28 Comments
Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Some of us share your long memories of Rudy--all the way back to when he was "just" a prosecutor cleaning up the Fulton Fish Market. Even then, those who were actually doing the hard work of the investigation and prosecution were complaining soto voce about how Rudy was lazy, uninformed and ill-informed, and that he spent more time and effort grabbing the spotlight than he ever put into the actually working the cases.

When he ran for mayor, Rudy did not hide his racism under a bushel. In so, so many ways, Rudy and Trump are the same person. From the petty grifts to the serial monogamy, from the overt use of state apparatus to go after opponents to the cuddling up to mobsters (Bernie Kerik, anyone?). And perhaps most of all, Trump and Giuliani are peas in a pod when it comes to massive amazing astonishing completely over the top incompetence.

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another similarity is the appointment of incompetent bullies to run various departments. and you had that idiot bo dietl running his fascist yap on don imus.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

What I said: He launched his first campaign inciting and encouraging racism.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Yeah, no. That whole "America's Mayor" thing was pushed by the same DC-based political media that thinks Tang The Conqueror is normal. They were looking for a Republican hero. They always are.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Let us not forget Bernie Kerik’s wholesome influence.

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for me, the funniest part of that old guiliani philippic as manger on the yankees, is getting the five years tacked onto the straw's sentence. i was living in the bronx through those years, and i don't recall many paeans and accolades to Rudy emanating from those environs. those weren't great years for that neighborhood, for a variety of reasons, but Rudy did nothing to ameliorate them, and much to exacerbate the already depressing conditions. a thug, in short. an adulterer, a cross-dresser, a law-breaker, an asshole.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

You're much too gentle on him.

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my compassionate side. I do all I can to repress it these days, though.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

In case anyone needs a recap, because the VV link is broken:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2007/07/31/rudy-giulianis-five-big-lies-about-911/

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haha, number one lie (i have more experience dealing with it [terrorism]) sure sounds just like the orange one's bray about knowing so much more than the rest of us about the covid, since HE ALONE OF US ALL had the valor to go mano-a-mano with the deadly virus, and kick its ass.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

To be fair, Rudy DID have more experience dealing with terrorism. If by "dealing with" we mean "ignoring warnings and being mayor when the city got attacked TWICE by the same group, and then STILL fucking up by putting the Emergency Command Center in the PRIME TARGET that al Qaeda had attacked before and promised to attack again."

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Speaking of "longstanding hatred of Rudy Giuliani", let me, as a New Yorker dotard add:

Back I was a zillion years younger, still something of a candy ass, I found Rudy's propencicy(sp.) for high profile busting of people while USA/SDNY for the TV unseemly -- later confirmed when he failed to get convictions. But the arrests got him good publicity and for a sociopathic shit such as he, nothing was more important than getting that publicity.

And then there was the start of his first, unsuccessful run for the mayoralty: Leading, inciting, egging on a cohort of shitfaced cops in a demo against David Dinkins to relieve themselves of their pent up racism.

So, you know, I match Roy's hatred for Rudy. At least.

Then, once mayor, there was the huge failure of Donna Hanover (to marry whom, Rudy was required to buy annulment from his prior wife so he and Hanover could wed in a church) when, given the opportunity, failed to bash Rudy's head in with a frying pan, merely injuring him enough to send him to the Doctors Hospital ER. (Rudy had come home late after working (or, per rumors, "working") with his press secretary.

Like Donnie, the pathological behavior didn't start at a certain point when triggered by ambition but he, like Donnie, was born rotten.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Rudy later married the press secretary, IIRC.

Ah! The Part of Family Values! Interesting how most of their leadership are serial adulterers. But remember: It's gay people who are ruining marriage.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Christine Whatshername. He did not marry her, sorry.

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There are many things to say about Giuliani & his shit-streak of awfulness in NYC and in the current regime, but one thing that doesn't get mentioned often is that he really missed a career in drag: sis really played the part in that video. His signature lip-synch would have been an Andrew Dice Clay routine interspersed with Cher's Half-Breed

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I feel like I've loathed Giuliani since the womb. Not only did Dinkins initiate the drop in crime, but Jackie Maple and Bill Bratton were the responsible parties in Rudy's administration, which is why he got rid of them. Not to mention his screwing Judi Nathan in Gracie Mansion while Donna Hanover and family were in the next rooms. Fun trivia: Donna found out they were separating when spineless Rudy announced it at a press conference. When Judi married him, she began calling herself "Judith" because "Judi Giuliani" was just too de trop.

Breslin had him pegged: "A small man in search of a balcony."

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I forgot that Breslin line, it's solid gold.

I remember sort of liking Guiliani when he first got elected because my entire grasp of Dinkins was that he played tennis, which did not seem very New York to me (I was a stupid kid, living in NJ). Four years later I was working in the city and Guiliani was less compelling. As a white kid, his years were no reign of terror to me; but they played instead as absurd. I remember one night in the Pyramid Club to see a friend's band (I was cool for 37 minutes in the '90s), there were these hand-markered signs taped to the wall: NO DANCING. Guiliani was trying to kill everyone's vibe by enforcing a "cabaret law" from 1930 or something because dancing... caused property values to plummet, was the idea? We'd get all hopped up on music and then hit the streets shouting and smashing windows? It was a minor but fully ridiculous note in the endless symphony of Republican insanity, and I remember my friend Rat (I had a friend named Rat) and I were standing very still under one such sign sipping pints of whatever was cheapest and he calmly said, genuinely amused, fully aware as were we all of the problem of defining the arts in a post-Dada world, "This doesn't make any sense. How are we to say that I'm not dancing right now?" In retrospect that was me at a Wiemar cabaret feeling surely reason would soon reassert its ass, and here we are 25 years later with Russia advancing across our land.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"... there were these hand-markered signs taped to the wall: NO DANCING. Guiliani was trying to kill everyone's vibe by enforcing a "cabaret law" from 1930 or something because dancing... caused property values to plummet, was the idea?"

More likely, he was just being a dick needing to show he was strong by being a dumb ass bully.

A cockroach.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Let’s hear it for Joe Biden, the master of the smackdown - Rudy and Paul Ryan!

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(Scholarly inquiry: To what does "Come on, lady, I laughed when you came in" refer? It sounds like a punch-line but I'm coming up empty.)

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It's just a stand-up comedian diss

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author

The comic in a nightclub scene in "Raging Bull" where LaMotta refuses a drink from Salvy. (Later, the comic is shown telling the quiet room "That was my best joke" as a bead of sweat rolls down his forehead.)

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I want in! I remember when he threatened to defund the Brooklyn Museum because one of the exhibits featured an artist who used elephant dung in a painting of a black Virgin Mary. The kicker? Chris Ofili sold the piece in 2015 for almost $5 million. Oh, and his anti-dance ordinance citing cabaret laws made New York City basically a parody of Footloose, Nebraska.

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I remember! Even went to the exhibit to spite Rudy.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

That's quite the bill of particulars! Makes Ted Wheeler look like good in comparison. LOL

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

The two luckiest politicians of my lifetime are Bill Clinton and Rudy, who both got to take credit for the 90s boom and the "cleaning up" of NYC, respectively. The real truth is that they just happened to be in the right spot when the Soviet Union fell, globalization, the service economy, and the internet revved up, and the end of leaded gasoline drove the crime rate down.

What Rudy also got to preside over was the beginning of the end of NYC as the equivalent of enlisting in the Army if you were a weirdo from somewhere else. And that short, billionaire goblin is the one who really finished that era of NYC off after Rudy fucked off. I think there are still pockets of the city where it's possible to find your freak platoon, but that sort of stuff isn't even really tied to place or physical location anymore.

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Oct 16, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I believe these days, it's a noun, a verb, and a GRU story about a Biden

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