“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.
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