraser device! SMITHERS:You mean the revolver, sir? MR. BURNS: Precisely. —C. Montgomery Burns
I was tempted to use a “Have You Seen Me?” milk carton graphic with this post. Why? Because the post's subject has been hiding out for almost a week—a helluva thing when you consider that the Iowa caucuses said subject's participating in are about a month away.
But when you've had as bad a week as Rudolph W. (“And the 'W' is for 'What the fuck hit me?'”) Giuliani, hide out like an off-his-meds, late-60's Brian Wilson is what you'd better do. Lest the press keep dogging your steps, asking about...well, you signing off on the NYPD's secretly walking your mistress's dog on the city's dime and lying about it.
Ohhhhh, what an awful week. Just an Off-Broadway, avant-garde production of “Murder On The Orient Express” kind of week for dear, sweet (like an almond-scented drink) Rudy. There, in that pivotal scene at the end, the train's riders walk one by one into the hushed berth...
NYC Comptroller William Thompson:
Questions just seemed to mount Thursday about the way Giuliani or his aides handled the security bills. Auditors for City Comptroller William Thompson uncovered the problems in 2001, and he says Giuliani's men slammed the door shut on them.
“"The Giuliani administration just refused to provide answers,” Thompson said.
Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."
When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that.
“Shluk!”, goes the rusty steak knife with the busted tip.
"I don't recall anybody, any statements about delay," Kelly told reporters.
He said all bills for the police details for Dinkins and now for Mayor Mike Bloomberg are handled directly "through the police department."
“Shluk!”, is the sound as paring knife makes when shoved in past the hilt...
Former Giuliani appointee NYC Procurement Policy Board head, Brendan Sexton:
“The cover-up of this and the explanations for it have been so disingenuous,”
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“He didn't want anybody to know what he was doing. That's the truth. I don't care about his personal life - it's not shocking to me that he wanted to visit his girlfriend...” ----------------------------- “The part that's disturbing to me is that my organization or any government organization could be used to conceal from the public how their money was being spent.”
“Shluk! Shluk!”, goes the spork melted into a crude, jailhouse shiv.
Taylor, 52, takes the bus every day to her midtown office and rides the subway to business appointments. In the six years Taylor and Bloomberg have lived together, she said she has never had reason to want or need personal NYPD security.
“I don't have security in Bogota or Nairobi or Moscow when I travel there on business, why would I need security in the safest city in the world?” Taylor told the Daily News yesterday.
“Shl-u-u-u-u-u-uk!”, is the sound a melon-baller makes as it plunges into a sucking wound.
And when the low point is your poll numbers cratering to where a Keane-eyed, bible-thumping, ethically-compromised crazy has eliminated your double-digit lead to pull even with you...well, the word abysmal comes to mind.
You would think that maybe with Huckabee's newfound limelight—and the scrutiny it's brought, exposing partisanship-fueled pardons of serial rapists who go out and rape again, and kill on his watch, and Mitt Romney's gardeners becoming a campaign issue along with his declaration of “faith”, and diss of non-faith (¡Azaleas, Si! ¡Atheism, NO!), that somehow Giuilani could manage to sneak his way back to a semblance of respectability by flying through all of that “chaff”
Judith Nathan got security earlier DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS—Friday, December 7th 2007, 4:00 AM
Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed—even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News...
Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.
They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm—as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend - that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor's girlfriend in May 2000.
“Two things capture the American attention like no other: sex and money. Only scandals involving sex or money garner any serious public interest. Even then, a money scandal without sex leads most Americans to yawn. And dogged persistence can outlast most sex scandals (see Vitter, David). But when you combine the two -- when you add adultery to misappropriation of taxpayer money -- magical things happen. It's like that beautiful chemical reaction when heat, yeast, and sugar meet. There's an unusual smell, then lots of hot air, and then everything blows up real big.”
Damn straight. But the world's a funny place. The indestructible Achilles was felled by an arrow to his vulnerable heel. The nearly untouchable Al Capone went down on tax evasion charges. And Rudy could well be a'-swirlin' down Le Crappéur himself thanks to this petty thievery and cover-up, but...
There's a bigger story.
Salon's Joe Conason pointed this out when he said last week,
...“When the nation's news executives decided which of two highly embarrassing Giuliani stories to feature, nearly all of them made the wrong choice. While they lavished enormous attention upon a Politico story dealing with adultery and bureaucracy, they should be devoting at least as much time to yet another in the long series of Wayne Barrett scoops in the Village Voice, because this one involves business and terrorism.”
And what was that story? It's the one that forced him to quietly—rat-piss-on-cotton-in-a-vacuum-room-quietly—step down as chairman of the shady-fuck “firm” that bears his name?
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has stepped down as head of his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, after months of refusing to disclose the firm's clients or the role he played.
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While insisting the firm's client list was confidential, Giuliani has noted the media have named a number of his clients.
Published reports have identified one client as the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, which was accused of sheltering suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although that country today it is a U.S. ally.
There are countless what ifs about 9/11, hundreds of events, maybe thousands of lives, any one of which if just altered slightly might have preempted the attacks. But this one involves a man identified tonight as a close business associate of Mr. Giuliani‘s. A man accused of having harbored in, then helped 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed escape from the Gulf nation of Qatar hours before the arrest that would have been affected by an FBI team.
The war on terror candidate looking tonight, a lot more like the ties to terror candidate. Wayne Barrett of the “Village Voice” reporting that Mr. Giuliani‘s extensive business contracts with the nation of Qatar tie him directly to the man who kept Khalid Sheik Mohammed out of American hands. He is Abdullah Bin Khalid Al-Thani, he was Qatar‘s Islamic Affairs Minister at the time and its Interior Minister since 2001 when the FBI was hours away from closing in on Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 1996, Al-Thani who was harboring the suspect is widely accused of tipping him off to the FBI agent‘s imminent arrival as well as giving him 20 blank passports. Former CIA case officer, Robert Bayer says he did so with the blessing and probably the direct orders of this man, the Emir of Qatar.
You may remember, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani from his trip to New York City during the 9/11 aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, most of it to go to the families of the victims. Mayor Giuliani more than glad to take that check and to serve as Emir‘s personal tour guide during his visit and to be his fellow guest on the Larry King Show on CNN. That, it seems, was only the beginning of their alliance. Years after his mayoralty had ended, Mr. Giuliani was to begin a far more lucrative partisanship with the government of Qatar, specifically with the Interior Ministry run by, you guessed it, the fellow member of Qatar‘s royal family, Abdullah Al-Thani.
If letting the 9/11 mastermind go were not bad enough for that man, Al-Thani is also said to have hosted Osama Bin Laden on two separate visits to his farm. It is with this terrorist aider and abettor that Mr. Giuliani‘s security firm, a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners has worked on undisclosed number of contracts, reports the “Village Voice,” some of which Giuliani himself and his employees openly have acknowledged. Mr. Giuliani telling a South African newspaper in June 2006, that he, quote, “Recently helped Qatar to transform Doha in advanced of the Asian Games, an Olympic style competition that his firm oversaw for last December.
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OLBERMANN: Even if Rudy Giuliani did not know about the central role that Qatar has played as a facilitator of terrorism, if he didn‘t know that in October of 2001 when he hosted the Emir and was his, you know, tour guide, television pal, was there enough evidence making the case against Qatar by the time the Giuliani Partners started doing business with that country in 2005?
BARRETT: Keith, he would have had to have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to know it because he then in 2005 had running his security unit, two of the FBI agents who had been pursuing the Qatar relationship. In fact, Ali Sulfan (ph) who was the lead FBI investigator in both the Khobar towers case and the Afghan - no excuse me, in the Cole case, he was the lead investigator and the investigation of the embassy bombings in Africa, he was the lead investigator and Qatar. I have a hard time with the pronunciation of it but a Qatar charitable society that the Emir directed the funding of this—they participated directly in the funding of the bombing in—of the African Embassy. So, if he just looked around and listened to his own staff he would have known.
“Sex On The City” is merely the smoke—choking, acrid smoke at that, but smoke nonetheless. T
...Which graphic to use. Do I Go With The LOLFinished?
