Why the fascination with Rudy?

[annabanana]

In an article in today's Newsday, a poll is quoted that would have more New Yorkers supporting Rudy than Hillary in a hypothetical WH run in '08. Have NYers forgotten what a crap Mayor he was until he metmorphsized into a 9/11 hero? Or is the poll suspect? I don't think that NY has soured on Hillary to this extent.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uspres0308,0,7348382.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

[HereSince1628]

1. Major League Baseball hasn't started. They have to hype something.

[AzDar]

2. I don't think it EXISTS. We are being force-fed this crap; both the

'Hillary's got the nomination wrapped up', and the 'Giuliani is a great leader
and a decent human being' meme are what the Corpocracy controlling the Media wishes us to believe.
Resist!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. Was he really a crap mayor?

I grew up in the Metropolitan area and left in the late 70's and it was a mess. All I know is that when I go back there now, the subways are clean, lit, and I'm not afraid for my life. That's my one and only point of reference. Most of my family in NYC and Jersey City liked him.

[annabanana]

8. Well, he was ok in the "made the trains run on time" way

that Mussolini was. His police force was also brutal and out of control. Artists were no longer allowed on the street.. homeless warehoused against their will
etc etc

[Mizmoon]

4. This NYers remembers Guliani's "I'm impotent" divorce defense

what a maroon. He should hang out with Bob "E.D." Dole.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Because:

1. He isn't *.
2. He isn't Cheney.
3. He isn't Hillary.
4. He isn't Tom DeLay.
5. He isn't John McCain.
6. He isn't Bill Frist.
7. He isn't Dennis Hastert.
8. He isn't Arnold.

He is (if you believe the PR) "America's Mayor". Even though all he did was do his job with the help of a minion or thousand on 9/11, Rudy came out looking very "executive", Mr. "Can-Do". He was calm and in control. Americans are looking for a new hero. Someone no-nonsense. A "real man" who isn't controlled by any body or any organization.

Unfortunately, Rudy has the appearance of a lot of these desirable qualities.

[0007]

10. Let Rudy and Bernard Kerik clean streets in D.C.

Don't let these two crooks near the cookie jar.

[meegbear]

6. A New York City newspaper ...

asking New York residents about a New York City mayor. DUH!!!

[leesa]

7. Because people actually believe he wasn't part of MIHOP.

[Crankie Avalon]

9. The hair?

What's the story behind that???

[OhioChick]

11. If I remember correctly.........

weren't New Yorkers embarrassed by him prior to 9/11? Still married and taking the girlfriend everywhere? Republican family values, huh? :eyes:

[Wetzelbill]

12. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of simply not tucking his tail

between his legs and running away on 9/11. He's considered a hero more because of what he didn't do than what he did do. It's a poor state of affairs when the media is so desperate for a hero that they set the bar that low.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

13. you mean this guy?

he seems to dress in drag alot.

iirc, he was in drag on letterman and snl.

[HamdenRice]

14. Giuliani was popular because he gunned down Black people

Let's face it: Giuliani was popular because he was an open racist. There is an undercurrent of racism in the outer boroughs and of secret, coded racism even in the white shoe districts of Manhattan, and Giuliani played to that.

When Giuliani first ran for mayor against Dinkins, he led what is now universally called a "police riot", where in some of NY's finest shouted slogans right out of 1960s Mississippi. Giuliani responded that he agreed with the rioters.

When he came to office, NYC was already on the rebound and had been for over a decade. I really despised Mayor Koch, but to be ruthlessly honest, Koch initiated NYC's rebound. The city hit its nadir under Koch, but on a wide variety of fronts, it was obvious that the city was coming back -- renovation of abandoned buildings, employment, and the subways.

Despite his reputation, Dinkins continued the rebound. Despite the crack epidemic hitting its peak, crime began to decline during Dinkins administration. The main reason was that Dinkins bucked the police union by taking cops out of cars and putting them on the beat. I remember that day: it was like crime dropped over night in my neighborhood dramatically.

Giuliani reaped almost two decades of public and private investments in NYC government and infrastructure and eagerly took credit for projects and initiatives that had started years before but that bore fruit during his administration.

He made kabuki theater of being the cause of the drop in crime by having the police "toss" -- that is violently stop, throw to the ground and frisk -- somewhere between 100,000 and a quarter million black men, 90-99% of which led to no arrests. Even though Bratton, who engineered the continued drop in crime in Giuliani's first years wrote editorial after editorial that this was a disaster, Giuliani continued.

This understandably led to senseless killings such as Amadou Diallo and even worse Patrick Dorismond. The latter was killed for refusing to tell an undercover officer where he could buy drugs and shouting that he does not do drugs. Giuliani attacked the Dorismond family and illegally released Patrick's juvenile record of a minor infraction, saying "he was no choir boy." In fact, Patrick had been a choir boy in his local catholic church.

The gunning down of innocent black men was, however, wildly popular in some quarters of the city, and has contributed mightily to Giuliani's reputation for being tough on crime.

Happily, according to community gossip, the Dorismond family, which is Haitian, hired a houngan (voodoo priest) to put a curse on Giuliani, and shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, thereby saving the republic from this rising fascist.

As the great Jimmy Breslin described Giuliani, who tried illegally to stay in office after 9/11, he was "a little man in search of a balcony."

[Broke In Jersey]

15. From a Jersey perspective...

NYC was a very dangerous place to hang back in the 80s & early 90s. He did help clean up the place and make it the safest its been in many decades. Before he came along there was talk that the city was unmanagable and drastic measures to the cities charter needed to be undertaken. So from a tourism, safety, cleanliness, pride in the city, he is the difference. For everything else...I will listen to the people that live there.

[Jersey Devil]

16. Rudy - Exterminator of Squeegee winshield washers

and death to jaywalkers.

Cleaning up Times Square, chasing unlicensed umbrella & hot dog salesmen off the sidewalks and things of that nature certainly did improve NYC from a tourist point of view, that is if you are willing to overlook the fact that in order to do it he turned the police into something akin to the Gestappo who achieved these wonderful tasks by doing such things as shooting an unarmed man 40+ times and shoving a broomstick up another man's rectum.

[HamdenRice]

17. Another Giuliani accomplishment - not talking to a single Black politician

Giuliani famously bragged sometime late in his first term or early second term that he had not talked or shaken hands with a single African American leader or politician since he had become mayor. He was very proud of this and bragged to the newspaper interviewer.

He would have been great in Alabama c. 1960 -- although in the pre-civil rights south, white politicians at least talked to black leaders in a kind of informal governance.

[TahitiNut]

20. When I look at Giuliani I think "George Wallace Lite"

I lived in Alabama during George Wallace's reign - pre-shooting. He made racism seem banal. Rudy always shows up on my radar as a more modern, 'enlightened,' GQ version of Wallace.

[HamdenRice]

21. But I thought that Wallace was kind of enlightened compared to Giuliani?

Wallace started out as a southern liberal and was beaten in an election and declared to his aids, "I'll never get out n***ered again" in an election. I thought a lot of what he did was grandstanding, and when civil rights finally came to Alabama, he made a smooth transition to working with African Americans.

Giuliani, by contrast, detests African Americans personally. Even Wallace would not have bragged about not having met a single black leader during his entire administration, as Giuliani actually did.

[TahitiNut]

22. Wallace watched where people were going, took opportunities ...

... to jump in front and call himself a 'leader' - only to fade back and watch for the next opportunity. I saw him as a person with no moral convictions - a populist exploiter. My perspective is shaded by the fact that I left (escaped) Mobile the same week as Mississippi Burning. I took away a very bad taste in my mouth.

[JNelson6563]

18. Propaganda

He was the 9/11 hero so that's how he's marketed. They gobble it up.

[Fleshdancer]

19. It's emotional. Most Americans were hungry for a leader after 9/11

and when our President was flying around the country aimlessly and when our VP was in his super secret bunker, Rudy was there playing the part of a grown-up.

Also, this is a state wide poll, not just NYC. Only one city in the entire state has had to deal with Rudy long term. Besides, how seriously can this poll be taken when the article doesn't even tell the reader how many people were polled and the margin of error? The lack of details lead me to believe this was probably not scientific anyway.