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's latest testosterone-fueled rant found him arguing that if we hadn't invaded Iraq, Saddam (who had no nuclear program) would be "becoming nuclear right now," and making the jaw-dropping and stomach-turning claim that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "are kind of debating whether to invite" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad "to the inauguration or the inaugural ball." (At least he seems to accept that it will be a Democrat making out the guest list in January '09.)

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.

Here is the AP correction.

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Comments

[MrCoffeeCup]

Thank You Jimma Carr-ta! Back when you were in Charge a few bearded towel heads bitch slapped you into the next presidental defeat!!
Too bad you were wearing your wife's panties, otherwise you would have averted the Second Phase of the Islamic Revolution! First one we won in 1953.(Republican Administration) HA!

Thanks Jimma, due to your cowardice, we had to prop up that mad man Saddam so that we could continue our war on Communism. Thanks Bill Clinton, The Sudan gave you Osama on a plate. Thereby could have avoided 911(Coward) Twice we had him, twice we failed under Democratic cowardice. Somalia(Clinton admin)gets bitched slapped out of that country!
Now Rudi stands up and is identified as someone who tends to be a knuckle dragging, bad ass! And your point is! Why is it the the Arabs want a Democratic Party victory? Because they can win their War! Bitch Slap the Ice Queen(Billary)! Oh the Arab world can hardly wait!

[lawb]

If only the mainstream media did their homework, and rather than looking at Giuliani as entertainment recognize that he is more dangerous than Cheney, is scarier (because he is smarter) than Bush, and that he tried to do exactly what Musharraf has done after 9/11, when he attempted to extend his mayorship. Anywone thinking of voting for Giuliani MUST NOT IGNORE HIS HISTORY. KEEP IN MIND HIS FAMILY DOESN'T EVEN LIKE HIM. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU? NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOUR INTENTIONS ARE, THIS IS AMERICA AND WE CAN NOT VOTE FOR ANOTHER PERSON WHO IS NOT WILLING TO FOLLOW THE LETTER OF LAW WHEN IT COMES TO THE RIGHTS AND ACTIONS OF THE PRESIDENT. SUCH PERSON TAKES AN OATH TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, NOT TO HOLD ON TO THE PRESIDENCY UNTIL HE OR SHE FEELS IT IS SAFE TO TURN THAT POSITION OVER TO SOMEONE ELSE. THAT IS CALLED A DICTATORSHIP, OR MAYBE A "DECIDERSHIP," AND THAT IS NOT AMERICA.

[shag11]

The nitwits on the Right ought to be ashamed that they can be swayed by such rubbish. Fuck the issues,(healthcare, energy prices, low wages, crumbling infrastructure, turbulence throught the Middle East, foreclosure crisis, and on and on)as long as you can talk shit, they like you. What a joke.

[Garvagh]

The media are fully complicit in presenting this vicious liar and dangerous would-be dictator as a serious candidate. Giuliani's relentless slandering of Iran and Syria, when the assistance of both countries is needed to help to stabilize Iraq and allow this country to withdraw its armed forces without undue difficulty, demonstrates a supreme stupidity running along the lines already laid out by George W. Bush.

[castlerider]

Fish Lips Giuliani is such a joke to even consider as leader of the free world that it boggles the mind how anyone can even begin to be serious about the fool.
It shows what a week media we have, especially after his crazy misstatement about how if he'd been in England with his coloc cancer, he'd have been a goner since their survival rate according to him is 44%,
An outright lie.
Paul Krugman took him to task in a NYT op-ed, but where are the rest of the pundits when it comes to demanding some truth, for a change?
Ours is now among the worst, most dispicable mainstream media in the world.
Really! CNN Sucks! Fox Bites the big one, and the networks are still trying to find their tails. What a bunch of losers, with fish lips in tow....

[Zhonni]

Please read and post my comment please! I thought it was, well it's still, pretty funny.

[bolderdash]

there once was a boy named Rudy,
Who burped amd farted so rudely,
got the school play lead of Napolean,
put his Micky Mouse hat on his head,
won his school election for presidency,
based on his clowning and baffonery!

We have had a clown for President for almost eight years in GWB, i don't think America can afford another clown for four years to survive with Rudy!

[GLOBALISATIONisBARBARISM]

Your railleries are misplaced Arianna. Giuliani is a new vogue, and that is the strategic thing which you are trying to obfuscate. What does that signify? I'll tell you: It refutes the strategy of all those go-on-it-easy and be-shrewd-­and-expedi­ent Democrats, who counselled against a principled stance, e.g. by going for impeachment from moment one after Nov. 06.

All this is weary; it seems to be the fight of yesterday. Yet, exactly this is sentiment is wrong:

When the left goes on to not learn one bit from their failures of even a recent past, they'll truly end in getting disaster brewed. YOU CAN ALREADY, SMELL THE DISASTER: Half a nation supports a party, all of whose major candidacies can no longer discern and condemn a clearly unconstitutional, anti-human, ridiculous, detestable stance, in short: can not tell a bully from a statesman. And, now comes the hot thing, they may the minority today (those wanting a Republican president), but A SISSY-PUSSYFOOT LIKE NANCY PELOSI, - who not only nixed impeachment, but refuses to let anyone in the House do anything of significance, including their non-action on the brewing economic catastrophe, their sacrificing the remnants of American real economy to the financial locusts no going mad under conditions of the nearing crash - THREATENS TO BRING IN THE WRATH OF A DECLINING MIDDLE CLASS exactly in time for a ratcatcher like Giuliani exploiting the quasi-fascist rage for political holocaust.

And, mind you. This will be the end not only to an "American empire". It will be the end to anything in way of an America as an ordered political entity, whatsoever. And of a lot of civilization beyond America as well.

[Ben]

I know it must be fun to rip in to Rudy Giuliani, but why not spend a little time on Ron Paul? In the on-the-ground Republican straw polls, Ron Paul has beat Rudy Giuliani 33 to 5. (See http://www.ronpaul2008.com/straw-poll-results/)

Seems to me Paul is a bigger threat to the Democrats than the Weasel. How about a little equal time? You could pound on Paul a while, or would you prefer to pretend he isn't a contender?

[NYCexile]

Arianna,

Are you only just now realizing this? Where were you during both Giuliani Administrations?

Rudy isn't a Republican, he's an Authoritarian with him in the top spot.

The last I heard, Hizzoner was 0-for-14 in First Amendment cases alone. And that should tell you everything you need to know about dissent in a Giuliani Administration.

[Richard729]

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the toughest of them all? Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!!

One would hope that the 2008 election is more than who can bomb the most countries deemed by the Bush administration to be deserving of all-out immolation of their citizens. Clearly, this is the only so-called diplomacy ever exhibited by Bush and his warmongering mob.

Among Giuliani’s political advisers is author Norman Podhoretz, who, according to a Washington Post story, "...argues for bombing Iran to stop it from building a nuclear arsenal. Podhoretz says Iran, like Iraq and Afghanistan, is another front in the same war sparked by the Sept. 11 attacks. He calls this World War IV, the Cold War being World War III."

Another former Giuliani adviser who supports expanding executive powers and soon-to-be Bush's new Attorney General, is retired federal judge Michael Mukasey.

"Both Mukasey and Giuliani back the Patriot Act, which expanded law enforcement's access to private telephone, e-mail, financial and other records, among many other provisions," according to the Washington Post report.

As we all know, things can change almost overnight in the world of politics. One outcome that has yet to be determined is whether Hillary Clinton is steeled enough to withstand the inevitable Swift Boating and trashing of her character to the degree that voters will choose War Forever Bush clone, Giuliani, or will they say we’ve had a bellyful of the corrupt, depraved and murderous Republican killing machine?

Dick Cheney's One Percent Doctrine states that if anyone looks cross-eyed at you, that is the provocation that permits all-out force, even if it means killing millions of innocent people who have no desire to do harm or wage war against Americans.

Is that what our citizens want? If so, Giuliani better be ready to answer the call for a national draft because the most powerful military in the world is bogged down in Iraq with no clear end in sight. Fighting Iran will take more than just dropping bombs.

[CactusTom]

Unfortunately there is a caveman instinct in all of us that we gravitates toward a leader who sounds tough and acts decisively. Carl Rove understood this basic human instinct and so propped up Bush in this image, and he won twice. By 2006, however, voters finally overrode their blind desire for pure toughness, realizing that talking tough was not same as acting effectively. Indeed, voters came to understand that acting tough in all the wrong ways plays right into enemy intensions.

Guiliani is well behind the curve if he thinks the caveman tough guy act hasn’t lost its luster for the foreseeable future with American voters. He is like the general fighting that last war. The only voters he is likely to impress are those 24 percent Republican dead enders.

[MNUSA]

I just think he would be a disaster as President.

[TLV]

The media execs decided long ago that it would generate more viewer-ship to pit Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 election. We have absolutely no say in this. Elections are a mirage.

[M. Peach]

Rudy is a creep. I live in Manhattan and he is definitely a bully and tyrant. I can't imagine him getting the nomination, then winning the presidency. I shudder at the thought.