“It's rollin' round the bend, and backed up after catchin' me, and it's mowin' me down again.”
It has gotten as predictable as Lenny and Squiggy blundering in after Laverne casually says the word, "Idiots".
As regular as Old Faithful...or Uncle Nate after his mid-day Metamucil Colada
What's that? Why, its the oft-mentioned here, long-dormant, Non-Friends of Rudy rising from their slumber with the studded-gloved cock-punches, that's what.
Let's go back...to the ancient days of, ohhhhh, 'bout a month ago—Friday the 13th to be precise (How apt!), when we said...
9-11. The Firefighters. Video and the Internet. The three Weird Sisters from Macbeth, brewing up a vile potion of campaign doom.
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As even the greenest of students of military history can attest, hell, even a casual observer who's only seen war play out as it has in the Iraq debacle will tell you, you can only fight a war on so many fronts. Rudy's got more directions to fend off attacks from than there are on a Goddamned compass. As stated in the original post, his own home (NY) can kill him.
The first teary ad from a widowed survivor of a "pile" worker who didn't get a respirator mask because Rudy found them to be an off-putting public image.
The fateful day 343 NY Firefighters (The same number as was lost in the hell of September 11th) show up at a fundraiser, or speech venue in New York, clad in Black--clutching candles in deathly silent vigil.
Double-damn.
Sooooooo...who does the creepy little martinet decide to pop dumb shit about this past week? You guessed it—the guys—the cops, firemen and emergency workers I saw from the corner of my eye, crawling over that awful pile of death and pulverized memories as I hurried down Broadway for days on end after September 11th. He let this slither from between his reptilian lips:
Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."
Battalion Chief John McDonnell, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, said: "I have a real problem with that statement. I think he's really grasping and trying to justify his previous attempts to portray himself as the hero of 9-11."
Michael Palladino, head of the Detectives Endowment Association, the union of NYPD detectives, told the Associated Press that the mayor's record can't compare to those who spent 12 months sifting through toxic debris for evidence and human remains.
"As a result of their hard work, many are sick and injured. The mayor, although he did a fine job with 9/11, I don't think he rises to the level of being an equal with those men and women who were involved in the rescue, recovery and cleanup," Palladino said.
Let me say this...as a New Yorker, whose wife worked in Two World Trade up until September 11th, 2001...
...whose wife missed being in the building by 15 minutes that morning because she was delayed by voting, and heard the roar of the too-low turbines, and felt the heat of the explosion burn her neck as she called upstairs to tell her co-workers the "GET OUT!", just as WTC 2 was hit.
Let me say this as the husband who assumed she'd perished until about 1 p.m. that afternoon, because telephone service was down and I couldn't hear from her.
Who along with his wife, lost three friends in the disaster that day.
I remember the day all too well. primarily because I pretty much had a nervous breakdown when I saw WTC2 fall from the screen, thinking my wife was in it. The days afterward are etched into my mind because I worked 11 blocks north of it, and remember that dank stink of torn-open earth and yes...death.
It is however, NOT Rudy's being down there "every day" that I recall. I remember the firemen, and cops and volunteers sitting on curbsides on Houston, and Franklin, and the North side of Canal Streets, pouring spring water over their heads and into their eyes to clean out the debris, and bits of 3,000-odd people that had settled there after tearing through that mess, looking to save..."sigh!"...find someone. My friend D______, from the volunteer ambulance corp, who called me, I remember him begging to use my company gym's shower after a horrific day, where he and his fellow pile-climbers stumbled across...indescribably awful human remains. He didn't want to wait until he got home to wash off, and the large alcohol wipes supplied at Ground Zero just weren't cutting it. He and I drank that night at Fanelli's Bar.We drank a lot—and D______ doesn't really drink, which told me that he'd seen something that he desperately wanted to forget that day. Not surprisingly, he didn't go back down there the next day. Or that Saturday, or Sunday. Monday? Yes. He was back. D______ didn't drink much until that night we hung out. But he does all the time, now. At least, the last time I saw him.
We really don't hang much any more.
I can remember seeing the smoke coming from that pit, from my job's 8th floor window...and the lights blazing into the night, and that putrid stink for weeks on end. That stink rode the night breeze into Downtown Brooklyn, slumping your shoulders as you walked up Tillary St. because you stupidly hoped a river's distance bought you escape.
Those things...I remember. And what pray-tell do I remember of Rudy in those days? I remember his so-called heroic walk amongst the people. How clean he was in comparison to the other folks stumbling around, ash-whitened, and in clouds of dust, like large, just-shaken powder puffs. And I remember the photo-ops—Rudy in his nifty, mint condition NYPD windbreaker and hat, and of course, a particle mask. Still in his mincing, hunch-backed walk—on the periphery of the just-collapsed hell, where he could get the pile as a nicely balanced photo backdrop. And of course, all the press conferences at the Plan B emergency location, because the Plan A location was stupidly located in a terrorist target—7 WTC. Those press conferences with a faux-concerned Bernie Kerik at his side?—I remember those—with BK evidently day-dreaming of what position he was gonna bang Judith Regan in at his opportunistic, 9-11-perk fuck-pad.
Too many people in NY remember Rudy for his self-aggrandizing, posturing, and "Me! Me! Me! bullshit in the wake of 9-11—in particular his frowned-upon grab at the "mayoralty-for-life" in spite of his term being at end, and someone else being in line for the job.
And the cheap "I was there!", statement this week, trying to desperately enhance his shady-assed bona fides about that deadly day, blew up in his face, as he was forced to do "tha back down" in the face of criticism like this:
"That's insulting and disgraceful. He's a liar. I was down there on my hands and knees looking for my son."
-- Fire Captain and Giuliani foe James Riches, whose firefighter son died on 9/11, lashing out at Rudy for saying that he was at Ground Zero "as often, if not more, than most of the workers.
Not the people to lay fast-and-loose with about what happened that day. Most certainly, not the ones to pull cheap, piggy-back bullshit with, either. 'Cause when you do, and you get busted on it...you have to run “Tha Back Down”:
“I think I could have said it better,” he told nationally syndicated radio host Mike Gallagher. “You know, what I was saying was, ‘I’m there with you.’” […]
“What I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them, because I feel like I have that same risk,” he said.
“There were people there less than me, people on my staff, who already have had serious health consequences, and they weren’t there as often as I was,” Giuliani said, “but I wasn’t trying to suggest a competition of any kind, which is the way it come across.”
This just in...4 out of 5 common simpletons agree that digging clear through to China has to this day, never gotten anyone out of a fucking hole, Rudy. But above and beyond the jaw-dropping stupidity of the comment (or manifestation of a narcissistic personality disorder as commenter LovenandLight has suggested), is its exposure yet again of his having all the integrity of a crackhead with a key to a DEA evidence locker.
You already knew that, though. So, you take a breath...and just when you thought it was safe to go back on the campaign trail..."FWHHHHHHTTTT!", it's another curaré dart in the neck for Rudy... from a very familiar source
GROUP NEWS BLOG—JULY 5TH, 2007
Within the vast sea of faux-moderate hackery that is New York's press, there are several, scattered, vessel-crushing vortexes--whirlpools of naked, honest dislike for Giuliani.
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People like former Times Op-Ed page editor Gail Collins, Op-Ed regular Bob Herbert, the Pulitzer-winning Jim Dwyer, and The Village Voice's NY mole extraordinaire (and Journalism mentor for our Steve) Wayne Barrett, just to name a few.
Who dug up this fresh ugliness late last week:
Via TPM: So, why is it, exactly, that Giuliani picked the WTC site? The mayor personally established a specific standard: he had to be able to walk to the command center from his office. ("I've never seen in my life 'walking distance' as some kind of a standard for crisis management," said Lou Anemone, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD. "But you don't want to confuse Giuliani with the facts.")
There is, however, an explanation for the walking-distance standard.
Barrett:The 7 WTC site was the brainchild of Bill Diamond, a prominent Manhattan Republican that Giuliani had installed at the city agency handling rentals. When Diamond held a similar post in the Reagan administration a few years earlier, his office had selected the same building to house nine federal agencies. Diamond's GOP-wired broker steered Hauer to the building, which was owned by a major Giuliani donor and fundraiser. When Hauer signed onto it, he was locked in by the limitations Giuliani had imposed on the search and the sites Diamond offered him. The mayor was so personally focused on the siting and construction of the bunker that the city administrator who oversaw it testified in a subsequent lawsuit that "very senior officials," specifically including Giuliani, "were involved," which he said was a major difference between this and other projects.
Giuliani's office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator.
Oh yeah. Cronyism. Graft. Cigar humidors and monogrammed towels. (!) And yes, just like his boy Bernie, exploiting government largesse to nab a cushy downtown fuck-pad for the Goumada. Read the whole sordid thing. Wayne, as predicted, takes Rudy's 9-11 persona apart like an old G.I. Joe doll tossed into a roaring wheat thresher.
This is the price you pay when you aspire to "greatness" while being an utter shit to everyone whose path you've crossed in life. There are no Alberto Gonzales-types who can, or will cover up your past misdeeds. No glad-handers or hardcore true believers from home to back you up alá George Bush and the Texas Mafia. Home, a.k.a. New York...is where the hate is.
You see, Rudy—unlike Bush, who can play the affable back-slapper card—just isn't and has never been the kind of guy you wanna sit and have a beer with.
He's the annoying jerk who makes you wanna smash a Schlitz bottle on the side of the bar and grind the damn thing hard into his squinched face.
Which is what his enemies are doing to him right now...one by one.
And it's only August of '07.
Say it again...with Dave Chappelle and Atrios—in harmony this time, children:
"Jiffy Pop, bitches!"
*Props to brat for the inspiration for the post's accompanying graphic
“Yeah, the karmic train is just flattening Rudy. I can't wait for it to back up and do it again.” brat | 08.10.07 - 5:28 pm
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