Awww Rudy, You Know Better! No Checks, Baby! CASH On The Dresser Tells No Tales!
The pundit backers of the Rudy Giuliani candidacy—backers who like to pride themselves on their plugged-inned-ness, and boast the same zeal in sniffing out trends as dogs have for sniffing at poop, are among the dumbest things going with opposable thumbs.
These knee-bruised pom-pom shakers would have you believe the spin they live by—that Rudolph W. Giuliani is some sort of worldly, ready for the big stage übermesch, prepared for any and all challenges a leader of the free world would ever have to face.
The flaming towers and collapsed fuckpad of 9-11 has forged this otherwise pasty, hate-able little martinet into a mighty leader of the West—with portfolio!
Slobber! Slobber! Slob—Gag-ghhhhhhk!
Wrong.
What Rudy Giuliani is is exactly what the great Jimmy Breslin called him out to be years ago—“A small man in search of a balcony.”
If you really look at Giuliani and the way he's conducted his “campaign” thus far, it should be evident that he's little more than a puffed-up, local politi-thug—used to bigfooting and bogarting his way around a much smaller pond than one that commands the national spotlight every day.
You can see it in his wan and cavalier campaign style. He acts as if he's still working NY's five boroughs—or rather, in his case—one city (Manhattan) and four wooden spokes on a glittering, golden hub. New York—cocooned, self-centered place that it is, in many ways deferred to Rudy's snarling and back-handing about. He cowed much of the press corps with denial of access, black-balling, and played a local version of the Bush “yer a traitor” game, where anyone who questioned his tactics was deemed anti-city, and down with the dusky hordes he was tossing into jail like so many grapes into his hungry mouth.
He grew used to the kid-glove treatment...until his second term, when his brand of Queegish crazy wore thin on even those who once deferred to him, and they actually started in on him for his ham-fisted brazenness.
It kicked him in the ass with his ugly handling of the “end” of his marriage, and his feeble, grasping linkage of that to his cancer diagnosis—thinking it would garner him sympathy from the press. It didn't. Pile that atop the rest of the second-term troubles that stripped his teflon veneer—his callousness after various acts of brutality by the storm-trooper wing of his NYPD, the mounting casualty list of commissioners he personally drove out thanks to his egocentric arrogance...even something as simple as a crazed, over-the-top, and unintentionally telling outburst at a ferret owner during a radio show, (via Oliver Willis and This American Life) and he was no longer “Fuck what you think...'I-can-get-away-with-anything' Rudy”.
Until September 11th that is. Still, what I call the luckiest day in his misbegotten life.
A pariah up until that point, the tragedy gave him a chance at that balcony Breslin spoke of—and Rudy stepped out onto it, practically jodhpured and high-booted, and played to the crowd beautifully. It pretty much worked. The local press quickly tired of his antics again, but it wasn't that “peanut gallery” he was playing to. Rudy was preening for the masses in back, and in the balconies. They ate it up for quite a while...enough that he thought that 9-11 and his “rehabilitation” had reset his relationship with the press back to its old, comfortable zero point where few would would check on his blustery pronouncements and daily dribble of white lies—small, medium, and some quite large.
He still has those braying pundit pals hype-manning for him. But the national press is too big and scattered to all fall in line. And because of that, you get an ugly, little exposé like this one from last week:
Rudy Giuliani has a firefighter problem. Following up on earlier criticism, a group of 9/11 family members and firefighters met on Monday at Dartmouth College to launch a campaign against the former New York City mayor and current Republican presidential candidate for what they deem to be massive failures before, during and after the attacks of 9/11.
But at least one member of the FDNY continues to offer his support to the former mayor -- and may be getting paid for it.
John R. Orlando, who serves with Engine 216 in Brooklyn, New York, has been cited prominently as a Giuliani supporter. Last June, in a New York Times article detailing the mixed reviews Giuliani has among the city's 11,000-membered firefighting force, Orlando said he regularly saw Giuliani at fires despite suggestions otherwise.
Orlando was also quoted as saying the “bottom line is, I think he's been more of a friend to firefighters than I've seen in the news. I don't think all the criticism is warranted.”
Did those comments come with a reward? Three months after he praised Giuliani, Orlando found himself on the former mayor's payroll. On September 28, 2007, the Giuliani campaign paid one John R. Orlando more than $1,580 for what they deemed on a campaign filing as “political strategy consulting.”
When asked about the arrangement -- after repeated attempts for comment -- Giuliani spokesperson Matt McKeon questioned the question.
“Are you suggesting that firefighters aren't capable of political strategy?”
Pressed to describe what strategy, exactly, Orlando provided, McKeon replied: “I'll get back to you.”
He never did. (emphasis from LM)
Orlando, who is still with the FDNY, was also reached via phone. He was asked for comment about both his consulting for Giuliani and his thoughts on why the former mayor has been poorly received among his fellow firefighters. Like McKeon, he too said he would reply at a later time and never did. (LM emphasis, again)
Mister 9-11 is such a friend of the firefighters that groups of them ally against him along with other 9-11 survivor families, swear vengeance against him, and the one firefighter who speaks the loudest for him, come to find out has been cashing a fucking check for his “support”.
Ohhhhhhh....that is rich!
This is the Rudy we know all too well in New York. The one who just did whatever-the-fuck and figured all was mellow-“d” and no one would check back on it. But checking back they are, and just like he's been entangled in the Regan shit-vortex, (again, more brazenness) he's snagged his sack in the ol' zipper-teeth again with this “bust”.
One that simply says...RUDOLPH GIULIANI IS REDUCED TO HAVING TO PAY FIREFIGHTERS TO SAY POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT HIM.
No dodge. Just feeble spin. Another stumble from a man revealing himself to the country as a political rank amateur.
And stagnating in the polls, and dropping in enough of them to shake him up, he's resorted to open, off-the-talking-points-reservation pleas for support based solely on his 9-11 “record”.
His base paper—The New York Post threw him under the snow-chained bus with that sarcastic “Mr. 9-11” headline story.
Distance first...then the long-distance knife toss in the back.
Ohhhhh, yes! Doin' great there, “R”. Life's just a bowl of tiny-tiara-ed cherries for you these days, huh?
And what are these days all about, my fine, razor-lipped friend?
Surprising, mocking “MR. 9-11” headlines from your usual propaganda mill, and the lovely exposé that you, RUDOLPH GIULIANI, IS REDUCED TO HAVING TO PAY FIREFIGHTERS TO SAY POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT YOU.
Damn.
Hope he's worth it, Rudy. All fifteen-hundred blood-soaked “Washingtons” you spent.
Cha-ching! Enjoy the video. :)
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