It’s time for Rudy to shut his face and go home

I wrote about Rudy Guiliani a few weeks back. He got himself into mischief questioning whether Barack Obama loves America. With the exception of a few Tea Party Taliban types, he was roundly ridiculed for his comments. You would have thought that a seasoned politician like Rudy would have stuck his proverbial finger in the proverbial air and figured out that (1) he’d lost a ship load of credibility through his idiotic and insensitive comments and (2) he might want to keep a low profile until the murky air cleared. Not our Rudy. He’s just getting started.

Speaking, last week,  with New York talk show host John Gambling – he of the three generations of John Gamblings who, for 88 years, hosted the Rambling With Gambling show – Guiliani achieved the rare double banger of embarrassing comments.

First, he said that he wished Barack Obama was more like Bill Cosby. Oops – maybe not the smartest thing to say given recent revelations about America’s favourite TV dad. What he meant, was that Cosby used to regularly call out stupid behaviour by African Americans and Obama doesn’t. The Ferguson, Missouri situation was one of the examples he used. I guess he forgot that the recent shooting of two police officers, in Ferguson – the bad behaviour he wanted Obama to call out –  was a direct outcome of months of protest over the behaviour of a police department that has been deemed, by government investigators, to have consistently behaved in a racist manner. I don’t hear Guiliani calling that out.

His second mystifying statement was that former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson should be commended for killing Michael Brown. He tried to clarify that by referring to the report that says there’s no conclusive evidence that Brown’s hands were in the air when Wilson shot him to death. Unfortunately, all anyone heard, and all that’s being reported, is that Darren Wilson should get a medal for killing unarmed Michael Brown.

Rudy Guiliani used to be a savvy politician. I suspect he had a posse of consultants and minders around making sure he didn’t come across as a total dick. These days, he’s a sad old man trying and saying anything in the hope of remaining even a little relevant .

I have a message for Rudy. He’s showing himself to be an old school racist and increasingly Far Right fascist who is completely out of touch with reality. No one – except Rush Limbaugh and Bill O”Reilly – give a damn what he thinks and the more he opens his mouth, in public, the more he tarnishes what’s left of his post 9/11 reputation.

Rudy, it might be time to move into the home, on your terms, before someone gets a court order to forcibly do it.

Good bye Rudy. Your time is now officially up.

Rudy Guiliani should have looked in the mirror before he tried to give Obama a lesson in love

Former New York City mayor, Republican darling and 9/11 ‘hero’ Rudy Guiliani has made news with his most recent comments about Barrack Obama. Guiliani has said that Obama doesn’t see America like Guiliani does because the way Obama was brought up has affected his world view and, as a result, he doesn’t ‘love’ America. This is thinly veiled Far Right code for ‘Obama was brought up in a Muslim country, his father was Muslim – in fact he was probably born in a Muslim country. Hell, he’s probably Muslim himself and he hates good right-minded Christians like Rudy”.

How was Rudy brought up and how did it affect his view of love and America? Well, Wayne Barratt, writing an investigative piece for the New York Daily Times offers some insights.

Guiliani has been quoted as saying ”Obama wasn’t brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country”.

Guiliani got his ‘love for America’ from his father Harold – who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy’s uncle. Harold was able to use his convict status to his advantage during the Second World War. He ensured that, even though his conviction had been under an alias, that the draft board knew of it so he could avoid service during the war. This is the man Rudy regularly referenced, during his public life, as his main role model. Obama’s uncle and grandfather, on the other hand, served during the war and his uncle helped liberate Buchenwald.

It is true that Guiliani got his values from his father. During Vietnam, Rudy got at least six draft deferments and even got the federal judge he was clerking for to write him a letter creating a special deferment category. Later in life, he married his cousin Regina. When he found greener pastures, he got a priest – who had been his best man  – to grant him an annulment on the grounds that she was his cousin. As if he hadn’t known that at the time? He then married Donna, had two children with her, and when he’d had enough of her, he dumped her in a press conference. During the later stages of his marriage to Donna, he spent a small fortune of New York taxpayers’ money being snuck around by security staff and police to see his girlfriend Judi, who is now his third wife. So I guess he does have a great deal of experience with ‘love’ – or at least something that approximates it.

Guiliani did do a good job of unifying New Yorkers, and the whole country for that matter, immediately after 9/11. That’s about it. Some of his closest associates – including friends that he appointed to senior roles – ended up in the joint for corruption of one sort or another. Former Police Commissioner, and Guiliani sidekick, Bernie Kerik immediately comes to mind.

Now Rudy says that, in spite of his comments about Obama, he’s not a racist. Outside of the typical Fox News lunatic fringe, he’s having a tough time finding people who agree – even some Republican presidential wannabes are calling him out.

It’s time for Rudy Guiliani to crawl into a hole of obscurity, shut up and stop embarrassing himself. The sooner the better.