Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Unhinged: Giuliani Buys Into His Own Testosterone-Fueled Myth
With each passing day -- and each bellicose, over-the-top, spittle-enhanced pronouncement -- Rudy Giuliani is revealing that he has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant. His behavior on the stump shows Jimmy Breslin nailed it when he described Giuliani as "a small man in search of a balcony." (Don't forget, Il Rudy cleaned up Times Square and made the subways run on time.)
Giuliani has apparently never met a belt he didn't want to hit below. GOP presidential candidates are in a contest to see who can be the biggest Neanderthal -- and this is caveman Rudy's latest swing of the club: "Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution? Well, I think Hillary wants to have champagne and dance the waltz with a holocaust-denying madman!"
Then there was his head-scratching defense of Mike Mukasey's waffling on waterboarding, claiming that, like the attorney general designate, he wasn't sure it was torture. "It depends on how it's done," explained Giuliani. "It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it." So if you're being waterboarded by a sexy girl in a room filled with candles, it's all good? Does Rudy occasionally come home, dim the lights, open up a nice bottle of chilled Chablis, put on a little Barry White, and ask Judi to break out the waterboard? Since when is there so much wiggle room when it comes to obeying the Geneva Conventions?
It's clear from his hyperbolic rhetoric that Giuliani has fully bought into his own phony myth -- painting himself as a two-fisted tough guy, the mayor with the "S" on his chest and the dust from the fallen twin towers on his shoulders.
The surprising thing isn't that Giuliani is channeling Rush Limbaugh, tossing red meat to the lunatic fringe that has taken over the GOP. It's that the media are letting him get away with it.
If a Democratic presidential candidate - or even a mere Congressman like Pete Stark -- had said that Bush was going to invite the nuke-happy Ahmadinejad to the White House for a celebration, the airwaves would be filled with demands for an apology and an emergency session of Congress would be called to pass a resolution condemning the unpatriotic insult. John McCain said that MoveOn "ought to be thrown out of" the country for calling General Petraeus "General Betray Us." But the front-runner for the Republican nomination suggests that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would want to party with tyrants, and he gets a free pass from the traditional press. Why? Does a potential Hillary-Rudy match up offer too many good story lines to be derailed by increasing evidence of Giuliani's readiness for a well-padded room?
Or maybe the media are just drinking the same Kool-Aid as the GOP faithful who seem surprisingly willing to look the other way when Giuliani treats telling the truth the same way he treats waterboarding: "It depends on how it's done."
Of course, if the media ever do get around to holding Giuliani's feet to the fire, they need to do it accurately -- not like the AP, which initially misreported Rudy's crack about Clinton and Obama inviting Ahmadinejad and Assad to the White House. The AP reporter heard "Assad" as "Osama" and many in the media, including me, went with the erroneous AP story -- in my case until I heard the sound byte myself.
Arianna Huffington is the editor of The Huffington Post and the author of many books, including her most recent, On 'Becoming Fearless….in Love, Work and Life'.
© 2007 The Huffington Post
14 Comments so far
Show AllIt's this or Hillary folks; arsenic or belladonna. Are you going to begrudgingly swallow one of those spoonsfull of doom, or tell the offerer that you need no such 'remedy' and try a more holistic approach such as voting for what's RIGHT, no matter the odds?
Some posters here will tell you that the belladonna is good for you because it's more pleasant a death than that of the arsenic. Deride them for the fools they are and reject their offerings of destruction.
Vote your conscience people, it's your only escape from the force-feed death of the modern American Plutocracy.
Giuliani is probably right to think Republican primary voters will eat up his remarks like chocolate syrup. The hysteria, brutality and sense of entitlement to power on that side of the political spectrum are frightening.
The MSM are giving Rudy the same free ride that they gave the Smirk.
Why else would the Repugs put up so many utter clowns like Guiliani other than because they know there won't actually be an election in 2008? It's kinda like at the end of a football game where one team's way out in front. The last 5 minutes they always throw in their benchwarmers because they know they've got it wrapped up.
Of course they'll be an election in 2008. Why would they bother stopping it when they can control it?
They are putting buffoons up as Republican candidates because Clinton is going to win, and they have to make it look believable.
The die hard believers will dance with joy because a Democrat is in the White House, just like they did when the dems took over congress. And won't they feel betrayed when the war continues, as well as the impoverishment of our people, the destruction of the environment, and the loss of liberty of all citizens.
Like Charley Brown and the football, some people fall for it everytime.
"Wiggle room" and "free pass" is doublespeak for "lies" and "corruption". Here's what Jack London had to say about the media in his "IRON HEEL": "You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it."
Hoa binh
She's right - it's downright shocking the MSM has given Rudytic a free pass, after the absolutely award-winning job they've been doing for the past seven years holding all the other GOPathologicals' "feet to the fire."
Probably just a one-off. Surely they'll be scorch lyin' Mitt's feet and Bomb Bomb McCain's feet and Wake Me Up When It's Over Fred's feet and...
its a race to the bottom....Rudy is just the biggest piece of scum in the pond.
Arianna can huff around about unhinged and testosterone and myth all she wants. Giuliani is a major, major threat to liberals in the election of 2008 because he promises to give the wealthy and corporations everything they want: tax cuts, lots of war support, deregulation, and cut loose the bonds of entitlements.
We need Mrs. Clinton or someone debating this crap point for point, no dodging, no above-it-all jokes.
"The MSM are giving Rudy the same free ride that they gave the Smirk."
this is just a guess, but isn't this evidence that Rupert Murdoch supports Giuliani?
Perhaps Murdoch has secret ambitions of becoming a made-member of the mafia. If so, Rudy would be the one to go to.
Giuliani and Mitt Romney, two well educated, intelligent and formerly moderate Republicans, are without the excuses of the dimwitted Bush and Huckabee. Their positions on this issues are a result of pure, Machiavellian political calculation and willingness to put electoral expediency ahead of morality, law or common decency. They are shameless opportunists who discredit themselves--and us, if we elect them.
Daniel David, again, you amaze me at the sheer gall of making a list of 'Republican' traits, and then pretending that Hillary Clinton is somehow the cure for those things. Name one single trait on that list that Hillary doesn't possess. It's hypocritical in the extreme.
Read my post above for clarity.
As a friend from NYC delicately put it: "Giuliani's an asshole. Everybody in New York hates him. Sit through one of his speeches; the guy doesn't wear well."
Out in Iowa and NH they seem to be finding out the same thing; voters who hear Rudy in person are less than enthusiastic about him, and become even less motivated to vote for him the more they are exposed to him.
"It's clear from his hyperbolic rhetoric that Giuliani has fully bought into his own phony myth — painting himself as a two-fisted tough guy, the mayor with the 'S' on his chest and the dust from the fallen twin towers on his shoulders."
Let's not tell Mayor Nosferatu that the 'S' doesn't stand for Superman, as America will quickly discover.
Maybe waterboarding isn't/shouldn't be considered torture when it's undertaken for a noble, moral cause. You know, like when the Spanish Inquisition does it.