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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Rudy
Posted by Jill | 6:02 AM
Well, it looks like Judi Nathan's dreams of being America's Queen have been dashed on the shoals of Dade County. No longer will we have her zombie, plasticene, Botoxed-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life rictus of an adoring smile to make shivers of revulsion run down our collective spine. "Little Louis", her affectionate name for her Louis Vuitton handbag, won't be residing in the White House after all. (/meow)

And Rudy Giuliani's dreams of huge armies goosestepping through the streets at his command as they head off to endless, expansive war in the Middle East, of long prison sentences for potsmokers and jaywalkers and murderers alike, similarly must be put away, perhaps to be resurrected later, but for now -- simply a dream deferred.

And the rest of us can heave a deep sigh of relief.

For now.

Because the Republican nominee who will treat us to either an entire summer and fall of strolling down Whitewater Vince Foster Rose Law Firm Monice Lewinsky Lane, or a summer of turning Barack Obama into either a cousin of Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden's mole here in the U.S. will be either the craven Bush whore John McCain or the even more craven panderer Willard Mitt Romney.

And one of them could still pick Rudy as a running mate.

So what went wrong? Is the age of fearmongering past? Was it his personal life? Last night on MSNBC, the horror that is Pat Buchanan was offset by the treat of a rare appearance by Bob Herbert and of course the insights of Rachel Maddow. Herbert is dead-on here, that Giuliani is at heart a cop -- and it actually says something redeeming about Republican voters that this ultimate punitive daddy figure was so soundly repudiated:




However, the redemption stops there. For as noted at ThinkProgress (with more video), John McCain's vision for America is "less jobs and more wars."

So what went wrong for Rudy? Why is it that his attempts to reframe himself as a conservative were such a spectacular failure whereas Mitt Romney's same game has him still in the race? Is it simply a matter of Romney being better-looking? Was it the Vanity Fair article about his sleazy business dealings that include representing Middle Eastern dictatorships that have harbored the very terrorists he decried at every turn? Or the article in the New York Times revealing the police memo that unequivocally urged the then-mayor to NOT locate his command center in the World Trade Center? Did the revelation of his use of city vehicles to chauffeur his then-goumah around turn off socially conservative voters, and was the "Eww!" factor triggered by Judi's gushing about her hot, manly husband a symptom of just too much information? Did Joe Biden distill that nagging something that people didn't like about Rudy but couldn't put their finger on when he famously and accurately said in a debate that every sentence out of his mouth is a noun, a verb, and 9/11? Or is it just that he's an openly authoritarian prick, and Republicans prefer their authoritarian pricks to have a stupid grin and a towel-snapping frat boy demeanor?

If there were no other reasons to wish Steve Gilliard was still here, the spectacular fall of Rudy Giuliani would be enough reason all by itself. But since he's not, let's let one of his torch-carriers, the great Lower Manhattanite, answer the question:

Take the worst elements of Captain Queeg, Nellie Oleson, Stinky from Abbott & Costello, and an STD'd scorpion, bundle it into a man and put said man in charge of a complex, challenging city and you'll get what Rudy Giuliani was really all about. Tourists and outsiders didn't get him. They didn't have to live with him. They got the cathode-ray Bing Crosby of the pipe, red alpaca sweater and the Christmas specials. We lived with the drunken Bing swinging the extension cord and windmilling signet-ringed fists as he prowled the house looking for someone to fuck up.

Time won out, though, and it managed to utterly expose him. Quite honestly, Rudy was nearly as lazy and disinterested a candidate as Fred Thompson was—both of them lazy honoraria-grabbers swearing somebody owed 'em something because they thought they were somebody . And in the end, they can now go meet at Tree's Loser Lounge and swap notes on star-fucking and prosecutorial malfeasance.

Me? I'm gonna sit here with the icy blonde tonight, and get around town a bit later in the week. I'm sure I'll see a bunch of her doppelgangers out and about with my fellow revelers in town. But for now, the mind wanders.

What's Ol' Judith gonna do now? Cialis and dough is fine, but mama wanted more. Access to power was the drug. What new doll will she start crawling after in the “Valley of Delusions”?

The Aqua Velva's gone—along with the leathery, old-man skin. And now, so too is the “tough cop”—his precious Sipowicz. It's down to McCain for Tweety to toss the lettuce, tomatoes and ranch dressing for. Ick. I just threw up in my mouth. Not a little. A lot.

And the irony isn't lost on me that Rudy's final come-down is tomorrow in California—of all places, Simi Valley. Home of the Reagan Library, and home of the springboard for the police-brutality-fueled L.A. riots. Rudy should be right at fucking home.

Full circle. Bullshit's end. And please let the door hitcha' on the way out—and may there be a patch of ice right in front of the Goddamned door.


(And while you're at it, don't miss installment one of his series The NY/DC Power Play on the Giuliani/Kerik/Judith Regan Axis of Evil.)

Whatever the reason, today we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief that Republican voters in Florida -- especially the transplanted snowbirds -- saw how cynical the relentless repetition of 9/11 was, and how terrifying the Foreign Policy of Norman Podhoretz was and said "No!". We can be thankful that Jewish voters in Florida are not the blind, crazy Zionists that Rudy thought they were and didn't think turning the entire Middle East into a sheet of glass was a swell idea. Today we owe a debt of gratitiude to the state of Florida.

But don't get too cocky, there, guys. Don't forget, your state is still, and forever will be, the scene of the original crime of November 2000.

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