Hey Rudy, You Missed a Coupla' Gold Fillings In a 9-11 Cadaver Back There...
I have a friend here in NY who works in broadcast journalism, as well as doing a little stand-up comedy on the side. He and I were sitting in an editing suite about a month ago when we saw Rudy Giuliani yammering on about something on a monitor behind a glass door. We couldn't hear what was being said, so my friend joked, “Oh wait, lemme turn Rudy up so we can hear him better...” He mimicked turning up a volume knob and then said what he figured Rudy was saying, his volume rising with the knob twist.
“Nine eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven! “Nine eleven-nine-eleven? Nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-ELEVEN! Nine-eleven-nine-eleven-I beat n*gger squeegee men upside the fucking head for fun! Nine-eleven-nine-eleven! Thank you very much!”
I believe that Rudy owes my friend a hefty paycheck or two as a campaign consultant, because after the last few days, it seems that Giuliani absolutely cribbed my boy's jokey shpiel and is seriously tear-assing away with it like a shattered-braced Forrest Gump.
First, there was this piece of sordid, money-grubbing news from his camp—and no, the reporter who got a hold of this has not had his ass kicked like a dusky squeegee man...yet...
The union — already a vocal critic of Giuliani's — said Tuesday that the fundraiser's "$9.11 for Rudy" theme is an abuse of the image and symbols of the 2001 attacks.
"It is nothing short of disrespectful to the legacy of the thousands of civilians and 343 brave firefighters who died at ground zero," IAFF president Harold Schaitberger said. The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd called the theme "unconscionable, shameless and sickening." The firefighters' union has endorsed Dodd. Another Democratic candidate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, said the event was "overdoing it."
"You know, we shouldn't use a tragedy for politics," Richardson told New Hampshire reporters on a conference call.
A Giuliani spokeswoman said the $9.11 idea was selected without the campaign's knowledge. "These are two volunteers who acted independently of and without the knowledge of the campaign," Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella said. "Their decision to ask individuals for that amount was an unfortunate choice."
Understand what went on there. A Giuliani booster held a fundraiser for his razor-lipped idol, using the keen as fuck donation angle of the attendees paying the amount of NINE DOLLARS AND ELEVEN CENTS apiece to gain entry. Kewl! And when busted on the exposure of the creepy amount requested—and as you can tell by everyone's denial of knowledge of who sanctioned the number, that EVERYBODY probably signed off on that number—Rudy's people didn't cancel the event, nor did they turn the ill-gotten money down. They pocketed that shit like a crackhead left alone in a DEA evidence room.
Okay?
The man who blanches at the mention by critics of his profiting from his “BMOC” strutting around in the immediate hours and days after September 11th, has got his “old friends” running about with donation baskets asking people to pony up “$9.11” apiece for him. Gotta get that gas money for the SUVs to drive to those $25,000-a-pop “speeches” from somewhere, right?
But then...just when you thought he couldn't pimp 9-11 so much that it'd become grotesquely loose and floppy from overuse...well, Ol' Mayor Silky tosses his big-feathered hat into the ring, slips his goldfish-filled, orthopedic shoes on, and steps hard, baby—right into a pile of steaming, runny, political dog-shit.
This was no emergency call. His cell phone rang in his pocket during his speech, which is itself unusual; most public officials turn theirs off during events, if only out of courtesy for the audience. Mr. Giuliani went on to answer it and carry on a routine “love you” and “have a safe trip” exchange with Mrs. Giuliani while the crowd (and those of us watching on C-Span) wondered what in the world that was all about.
His campaign aides spun the episode as a “candid and spontaneous moment” illustrative of the couple’s affection. We might believe that if we hadn’t heard stories of similar behavior by Mr. Giuliani as he has campaigned around the country. During one event in Oklahoma, we’re told he took two calls, at least one from his wife, and chatted for several minutes as the audience waited. That episode followed Mr. Giuliani’s eye-popping disclosure earlier this year that, if he’s elected, his wife would sit in on Cabinet meetings. He later downplayed that possibility...
“That was just weird,” one NRA audience member told the New York Post about the phone interruption. Mr. Giuliani doesn’t need more weird.
Okay, we have several levels of “up-30-points-in-the-4th-quarter” cheap-ass point scoring here. The first is the inane, contrived, and trotted out once too often, “call from bug-eyed wifey at an inopportune time” routine. Turns out, Der Rudester's played that card a few times before, alá Bush's oft-repeated, Yakov Smirnoff-quality quip about his inability to deal with words having lots of “syllables” (pronounced by him as “sill-ah-bulls”...oh teh funneeey ). It just seems that Judi has this amazing, Radar O'Reilly-esque power to tune into Rudy, and always manage to catch him just as he's delivering a key point in a speech somewheres. And he, bless his loving, shriveled, black-ice heart—simply can't let the whip-wielding Ilsa's call just go to voicemail like the other 99% of the planet's busy inhabitants. He must speak to her, professing his love in gooey Fletcher's Castoria-sweet tones—while at a podium, in the middle of campaign/policy speeches—to waiting, confused-as-hell crowds.
What's the dilly with dat? Easy. Some fucknut campaign advisor, wedded to decimal points in focus group data has apparently told this hollow-hearted devil that the numbers are bad for him on the empathy/caring tip, and he has to do things to make him seem more...well, “human”, and appealing to demographics he's got huge problems with (WOMEN!). So, it's bye-bye to “Herr” Giuliani, the snarling martinet, and “Hello!”, to Li'l Rudy—the sentimental, empathetic, ersatz Alan Alda, circa 1982. Of course, a majority of women—at least the freep-ettes who aren't just blindly in his camp are more than hip to his “my political power is the ultimate penile enhancement” ass-grabbery with women other than his last wife, Donna Hanover. So realizing the limits of the play to “devotion”...Rudy went to defend the cell-phone idiocy using the only thing he has in his bag of bullshit.
“And quite honestly, since Sept. 11, most of the time when we get on a plane, we talk to each other and just reaffirm the fact that we love each other,” he said.
Yeah...that tattered, nick-marked, set-on-a-spring-lever-up-his-cheap-suit's-sleeve 9-11 card.
To put what he's done in these two instances in perspective, you need only look at the facts involved.
Rudy's campaign needs money? Use $9.11 as a fundraising prompt.
Screw up badly in an attempt at image makeover? Use 9-11 as an excuse to cover for the gaffe.
The “Because of 9-11, me and my spouse talk a lot more on our cellys” excuse/line is pretty cold comfort to a spouse of someone who didn't make it home that day, Rudy. And the $9.11 pitch for campaign moolah is sitting like rusty nails in the gut of those same people. They're hearing about it. Because in spite of your poll numbers, or rather, because of them Rudy, your enemies from the right are helping to spread the stories to hurt you, and help their hard-core fundie candidates. It ain't even the left dogging you out on these craven blegs. It's the base, baby. The GOP base. And while you've gotten by thus far thanks to media focus on the more interesting Democratic candidate field, as the days get short, and you have to open your reptilian mouth more and more—you won't be able to help yourself. And you'll keep going on just like my buddy joked that day...
“Nine eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-eleven! “Nine eleven-nine-eleven? Nine-eleven-nine-eleven-nine-ELEVEN! Nine-eleven-nine-eleven...”
And some of those pissed-off families of the victims you're scuffing your feet on as you dance on their graves are gonna say something that'll leave you stammering thrice as hard as when it got out that your daughter backed the Othello to your Iago. You'll think that's nothing compared to the narrative that's being laid out. A narrative that says...
As surely as a grave-robber unearthing of a victim of that horrible day to pry gold fillings from his mouth, you, Rudolph W. Giuliani are just as despicable in your repeated pimping of the deaths of those 2974 people—for attention, as a dodge/excuse for PR screw-ups, and yes, for COLD, HARD CASH you either put in your pocket to buy people tiaras, or use to further your ego-fueled campaign.
If there was ANY doubt—so much as a sliver of a sand grain's scintilla of a doubt that not only is 9-11 your ONLY selling point, but is also the one thing you will use to defend, deflect, and deploy regardless of the triviality of any hiccup you may face in this campaign...and in life, it was utterly erased with these two shameless break-dances in the graveyard of September 11th's victims.
It is nothing but the awful truth to say that September 11th was the luckiest day in your misbegotten, amoral life, Rudolph W. Giuliani. And you have behaved accordingly, poaching, and selling the poisonous, golden eggs from a dead-eyed, ghostly goose.
What next, Rudy?
Will you and Judi trendily adopt a child from some Eastern European country, (not Africa...that's too trendy for your racist ass.) and name him “Nine-Eleven”, alá George Costanza's idea of naming his child “Seven”?
Ooooh! Maybe you'll tailor your
Or will you ditch the usual, barge-like campaign bus for your whistle-stop tour to meet Americans, and tool about from the purple mountains, to the fruited plain in snug, intimate style with your beloved Judi...in a red, white, and blue painted Porsche 911?—courtesy of your car-dealer ex-roommate Howard Koeppel?
As irony is dead...and you have all the shame and tact of Rip Taylor on a crack bender, I probably shouldn't put those ideas out there as jokes. One of em's liable to come true.
My money's on the speech length...with the adopted baby a thisclose second.
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