Giuliani’s Closet
Rudy Giuliani’s closet is filled to overflowing, and its contents are dropping out all over just as he ratchets up his presidential bid. And there’s a lot more than bones in those dark recesses: go here for the full (450 pages!) story, but I’ll give you the short (and spicy) version:
It’s all about the “weirdness factor,” as a secret study done by the Giuliani election team and leaked to the “Smoking Gun” website puts it. There’s the matter of his first marriage, to his cousin, Regina Peruggi: Rudy claims that for 14 years he didn’t know that she was a twig on his very own family tree, but if you buy that, you’re no doubt still waiting for those “weapons of mass destruction” to be unearthed in Iraq any day now.
Although he doesn’t say exactly when he took the trouble to investigate his family genealogy more closely, Rudy started seeing Donna Hanover in 1982: his marriage to Peruggi wasn’t annulled by the Church until the tail end of ’83. This particular corner of Giuliani’s closet is a particularly dank and cobwebby realm, best not looked at too closely. As the secret study put it, the matter of his first marriage “has been raised in the media as an extremely bizarre event.” And we’re talking about his home town media: just wait until the evangelicals in the outbacks get the lowdown on what has charitably been described as Rudy’s “chaotic” personal life, which is racy even for cosmopolitan New York: this was reportedly the real reason he backed down from challenging Hillary Clinton in the Senate race. The Giuliani dossier goes on to bluntly assess the candidate’s vulnerabilities:
“In reviewing the news stories describing this event and others in his private life, there are numerous inconsistencies and questionable circumstances about how long the two were married, whether Giuliani knew he was marrying his second cousin, whether he dated other women while still married.”
None of this matters, of course, to the neocons who seem to have united around Giuliani: indeed, they rather prefer it, I think, because it underscores their elitism, their sense of themselves as philosopher-kings exempt from the myths that dominate the lives of ordinary men and women. There is one truth for the elites, and another one for the masses. If you’re a Straussian, this isn’t monstrous hypocrisy: it’s the natural order of things.
Ah, but don’t worry, the anointed one will be able to bamboozle the bourgeoisie on account of his ascension into the mythic iconography of 9/11, and his reputation as America’s Mayor and his hardline neoconservative foreign policy views: according to CBS News, Rudy “perhaps more than any other candidate comes closest to holding neoconservative views on foreign policy.” Rudy will come packaged as the uber-Bush, a more decisive and even ruthless leader who will complete the neoconservative revolution by launching simultaneous invasions of all Muslim countries, and with Russia thrown into the bargain for good measure. This is to be followed very shortly by the ditching of the Constitution, and, presumably, the End of History.
Or, at least, the end of our old republic, and the beginning of the age of the American Caesars. Let a descendant of the ancient Romans reclaim the imperial purple – yes, life is full of little ironies, and mostly they are unpleasant surprises.
The neocon conception of American foreign policy as seeking out “benevolent global hegemony” is perfectly suited to Rudy’s imperial persona. His supposed strengths as the “national security” candidate are what, one supposes, the neocons regard as their trump card: i.e., a continuation of our crazed foreign policy which is opposed by more than two thirds of the American people.
This, however, is what counts to the ghoulish coalition that currently controls the GOP: Upper West Side neocons, and born-again backwoods folk quite inured to the idea of kissin’ cousins. Add to this the rising generation of Ann Coulter fans who are ready for a new Lider Maximo, and we have Bushism without Bush, a dissolute prince of the city whose inner demons are to be enacted on the world stage.
If we are going to compare American Presidents to Roman emperors – a practice, I fear, bound to become customary in the annals of future history tomes – a President Giuliani would probably turn into an American Caligula, who, in a gesture of contempt for the surviving institutions of the old Roman republic, appointed his horse proconsul. Bernard Kerik, Rudy’s former close associate and his pick for Homeland Security chief, is probably comparable to that, although I wouldn’t want to insult horses, but you get the idea if you follow the links.
What interests me about Kerik, however, isn’t the alleged organized crime connections, or even his typically New Yawkish grabbiness and gaudiness, his persona as a “character” – the “Mayhem Magnet” --but his briefly held position as “interim” minister of the interior in newly-conquered Iraq. Here we had just subjugated the country, and the first wave of neocon-connected appointees were flown over there, including Kerik – who, as unofficial head of the thuggery department, set up the Iraqi national police. Here’s a clip from his interview with the Lehr News Hour that gives us the flavor of his methods and practices:
“If you pick the right leaders and you place them in the right positions, let them do their job and that's sort of what's going on in the police now. We appointed a senior deputy minister, we appointed the chiefs in Baghdad throughout the rest of the country. We have to make sure that we keep track of them, monitor them, but let them do their job, let them pick the right people; then the job gets done.”
These “police” are now functioning as death squads, executing and ethnically cleansing Sunnis from Baghdad and environs: they have already accomplished this in the largely Shi’ite south. The job is indeed getting done.
If and when Rudy takes the oath of office, and swears to uphold the Constitution, there will be many more Keriks to come. Believe you me, it isn’t going to be pretty. About as pretty as Rudy in drag.
Not that there’s anything wrong with drag queens, provided they’re either entertaining or convincing. I once saw a group of them standing on a Jalan Sultan Ismail in Kuala Lumpur, on Christmas eve: they seemed like young and very girlish elves, so small and willowy were they, calling out in their singsong voices. More feminine than your average American woman, in any case: exclaiming on their beauty, I was corrected by my young, uh, guide, who assured me that these were “lady-boys.” (Another of life’s little ironies: there are more lady-boys on Jalan Sultan Ismail, a busy thoroughfare in a supposedly Islamic country, than there ever were on San Francisco’s Castro Street. )
I don’t care one whit about Giuliani’s private life, although I have a hard time believing the evangelicals are quite ready for the rutting Rudy. He is, after all, an Italian male, with certain impulses wired into his brain, particularly that part of it that rules the sexual imagination. I say, more power to him in that department – life, as the Italians know, is to be enjoyed, rather than endured. But what we shouldn’t have to endure is a Giuliani presidency, which would be a disaster in both the foreign policy and civil liberties departments. As far as the latter is concerned, if he treats the Constitution like he treated the New York City Charter, we are in for a hard time. Regarding the latter, I’ll just cite his stated views:
“We've got to start getting beyond Iraq. We've got to be thinking about Iran. We have to think about Syria. We have to be thinking about Pakistan and Afghanistan and making sure that the transition in Afghanistan goes correctly. We have to be ready for the fact that, whatever happens in Iraq, success or failure — success will help us in the War on Terror. Failure will hurt us. But the war is still going to go on. They're still going to want to come here and kill us.”
It wasn’t Iraqis who attacked us on 9/11, and yet Giuliani insists on seeing everything through the prism of 9/11 – and so, in his world, we don’t need to inquire too closely into who “they” are. In this Orwellian age, the enemy is bound to change, anyway, at any particular moment: you’ll recall that, yesterday, the enemy was the Ba’athist “dead-enders,” and their Sunni supporters. Today it is renegade Shi’ites, like the Mahdi Army, and the very “police” force-death squads that Giuliani’s buddy Kerik set up. A more classic example of “blowback,” as the CIA types call it, would be hard to imagine. And we’ll be getting plenty of blowback from the foreign policy of the Giuliani administration, promising to be even more reckless (if that’s imaginable) than Bush’s – and that’s my real objection to the first drag queen in the White House.
Comments
Good piece Justin,he makes bush look good.
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PREDICTION: If Rudolph Giuliani gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, he’ll be the first GOP nominee since William Howard Taft in 1912 to finish in 3rd place.
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I wonder what Dame Edna Everage (a Lady of unimpeachable integrity) would say about all this.
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Less than three weeks past Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news service boasted: Former Federal Prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, a former Mayor of New York City who may run for U.S. President, said the sentence was unfair and “way beyond the sentences served by other people that have been convicted of the same offense.”
The gist of this is that Rudy would let the traitor Jonathan Pollard off in order to garner Neocon support.
Does America need a President who would sell us out for AIPAC’s bucks?
A traitor should be shot, not released to a carefree life in Israel as a hero.
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I think you’re being optimistic. I’m not so certain there are going to be any presidential elections next year. Stock up on canned goods and ammunition.
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I just want Guiliani to run so I can ask him publicly how he knew the buildings were going to come down in New York. I’d ask who told him? What did they say? And then I’d ask specifically about building 7.
Guiliani is a drag, even in drag.
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Oh, dear. He’s kinky perhaps and certainly up to his eyeballs in 9/11, but it’s ok both with state law and Canon Law to marry your second cousin. It was not that uncommon in various ethnic communities in NYC even at that late date.
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I agree with Allan, there probably won’t be elections next year, but then, we haven’t had a presidential election for the
last 2 cycles. It’s not how you vote, but who counts the vote. As long as the cabal controls the electronic ‘voting’
machines, there cannot be fair elections.
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Rudy, McCain, Clinton, Obama, it does not matter. Unfortunately it took segregationist Governor Wallace to reveal the truth that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between” Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protestors, banning books like “America Deceived’ from Amazon, stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason.
Last link (before Google Books bends to gov’t Will and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
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It doesn’t matter how bad this guy looks…
nothing makes Dubya look better, nothing.
They probably both did the drag thing in
Bohemian Grove. (among other things)
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rudeeee tootie is certainly a third place finisher in any three way race.
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Rudy Guiliani is one of the most over-hyped politicians in America today. Yes, after the 9/11 attacks, he gave a few nice press conferences; but, when you look closely at the record of the former mayor of NYC, Guiliani is nothing special. During his tenure, Guiliani did little to reduce the enormous city bureaucracy that dominates the life of New Yorkers. We had a big drop in the crime rate (along with the rest of the nation), but a lot of that credit should go to former Police Commissioner, William Bratton, whom Guiliani would later fire because he was jealous of Bratton’s success. After the Amadou Diallo shooting, we almost had a massive race riot because of Guiliani’s lack of leadership and his knee-jerk (if not mean spirited) support of the police. And, as far as 9/11 goes, journalists, Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, in The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, argue the Guiliani administration was grossly negligent toward the public safety and health of the city, and that the Guiliani administration’s negligence led to many lives being lost on 9/11.
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Mr Cabal wrote: “I’m not so certain there are going to be any presidential elections next year. Stock up on canned goods and ammunition.”
Ammunition? This is the kind of thinking which makes me fear America’s probable reaction to collapse would be far worse than the Russians’ reactions to their government’s collapse. For all their faults and follies, the Russian people generally exercised a lot of good sense and self-restraint and practicality during their recent “time of troubles” in the 1990s. Stocking up on vodka took precedence over any thoughts of ammunition, and muddling along in improvised ways rather than civil war. The American tendency to extrapolate immediately from political turmoil to thoughts of civil war demonstrates just how fragile America’s social contract has become, as well as how estranged Americans - including many so-called conservatives among them - have become from the foundations of Western civilisation.
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ROFL!!! I have a very ahrd time jsut reading justins stuff with a straight face. Okay its serious business but mostly comicky…
After all, how else can you even begin to accept that a milion Iraqi’s were killed to steal their oil in this day and age with any kind of reality and still be able to function… Even Genghis only killed like 50000 and he killed everyone…
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Ah Rudy, yes I remember.............when the press was following him as he strolled down Broadway with his misstress........and then they cut to his poor wife dealing with some sort of interview and she is the only one that doesn’t know where Rudy is......... Yes probably better (now that women can vote) for the neocons to run someone else, someone less thuggish. Sorry for any errors, for some reason I cannot see half of the page when I compose.
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http://www.WeSupportRonPaul.com
We need to get back to the constitution, the best candidate to do that is Ron Paul. The media has an almost total black out because they know how much grass roots support he has. If you have any good ideas let them know!!
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J.Ball -
Good point on the fragility of American society - not so social. On a related not, it seems the growing secessionist movement is developing along some interesting fractures - legal secession vs. guns and tanks.
I’m all for self-reliance, including a good amount of food stored for whatever calamities are sure to come (hurricanes, job loss, etc...) but the armageddon-tomorrow mindset forgets the charity that is a prerequisite in the Christianity most of them claim. If the end of the world is tomorrow (who knows?), seems a final judgment might include more criteria than how well the gun case in the bomb shelter is stocked.
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Rudee is wrong on abortion, homosex,the iraq war, israel,and his love of power. He is a budding Mussolini.
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“This is to be followed very shortly by the ditching of the Constitution, and, presumably, the End of History.”
yea verily!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ_jQDfFaZI
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I think Giuliani is the PERFECT
Republican candidate. It’s time
the whole Party came out of the
closet to publicly embrace
their true brand of queer politics.
A man dressed up as a woman is an
apt picture of today’s Republican
Party.
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J. Ball: Yes, ammunition. Many medicated neighbors may not be prepared.
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That a man like Rudy could even be considered for president boggles the mind.
Mygod mygod is there not another Ike out there when we so desperately need him.
Wait a minute has anyone heard of Chuck Hagel????
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I love the irony.There should be no doubt that Giuliani is in it for the cash.There are a lot of” fools” who think that the rest of the country will sip the kool aid that he and his gang served up to New Yorkers but it is all wishful thinking.
Despite their brutality,one thing that the ancient romans had was courage and they would have been on the frontlines instead of several thousand miles away playing the roles of cheerleaders.
They too were meddlers in that part of the world and also did not seem to have learnt anything.
I do believe that he will fold and withdraw with his pockets and grubby hands full of money.
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Femininity isn’t a valued quality on Castro
Street. Like Jeff Gannon/Guckert, Matt Sanchez,
and Buzz Windrip’s chief of staff in “It Can’t
Happen Here”, homosexual males seek out masculine
qualities while travestying female ones. The men
who are erotically thrilled by illusory femaleness are a
very different breed from the one that rules
in Sodom.
I can’t agree with the comment posted by Jack that RG is a “budding
Mussolini”, who was no friend to abortionists,
sodomites, Zion, or the mafia.
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I’m not surprised that Guilliani, the drag queen is the front runner in the Republican Presidential nomination race.After all, a man dressing up as a women is an apt methaphor for the Republican Party is itself, which has been pushing Wall Street economics by campaigning on Main Street social values for years.
The Repubican Party found their perfect figurehead in the personae of George W Bush himself, a spoiled child of Northeastern Big Money liberalism, a Prep school bad boy pretending to be a down-home Texan and Born-Again Christian! Bush2’s Cowboy Drag act has been entertaining me since he got selected by the Supreme Court to be our new Emperor back in 2000.
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Mr Blalock,
Well done! HA! HAHAHA! :-)
Methinks, that in your understated way of speaking the truth, you have come very close to writing some Japanase Haikus about Giuliani!
Now let me have a go, at some spontaneous Haiku poetry about Giuliani! (For anyone unacquainted with Haiku, it’s a Japanese form of free-verse poetry, five syllables followed by seven, followed by five. Certainly our host Taki can tell you more about it, as he is a disciple of Japanese martial arts.) Here are my extemporaneous haikus dedicated to Giuliani:
Two towers fell, while
Gi-u-li-a-ni rose like
His staff always does,
For him, his staff rose
And many followed that flow’r:
They will never close
Until well sated
By venal ambition and
The vanity of
Chintz and wanker sperm,
The germs of fantasist boys,
Cowardly men of
War, who know no war,
Nor any blood nor Honour.
Giulani, you whore.
(And on that note, I would have NO objection to a homosexual or a transvestite in the US White House, IF ONLY they were honest men or women. Mr Giuliani, that rules you out.)
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Ha, J.Ball that was classic. I agree totally. There are many tranies or homos who I would much rather see in the White House so long as they are not whores of Rudee’s ilk
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