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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Ebasta's correct and the diebold 'scratch-in' was a joke.
God help us all if Giuliani wins. I honestly doubt it. He is full of S...
Gemma
Come on now, Arianna, what media...th
Excellent article Arianna!
Now on the Dems' side they all seem happy to punch Hillary and thus somehow increase the uncertainty of who's gonna win the general vote :-(
If by any chance it happens that Guliani comes out as the winner and becomes President, USofA will definitely become the most hated country in the world, with Iran trailing..
Biden was so right re Rudy, "a noun, verb, and 9/11" ! and the " Most underqualified candidate ". America will fall or sink even faster with a Rudy at the helm.
DARCY received a reply from KLABOW. It is an excellent example of how far gone some of the Dupes on HuffPost are, as witnessed by Klabow's "thinking:"
WHAT R U STUPID! REAGAN WAS GREAT!--For Iran-Contra and the deceit and mendacity and violation of the Boland Amendment? For his relentless effort to destroy labor unions beginning with the air controllers? For his exploitation of religion by posturing as a born-againer who didn't attend church and who finally did little for the Christian evengelicals who had boasted about having gotten him elected through their votes and then saw him do little for them? For his "trickle down" deep tax cuts for the wealthiest and increased military-industrial complex spending and the increasing debt that Bob Dole couldn't abide as Senate Majority Leader and who led the increase in taxes to control the growth that debt? (Dole said he never believed in trickle down economics and Daddy Bush called it "vodoo economics"); For the increasing number of indictments in his administration arising out of Iran-Contra?
I GUESS U THINK THAT A LYING PHILANDERER IS BETTER.---
U ARE WHATS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY! WAKE UP!--
Not at all. You are among those Dupes being easily misled and sent off to cheer and vote against their own best interests and by extension the best interests of all the rest of us. Thereafter, the happy ultra-Rightwing Stooges arrive in Congress and go to work for the wealthiest among us. It is time for you to wake up.
It's up to the democrats to lead the attack against the republicans. Somehow, with the exception of Bill Clinton, all democratic nominees seem to have taken a page out of the Michael Dukakis book on how to run for president. Don't attack, don't defend yourself and don't do or say anything offensive to your opponent. Gore and Kerry did this as well as Mondale and McGovern before them.
Big media is owned by the right wingers. That explains it all. They are just propaganda outlets these days.
We need to reverse media consolidation. That is the root of the problem. Break up these big corporations, and don't let the war machine corporations own ANY PART of the media. They just spend their time drumming up business in the form of advertising for war.
Arianna, please don't add to the wardrum-beating rhetoric about Ahmadinajad ("nuke-happy," "holocaust-denying madman"). That isn't exactly accurate and when you state things in that way, even if it is only to make a point, you add fuel to the anti-Iran fire.
First of all during Vietnam Rudy filed for a draft deferment it was refused by the selective service so he gos to the judge he is clerking for and this judge uses his influence to get his deferment. Now on 9/11 he presents himself as a hero of 9/11 what did he do? He made some speeches refused to take money from a Saudi prince that takes real courage. His claim to fame is that he was just there if that is all it takes to be a hero there are a lot of heroes in NYC. Rudy the tough guy only if a real tough guy is backing him up I have seen many like Rudy in my life catch them alone and they are not so tough. I see Rudy as a small man that likes to act tough pick fights and have some one else do the fighting. I find that those like Rudy that never served in the armed forces seem to be much quicker to send them to war. Rudy did not have the sense of duty or the courage during Vietnam to serve what makes him commander in chief material nothing. There have been many Presidents with out military service that were good Presidents but I do not think Rudy would be one of them.
Once again we're letting the professional political hacks of both parties who long ago sold middle America down the river shove their handpicked and bottle fed candidates down our throats. You have a cross-dressing chickenhawk now trying to act all butch,you have a Nazi-ette saying she'd have to wait until she was in power to decide whether or not she'd do anything about the un-constitutional powers the sitting tyrant has claimed. Then you have a real man a veteren a man who helped bring many new lives into this world. The more support Ron Paul gains it seems the further his party moves away from him. In an honest election he is the only Republican who could beat Hillary. Unlike Giuliani he actually beleives in things without being paid for it.
>>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.
Today is the day I gave up on MSNBC. Between Morning Joe and Mika's Dad backing Obama and Matthews, I'm a tough guy from Philly, spouting that Americans want a tough guy in the WH, I'm down to Keith O.
Rudy was in office about 15 weeks after 9/11. Will Ms. Huffington please lay out for us on this site what he did to stop another attack during those 15 weeks?
IL DUCE OR JUST IL DOUCHE BAG?...
If dems, liberals, and progressives want to scotch this man's candidacy, they had damned well better start playing dirty also. And the place to start is with Giulian's drag queen cross-dressing. This has been public sector for quite some time but is only just starting to be played up and publicized in the liberal media, including Huffpost.
My sense is that liberals have restrained themselves in this area out of a misguided sense of "fair play" and a correct assessment of the fact that this is a totally bogus issue. Well, friends, it sure ain't a bogus issue among the so-called "values voters" who are likely to form the core of Giuliani's support. So come on, let's put on the latex gloves and fight dirty!
The media has looked the other way since before Bush was "elected". No surprise that they side with the money.
Democrats don't need fake outrage every time Rudy opens his mouth, we have plenty of very real outrage to spread over the Rs.
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