Strange doings in Rudolph Giuliani's corner these days as he struggles to stay atop the GOP heap.
First was the bogus "surprise" cell phone call from his wife, Judi, as he addressed the not-so-friendly N.R.A.
Now, his campaign backtracks from an oddly themed fund-raiser requesting donations of $9.11. ("Sickening," is how Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd of Connecticut, in a fast press release).
But stunts are nothing new for Giuliani's campaigns.
Just call him Shecky.
When he ran against Hillary Clinton for a Senate seat in 2000, aside from engaging in an extramarital affair, then-mayor Giuliani had the state flag of Arkansas raised up a flagpole in front of New York's city hall while he completed a campaign-related swing through Little Rock.
In that lame-duck year, too, he recited, at a city hall press conference, the lyrics "Captain Jack will get you high tonight... " to suggest that Clinton endorsed illicit drug use, since the song played at a Buffalo, N.Y., hall where she received a third party endorsement (Billy Joel's song is actually about suburban ennui and alienation, but no matter). Via a direct-mail campaign to Christian Coalition Catholics around the country in early 2000, Giuliani suddenly championed the posting in public schools of the Ten Commandments (although, when it came to him, perhaps only nine).
Oh yes, and he yanked the city's subsidy and put the city legal department to work to try to defund an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum because of its "anti-religion" sentiments. Although a federal judge termed his actions unconstitutional, Giuliani stoked the controversy to good effect, raising millions for his ultimately short-lived campaign for Senate.
Just as off-kilter is Giuliani's recent boast, while in England, that he is one of the world's most famous persons (move over, Paris Hilton).
Or his half-baked accounts of grappling with terrorism for years and years.
"I investigated Yasser Arafat before anybody knew who he really was," he said in Las Vegas, thoroughly overstating his role as a U.S. attorney probing Arafat in the killing of Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists in 1985 on the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro. Jay Fischer, a lawyer who represented the Klinghoffer family, told the Washington Post this week that he never talked to Giuliani about the case.
"When I heard [him] just in the last six months making a speech that he knew about terrorism because he had led the investigation, I recall turning around to my wife and saying, 'That comes as news to me,' " Fischer said.
Enough said.