Rudy Giuliani
By Elaine Magliaro
On Friday, longtime New Yorker and public intellectual Fran Lebowitz was a guest on Bill Maher’s HBO program Real Time. During a panel discussion with Maher, Rob Reiner, Elahe Izadi and Bill Nye, Lebowitz gave her opinion of Rudy Giuliani and comments that the former mayor of New York City had made about Obama not loving America.
Lebowitz talked about the first time that Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993. She said his ads said “vote for me and it’ll be 1952 again. He is just soaked in nostalgia. That’s what he meant when he said Obama doesn’t love the country the way we love the county.”
That’s when Bill Maher asked, “What does it mean…that Republicans want to go back to an era, the Fifties, where America was run by socialism?” Lebowitz replied, “You mean economic policy. The New Deal. That’s not the part they miss. They miss — you know, what is behind Giuliani’s comments, and we’re not allowed to say this, but it’s racism. We now live in a society where it’s worse to call someone a racist than to be one.”
Real Time with Bill Maher: Fran Lebowitz – Giuliani and Racism (HBO)
Maher wondered, “What happened to Giuliani? He was the mayor of a liberal city.” Maher added, “He used to be a moderate Republican.” But Lebowitz countered with the following comment: “No, when Giuliani was the mayor, every five minutes an unarmed black guy was getting shot in the back. It was always a different excuse from the cops — ‘he had something in his hand, I thought it was a gun,’ and it was a candy bar. It was a key chain.”
Lebowitz also noted that during Giuliani’s stint as mayor of NYC, not one single unarmed white man was ever killed by police.
SOURCE
Fran Lebowitz: When Giuliani was mayor an unarmed black man was killed every 5 minutes (Raw Story)
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Thanks Elaine,
She was great on Bill Maher’s show.
Mike,
It was an excellent discussion…and Lebowitz WAS great.
Mike,
I loved the part when Lebowitz said that it’s considered MORE racist to call someone a racist today than to actually be a racist.
Elaine,
Fran is one of the smartest and wittiest of famous people around today.
A little (a lot) over the top (exaggerated). Don’t you think !!!!!!!!!! Killing people for skin color ??? what would an intelligent accomplish person like Ben Carson who has lived in hospital ER’s for most of his life say about that ?
All Ben Carson proves is that education is often no cure for ignorance and personal prejudice.
I make it a point not to watch Maher’s show, but for some reason it was on in the background the other day and I caught most of what Fran said. She was indeed great.
Gene,
We watch Real Time. There are great discussions and interviews on some of Maher’s shows.
I am not a Maher fan as he strikes me as being smug. However, I realise that in not watching him regularly I miss some very good interviews so I depend on this blog to point me to those worth watching. Lebowitz’s observations were spot on.
blouise,
I think he’s smug too–but that doesn’t keep me from watching his show.
Elaine,
Which is good for me! I don’t intensely dislike the guy and his “New Rules” segments are often downright brilliant. (Truth be told, sometimes I would take a break from the Daily Show for the same reason … smugness)
The Fifty Million Dollar,One delegate Man.
Rudy Giuliani, American Soviet
The Russians believed in exceptionalism, too
By Matt Taibbi
February 21, 2015
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rudy-giuliani-american-soviet-20150221
Excerpt:
But the problem with exceptionalism is that it can turn unintentionally comic with the drop of a hat. You’re made to believe you’re at the center of an envious universe, but then the world changes just enough and suddenly you’re a punchline clinging to a lot of incoherent emotions. I watched this happen with my own eyes to a lot of people in the former Soviet Union.
And I feel like it’s happening here now, with Rudy and the rest of the exceptionalist die-hards. They’re hanging on to a conception of us that doesn’t really exist anymore, not realizing that “America” is now a deeply varied, rapidly-changing place, one incidentally that they spend a lot of their public lives declaring they can’t stand.
This was all on display this past week. Rudy’s bizarre, Internet-maelstrom-inspiring media tour began with remarks at a private dinner for Scott Walker. People focused on the insult to Obama, but just as interesting was the apostrophic address to a conspiratorial and exclusive you and me America of his imagination:
I do not believe — and I know this is a horrible thing to say — but I do not believe that the president loves America. . . He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.
Rudy was ripped by pretty much everyone to the left of James Dobson for these comments, with the White House snarkily commenting, “It was a horrible thing to say.”
There were allegations of racism and “otherizing,” and the Twitter/Net/Cable feeding frenzy was intense enough that by the end of the week, even Walker began creeping sideways, beetle-like, in a direction away from Rudy (Walker told CNBC that Rudy could “speak for himself,” noting helpfully: “I love America”).
Characteristically, and with a trial lawyer’s bravado, Rudy tried to talk his way out of the mess, rambling in self-defense to Bloomberg, CNN, Fox and anyone else who would listen. At each stop he doubled down on his remarks, concluding the tour with an incoherent rant to the New York Times in which he denied his comments about Obama were racist “since [Obama] was brought up by a white mother.”