I've always said that the people who know him best hate him the most.
New Quinnipiac University poll of New York State voters:
In a head-to-head presidential matchup, Sen. Clinton tops Mayor Giuliani 53 - 32 percent, compared to 50 - 36 percent October 17.
"The former New York City mayor gets a split 41 - 40 percent favorability rating in the state, and a negative 38 - 51 percent score in the city."
President Giuliani 2008? Wake me when it's over! - why do you guys think?
Have you guys noticed that arch-enemy Giuliani is tumbling in the polls? This would be fortuitous news except that he is being overtaken by the even more heinous Huckabee (you know, the compassionate guy who wants to round up all HIV+ folks and put them in concentration camps). Twit Romney is within sniffing distance and leading in New Hampshire.
One would think it would be better for the Dems if the GOP nominates a dim-witted, ultra-right religious zealot like Huckabee or Romney, but I wouldn't put anything past an electorate that voted in Bush twice. They say that the independent "center" voters in this country have moved away from the wingnuts, so why does the latest poll show Romney essentially tied with Obama in a national vote?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
One would think it would be better for the Dems if the GOP nominates a dim-witted, ultra-right religious zealot like Huckabee or Romney, but I wouldn't put anything past an electorate that voted in Bush twice. They say that the independent "center" voters in this country have moved away from the wingnuts, so why does the latest poll show Romney essentially tied with Obama in a national vote?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Speaking of the odious troll....oh yeah Criddic, I can see why you LOVE him so much. What a stunning example of honor and integrity.
The Nation
Bad Sex in the City
by JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
[posted online on December 12, 2007]
There is something untrustworthy about a man who can't conduct a decent affair. Rudy Giuliani never could. He flaunted his girlfriend Judi Nathan (now a proper lady with a proper lady's name, Mrs. Judith Giuliani) at public events while he was mayor and still married to Donna Hanover, with whom he had no understanding about elective affinities. He used his son Andrew as his beard, claiming he was teaching the boy golf those many weekends when he was cavorting with Judi in Southampton. He announced his new love, and concomitant dumping of the old, at a 2001 press conference, thus informing Donna their marriage was over at the precise moment that any New Yorker listening to 1010 WINS learned of it. Then he tried to push her and the children out of Gracie Mansion so he could get on with his life.
In the return whiff of scandal around Rudy and Judi the hoary details of their crass courtship are said to be of no consequence. Let's not get into his private life, commentators quickly warned, eager to steer political discussion clear of anything that might actually rub up against the realities of life experienced by the common horde. Let's talk about the issues, the "new" ones here being hardly newer than what any New Yorker had long known: that the NYPD accompanied the pair on their trysts; that (hark!) these police escorts were paid for from the public purse and involved some finagled accounting.
The parched details and dollar amounts reported lately in The Politico are nowhere nearly as telling as the rough picture of things sketched in Newsday by Jimmy Breslin back in 2000, when he wrote about a cop nicknamed Wrong Way because once while pulling into Gracie Mansion with Judi in the back seat he almost collided with the cop pulling out of the mansion with Donna. Wrong Way was later part of a five-car police detail assembled simply to get the king and his court to the ball game: one car for Rudy, one for Judi, one for Andrew, one for Donna and one for the Other Girl he's said to have kept on the side, the two girlfriends given separate corporate seats at Yankee Stadium.
The only evocative tidbits among the latest revelations are news that someone from the NYPD walked Judi's dog and accompanied her on a shopping trip when she selected her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring--in Atlanta. At least the cops didn't torture or kill the dog, a practice that in an earlier life was part of young Judi's job as a saleswoman for US Surgical. That would have twinned Giuliani's personal and political deficits, probably irreparably.
In the main, the huff and puff over "taxpayer expense" is not likely to blow down much to obstruct Giuliani's presidential campaign. Once we collectively concede that a maximum leader requires maximum protection, and so too his loved ones--either for the sake of his happiness or as a hedge against ransom threats--then there's really not much difference between the wife, the kids, the dog, the girlfriend. The reporters at The Politico didn't sift through those FOIA documents out of a passion for fiscal probity. Sex is the story that sells here, so why not talk about sex?
Granted, it was more fun--the last time adultery and presidential ambitions coincided so publicly--to imagine Governor Clinton bound to a bedstead with silken ties, maddened by the big-haired blonde with her animal prints and scented light bulbs, a woman who claimed he was never so happy as when he could bury his face in her muff, than it is to contemplate Mayor Giuliani panting over his soon-to-be-new-missus, the "princess," according to Vanity Fair, who's always longed to be "a queen." To toss around the subject of adultery and politics now is to raise that specter of Saturday Night Bill and of the other big-haired girl, the frisky Monica, with her kneepads and cigar tricks and oral-anal games in the Oval Office. And no one much wants to do that: not partisans of Hillary Clinton; not her opponents, who may have to support her come November or ask for the Clintons' support; not conservatives, who may find themselves having to back their own philanderer down the road.
Already, this is a repression election. Rumors are afloat that Rudy needs a short leash, his eyes wandering toward a former rhythmic twirler with eclectic tastes, a fan of The Lonely Crowd, The Indispensable Chomsky and Leadership, by Rudolph Giuliani. Democratic bloggers bleat pathetically, "At least he [Bill] stayed married." Although it's Hillary's great asset, she sometimes wears marriage like a cross. Rudy is said to be similarly chafing now that Judith is his wedded wife.
Christians take heart in Mike Huckabee and, maybe, the knowledge that if Giuliani does turn out to be the chosen one, his sins won't matter anyway. David got away with Bathsheba, after all, and with dispatching her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to the enemy's spears. The rest of us can take heart that at least Rudy doesn't hold the power of life and death over anyone. Bill executed a man as the Gennifer Flowers story swirled in 1992. He bombed Iraq as the Senate considered removing him from office over Monica Lewinsky. Nothing beats death for distraction.
The trouble, in fact, is in treating sex as a distraction. Usually it isn't. Usually it's just life, like the mortgage and the bad school and the checkbook that's balanced or not, the dinner that's sublime or not. Adultery may thrillingly divert from one reality, but in the form practiced by Bill and Rudy and millions of others it tends to create its own parallel universe, with its own set of mores and unwritten rules. Rudy broke them all.
One doesn't bring the paramour to the marriage bed (unless it's a threesome), or involve the children, or deliberately humiliate the spouse. Bohemians, hippies, gay people, adventurers in polyamory have all experimented with different levels of truth-telling and have all decided, at one time or another, when a lie or reticence is the kindest act of all. But they've also understood, at some deep level, why the English called adultery a "criminal conversation": the criminal part could be jettisoned, as it was by English law in the nineteenth century. But the conversation, measured physically, emotionally, intellectually, could not. Only a madman or a monk would count it a moral failure to converse with more than one person for a lifetime, yet most Americans call adultery just that, even when they're engaged in it. And most married people probably are involved in it, or have been.
Poll numbers are as schizoid as the culture, with overwhelming majorities telling surveyors they "know someone" who's not monogamous while only a minority own up to their own sampling of delights afield. A politics that's similarly evasive--that counts as irrelevant the ways people arrange their lives, their joys, needs and sorrows; that cares nothing for how and why they converse--is no politics at all. It doesn't matter that Rudy had sex with Judi or anyone else, or that he had that police escort, frankly. What matters is that Rudy was a prick. Rudy made it cruel.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/wypijewski
The Nation
Bad Sex in the City
by JOANN WYPIJEWSKI
[posted online on December 12, 2007]
There is something untrustworthy about a man who can't conduct a decent affair. Rudy Giuliani never could. He flaunted his girlfriend Judi Nathan (now a proper lady with a proper lady's name, Mrs. Judith Giuliani) at public events while he was mayor and still married to Donna Hanover, with whom he had no understanding about elective affinities. He used his son Andrew as his beard, claiming he was teaching the boy golf those many weekends when he was cavorting with Judi in Southampton. He announced his new love, and concomitant dumping of the old, at a 2001 press conference, thus informing Donna their marriage was over at the precise moment that any New Yorker listening to 1010 WINS learned of it. Then he tried to push her and the children out of Gracie Mansion so he could get on with his life.
In the return whiff of scandal around Rudy and Judi the hoary details of their crass courtship are said to be of no consequence. Let's not get into his private life, commentators quickly warned, eager to steer political discussion clear of anything that might actually rub up against the realities of life experienced by the common horde. Let's talk about the issues, the "new" ones here being hardly newer than what any New Yorker had long known: that the NYPD accompanied the pair on their trysts; that (hark!) these police escorts were paid for from the public purse and involved some finagled accounting.
The parched details and dollar amounts reported lately in The Politico are nowhere nearly as telling as the rough picture of things sketched in Newsday by Jimmy Breslin back in 2000, when he wrote about a cop nicknamed Wrong Way because once while pulling into Gracie Mansion with Judi in the back seat he almost collided with the cop pulling out of the mansion with Donna. Wrong Way was later part of a five-car police detail assembled simply to get the king and his court to the ball game: one car for Rudy, one for Judi, one for Andrew, one for Donna and one for the Other Girl he's said to have kept on the side, the two girlfriends given separate corporate seats at Yankee Stadium.
The only evocative tidbits among the latest revelations are news that someone from the NYPD walked Judi's dog and accompanied her on a shopping trip when she selected her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring--in Atlanta. At least the cops didn't torture or kill the dog, a practice that in an earlier life was part of young Judi's job as a saleswoman for US Surgical. That would have twinned Giuliani's personal and political deficits, probably irreparably.
In the main, the huff and puff over "taxpayer expense" is not likely to blow down much to obstruct Giuliani's presidential campaign. Once we collectively concede that a maximum leader requires maximum protection, and so too his loved ones--either for the sake of his happiness or as a hedge against ransom threats--then there's really not much difference between the wife, the kids, the dog, the girlfriend. The reporters at The Politico didn't sift through those FOIA documents out of a passion for fiscal probity. Sex is the story that sells here, so why not talk about sex?
Granted, it was more fun--the last time adultery and presidential ambitions coincided so publicly--to imagine Governor Clinton bound to a bedstead with silken ties, maddened by the big-haired blonde with her animal prints and scented light bulbs, a woman who claimed he was never so happy as when he could bury his face in her muff, than it is to contemplate Mayor Giuliani panting over his soon-to-be-new-missus, the "princess," according to Vanity Fair, who's always longed to be "a queen." To toss around the subject of adultery and politics now is to raise that specter of Saturday Night Bill and of the other big-haired girl, the frisky Monica, with her kneepads and cigar tricks and oral-anal games in the Oval Office. And no one much wants to do that: not partisans of Hillary Clinton; not her opponents, who may have to support her come November or ask for the Clintons' support; not conservatives, who may find themselves having to back their own philanderer down the road.
Already, this is a repression election. Rumors are afloat that Rudy needs a short leash, his eyes wandering toward a former rhythmic twirler with eclectic tastes, a fan of The Lonely Crowd, The Indispensable Chomsky and Leadership, by Rudolph Giuliani. Democratic bloggers bleat pathetically, "At least he [Bill] stayed married." Although it's Hillary's great asset, she sometimes wears marriage like a cross. Rudy is said to be similarly chafing now that Judith is his wedded wife.
Christians take heart in Mike Huckabee and, maybe, the knowledge that if Giuliani does turn out to be the chosen one, his sins won't matter anyway. David got away with Bathsheba, after all, and with dispatching her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to the enemy's spears. The rest of us can take heart that at least Rudy doesn't hold the power of life and death over anyone. Bill executed a man as the Gennifer Flowers story swirled in 1992. He bombed Iraq as the Senate considered removing him from office over Monica Lewinsky. Nothing beats death for distraction.
The trouble, in fact, is in treating sex as a distraction. Usually it isn't. Usually it's just life, like the mortgage and the bad school and the checkbook that's balanced or not, the dinner that's sublime or not. Adultery may thrillingly divert from one reality, but in the form practiced by Bill and Rudy and millions of others it tends to create its own parallel universe, with its own set of mores and unwritten rules. Rudy broke them all.
One doesn't bring the paramour to the marriage bed (unless it's a threesome), or involve the children, or deliberately humiliate the spouse. Bohemians, hippies, gay people, adventurers in polyamory have all experimented with different levels of truth-telling and have all decided, at one time or another, when a lie or reticence is the kindest act of all. But they've also understood, at some deep level, why the English called adultery a "criminal conversation": the criminal part could be jettisoned, as it was by English law in the nineteenth century. But the conversation, measured physically, emotionally, intellectually, could not. Only a madman or a monk would count it a moral failure to converse with more than one person for a lifetime, yet most Americans call adultery just that, even when they're engaged in it. And most married people probably are involved in it, or have been.
Poll numbers are as schizoid as the culture, with overwhelming majorities telling surveyors they "know someone" who's not monogamous while only a minority own up to their own sampling of delights afield. A politics that's similarly evasive--that counts as irrelevant the ways people arrange their lives, their joys, needs and sorrows; that cares nothing for how and why they converse--is no politics at all. It doesn't matter that Rudy had sex with Judi or anyone else, or that he had that police escort, frankly. What matters is that Rudy was a prick. Rudy made it cruel.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/wypijewski
-
FilmFan720
- Emeritus
- Posts: 3650
- Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 3:57 pm
- Location: Illinois
From the New York Observer...perhaps my favorite dumb Rudy quote yet.
On the Gays, Rudy Goes Both Ways
by Steve Kornacki | December 10, 2007
| Tags:
* Politics
* Meet the Press
* Mike Huckabee
* Rudolph Giuliani
* Tim Russert
Getty Images
It just goes to show that in the world of Republican presidential politics, there’s no such thing as being too conservative on gay rights.
The news that Mike Huckabee advocated the quarantine of AIDS patients in 1992—the same year an H.I.V.-positive Magic Johnson was a starter on the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team and was named M.V.P. of the N.B.A.’s All-Star Game—is actually expected to boost his credibility with the Christian conservatives who hold sway in critical early primary and caucus states, like Iowa and South Carolina.
Obviously, Rudy Giuliani, who prodded the New York City Council to extend city benefits to same sex couples in the 1990’s and who shared an apartment with a gay couple when he was 56 years old, could never out-do, or even compete with, that kind of posturing.
But on the campaign trail, he’s been distancing himself from his once avowedly “pro-gay rights” past, trying to carve out some kind of middle ground that would make religious conservatives comfortable enough without exposing himself to charges of blatant, Romney-esque flip-flopping.
The tactic was on full display on Sunday, toward the end of the intense, hour-long Meet the Press grilling to which Mr. Giuliani had consented. Bringing up Mr. Huckabee’s freshly-unearthed ’92 statement, host Tim Russert asked if Mr. Giuliani agreed with another past Huckabee assertion, that homosexuality is an “aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle.”
“No, I don’t believe it’s sinful,” he replied, at first sounding very much like the same man who won two elections in New York.
But then he added a seemingly contradictory wrinkle: “My moral views on this come from the Catholic Church. I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality, as a way of somebody leads their life isn’t sinful. It’s the acts—it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have.”
The tricky—and maybe even impossible—balancing act between Mr. Giuliani’s well-documented past and his desire to appeal to the right was painfully evident in this response.
Gays and lesbians themselves, according to church doctrine, are not to be condemned simply for feeling an attraction to the same sex. But acting on that attraction, no matter how natural it might be for the individual, is regarded as a sin. Moreover, the church extends this attitude to its public policy prescriptions, strongly opposing not just gay marriage, but virtually any legislation intended to give same-sex couples (or individuals) equal status under the law.
From a public policy standpoint, the Church’s view runs flatly counter to Mr. Giulaini’s actions as mayor (and many of his statement during his short-lived Senate bid in 2000). And there is little in Mr. Giuliani’s personal background—particularly his living arrangement a few years ago—to suggest he has any particular discomfort with homosexuals or the “various acts” that they might engage in.
He went on to note, unavoidably, that his own personal actions provide him ample grist for confession. But Mr. Giuliani’s answer to Mr. Russert left the clear impression that, like the Church and much of the Republican primary electorate, he believes homosexual actions to be sinful.
Consider carefully the apparent thought process seemingly at work. When Mr. Russert asked him point-blank if he thinks homosexuality is sinful, he realized that saying “yes” would expose him to a torrent of negative press, given his own history. So, for the sake of not being dubbed a blatant hypocrite and opportunist, he said “no.” But then, in the next breath, he set about downplaying the significance of his “no” answer and trying to build a bridge to the Christian right, making sure to invoke his own religion. “Love the sinner,” as many Christian conservatives like to say, “hate the sin.”
This sort of tortured logic has characterized Mr. Giuliani’s stated positions on social issues throughout the presidential campaign. He has tried to play the same middle ground game on abortion, with an equally incomprehensible result. He has stuck with his long-standing position that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. But, to soften the blow to the right, he promises that he’ll pack the courts with “strict constructionists”—jurists who could make it possible for women to be thrown in prison for exercising a choice that Mr. Giuliani believes they have the right to make.
A few weeks ago, it seemed like none of this would matter: So much of the right was predisposed to like Mr. Giuliani and view him as most electable Republican that they’d rationalize their way to accepting his half-hearted social issues rhetoric. But then came Bernie Kerik, Judi-gate, business dealings with Qatar, all conspiring to send his poll numbers into decline.
Mr. Giuliani is gamely coming up with ever more novel excuses for his newfound conservative beliefs. The question now is whether conservatives are still willing to make excuses for him.
On the Gays, Rudy Goes Both Ways
by Steve Kornacki | December 10, 2007
| Tags:
* Politics
* Meet the Press
* Mike Huckabee
* Rudolph Giuliani
* Tim Russert
Getty Images
It just goes to show that in the world of Republican presidential politics, there’s no such thing as being too conservative on gay rights.
The news that Mike Huckabee advocated the quarantine of AIDS patients in 1992—the same year an H.I.V.-positive Magic Johnson was a starter on the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team and was named M.V.P. of the N.B.A.’s All-Star Game—is actually expected to boost his credibility with the Christian conservatives who hold sway in critical early primary and caucus states, like Iowa and South Carolina.
Obviously, Rudy Giuliani, who prodded the New York City Council to extend city benefits to same sex couples in the 1990’s and who shared an apartment with a gay couple when he was 56 years old, could never out-do, or even compete with, that kind of posturing.
But on the campaign trail, he’s been distancing himself from his once avowedly “pro-gay rights” past, trying to carve out some kind of middle ground that would make religious conservatives comfortable enough without exposing himself to charges of blatant, Romney-esque flip-flopping.
The tactic was on full display on Sunday, toward the end of the intense, hour-long Meet the Press grilling to which Mr. Giuliani had consented. Bringing up Mr. Huckabee’s freshly-unearthed ’92 statement, host Tim Russert asked if Mr. Giuliani agreed with another past Huckabee assertion, that homosexuality is an “aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle.”
“No, I don’t believe it’s sinful,” he replied, at first sounding very much like the same man who won two elections in New York.
But then he added a seemingly contradictory wrinkle: “My moral views on this come from the Catholic Church. I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality, as a way of somebody leads their life isn’t sinful. It’s the acts—it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have.”
The tricky—and maybe even impossible—balancing act between Mr. Giuliani’s well-documented past and his desire to appeal to the right was painfully evident in this response.
Gays and lesbians themselves, according to church doctrine, are not to be condemned simply for feeling an attraction to the same sex. But acting on that attraction, no matter how natural it might be for the individual, is regarded as a sin. Moreover, the church extends this attitude to its public policy prescriptions, strongly opposing not just gay marriage, but virtually any legislation intended to give same-sex couples (or individuals) equal status under the law.
From a public policy standpoint, the Church’s view runs flatly counter to Mr. Giulaini’s actions as mayor (and many of his statement during his short-lived Senate bid in 2000). And there is little in Mr. Giuliani’s personal background—particularly his living arrangement a few years ago—to suggest he has any particular discomfort with homosexuals or the “various acts” that they might engage in.
He went on to note, unavoidably, that his own personal actions provide him ample grist for confession. But Mr. Giuliani’s answer to Mr. Russert left the clear impression that, like the Church and much of the Republican primary electorate, he believes homosexual actions to be sinful.
Consider carefully the apparent thought process seemingly at work. When Mr. Russert asked him point-blank if he thinks homosexuality is sinful, he realized that saying “yes” would expose him to a torrent of negative press, given his own history. So, for the sake of not being dubbed a blatant hypocrite and opportunist, he said “no.” But then, in the next breath, he set about downplaying the significance of his “no” answer and trying to build a bridge to the Christian right, making sure to invoke his own religion. “Love the sinner,” as many Christian conservatives like to say, “hate the sin.”
This sort of tortured logic has characterized Mr. Giuliani’s stated positions on social issues throughout the presidential campaign. He has tried to play the same middle ground game on abortion, with an equally incomprehensible result. He has stuck with his long-standing position that a woman has the right to choose whether to have an abortion. But, to soften the blow to the right, he promises that he’ll pack the courts with “strict constructionists”—jurists who could make it possible for women to be thrown in prison for exercising a choice that Mr. Giuliani believes they have the right to make.
A few weeks ago, it seemed like none of this would matter: So much of the right was predisposed to like Mr. Giuliani and view him as most electable Republican that they’d rationalize their way to accepting his half-hearted social issues rhetoric. But then came Bernie Kerik, Judi-gate, business dealings with Qatar, all conspiring to send his poll numbers into decline.
Mr. Giuliani is gamely coming up with ever more novel excuses for his newfound conservative beliefs. The question now is whether conservatives are still willing to make excuses for him.
"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."
- Minor Myers, Jr.
- Minor Myers, Jr.
The man is a lunatic. Truly scary:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesm....ish.php
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesm....ish.php
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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Mister Tee
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8648
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
- Location: NYC
- Contact:
I don't have time to do it myself, but shouldn't someone be adding all the juicy Guiliani stories cascading through the press right now? Someone at TPM called it the Worst Week Ever for a politician running for president. Whether you call it Shag-gate (as Josh Marshall does) or Sex On the City (as the Kos-ites do); whether your favorite part is Judy's dog being walked by NYPD, or Bernie Kerik coming in to vouch for Rudy's ethics...this story is a beauty, and ought to be immortalzed in this thread.
November 13, 2007
Ex-Publisher Says News Corp. Official Wanted Her to Lie to Protect Giuliani
By RUSS BUETTNER
Judith Regan, the book publisher who was fired by the News Corporation last year, asserts in a lawsuit filed today that a senior executive at the media conglomerate encouraged her to mislead federal investigators about her relationship with Bernard B. Kerik during his bid to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.
The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.
Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, the News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O.J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.
In the civil complaint filed in state court in Manhattan, Ms. Regan says the company has long sought to promote Mr. Giuliani’s ambitions. But the lawsuit does not elaborate on that charge, or identify the executive who she alleged pressured her to mislead investigators, nor does it offer details or evidence to back up her claim.
Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near Ground Zero that had been donated as a respite for rescue and recovery workers.
Mr. Kerik, who in 2004 said he withdrew his nomination because of problems with his hiring of a nanny, was indicted last week on federal tax fraud and other charges.
“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik,” the complaint says. “In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”
Officials of the News Corporation were asked in a telephone call for comment on the lawsuit, but had yet to issue a statement.
One of Ms. Regan’s lawyers, Brian C. Kerr of the firm Dreier L.L.P., said she possesses evidence to support her claim that she was advised to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Mr. Kerik. But Mr. Kerr declined to discuss the nature of the evidence.
“We’re fully confident that the evidence will show that Judith Regan was the victim of a vicious smear campaign engineered by News Corp. and HarperCollins,” Mr. Kerr said.
The News Corporation controls a vast array of media outlets worldwide, including Twentieth Century Fox, the New York Post and the Fox News Channel, where Ms. Regan once hosted a talk show.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Ex-Publisher Says News Corp. Official Wanted Her to Lie to Protect Giuliani
By RUSS BUETTNER
Judith Regan, the book publisher who was fired by the News Corporation last year, asserts in a lawsuit filed today that a senior executive at the media conglomerate encouraged her to mislead federal investigators about her relationship with Bernard B. Kerik during his bid to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.
The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.
Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, the News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O.J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.
In the civil complaint filed in state court in Manhattan, Ms. Regan says the company has long sought to promote Mr. Giuliani’s ambitions. But the lawsuit does not elaborate on that charge, or identify the executive who she alleged pressured her to mislead investigators, nor does it offer details or evidence to back up her claim.
Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near Ground Zero that had been donated as a respite for rescue and recovery workers.
Mr. Kerik, who in 2004 said he withdrew his nomination because of problems with his hiring of a nanny, was indicted last week on federal tax fraud and other charges.
“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik,” the complaint says. “In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”
Officials of the News Corporation were asked in a telephone call for comment on the lawsuit, but had yet to issue a statement.
One of Ms. Regan’s lawyers, Brian C. Kerr of the firm Dreier L.L.P., said she possesses evidence to support her claim that she was advised to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Mr. Kerik. But Mr. Kerr declined to discuss the nature of the evidence.
“We’re fully confident that the evidence will show that Judith Regan was the victim of a vicious smear campaign engineered by News Corp. and HarperCollins,” Mr. Kerr said.
The News Corporation controls a vast array of media outlets worldwide, including Twentieth Century Fox, the New York Post and the Fox News Channel, where Ms. Regan once hosted a talk show.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
I think you're right Sonic, but I hope you're wrong.
Obviously if the Dems knew how to fight the way the Pubs do, they'd be making a bigger stink about this. But then I guess this issue is a bit too complicated to be distilled into a simple phrase like "flip-flopper" that the average American voting idiot can understand.
Obviously if the Dems knew how to fight the way the Pubs do, they'd be making a bigger stink about this. But then I guess this issue is a bit too complicated to be distilled into a simple phrase like "flip-flopper" that the average American voting idiot can understand.
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Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
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- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
And nobody is going to care.Damien wrote:Sonic Youth wrote:We can put the whole Kerik issue aside. It's not going to have even the slightest effect on the race.
Oh I disagree. WHen Giuliani puts forth his absurd claim that he is the candidate best suited to fight terrorism, his opponents need only say, "Yeah, look whom he felt was the best person to headland Homeland Security."
You think the average voter in Iowa is going to take the time to delve into what is essentially a very complicated, involving and ultimately boring story? It's minutia, it's detail. It's not going to have an effect anywhere in the country except maybe New York. And then, only in New York City.
Wait and see.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
Oh I disagree. WHen Giuliani puts forth his absurd claim that he is the candidate best suited to fight terrorism, his opponents need only say, "Yeah, look whom he felt was the best person to headland Homeland Security." Add o that his quote (paaphrasing) "I slep better at night knowing that George Bush is my president" and you got someone hoisted on his own wordss and actions.Sonic Youth wrote:We can put the whole Kerik issue aside. It's not going to have even the slightest effect on the race.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
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Lesson to candidates: Avoid the L word?
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 10, 2007
The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president. I’m starting to make a list.
Quality to avoid No. 1: Loyalty.
Whenever you read that a candidate “values loyalty above all else” — run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you’re choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.
How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things, as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs?
Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik, the really, really loyal former New York City police commissioner. Rudy Giuliani, who was entirely responsible for Kerik’s meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur, has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his protégé’s spectacular fall. Giuliani did say that he made a “mistake in not clearing him effectively enough,” which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik’s neighbors. In fact, the lapse in the “clearing” procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime.
Giuliani claims not to remember this moment in the vetting process, which seems sort of strange for a guy who made his career prosecuting the mafia and those-who-had-ties. The former mayor does, however, have a bad memory. We know this because he obtained an annulment of his 14-year-long first marriage on the grounds that he had forgotten that his wife was his second cousin.
On the terrible day of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerik was with the mayor as Giuliani left the disaster at ground zero, searching for a telephone to contact the outside world. Also loyally at the mayor’s side were three deputy mayors, the fire commissioner and the head of the Office of Emergency Management. They all walked north, in a little command-clump, intent on the central mission of protecting their main man. You would have thought, really, that the protecting job could have been done by youthful aides while the alleged leaders tended to the fire, emergency and police problems downtown.
But if anybody had stayed behind, focusing on the wider city rather than the man who had plucked them all out of obscurity and given them everything they had, how would he know they were loyal? The ties forged in that clump of commanders catapulted them into extremely well-paying jobs in the firm of Giuliani Partners and convinced the mayor to propose Bernard Kerik as the next chief of the Department of Homeland Security, a position for which he was approximately as well qualified as I am to be quarterback for the New England Patriots.
Giuliani had a great police commissioner, Bill Bratton, during his first term when all the critical crime-fighting apparatus for which the administration became so famous was put into place. But Bratton was not particularly loyal, in the sense that he did his job well, then enjoyed taking credit for it himself. And so he was gone.
There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani’s famous book “Leadership” that is titled “Loyalty, the Vital Virtue.” In it, he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city’s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding’s father, Ray, was the chairman of the city’s Liberal Party, whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor. “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics,” he said.
For some mysterious reason, the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family. Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding, giver of the Liberal Party endorsement, not only by giving his qualified son a good job, but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son, Russell, who wound up embezzling more than $400,000 for vacations, gifts and parties. We will not even go into the pornography part, except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer, only a few were of children.
The Giuliani version of loyalty, which bears a terrifying resemblance to the George W. Bush brand of loyalty, is entirely about self-protection. An administration safe beneath the loyalty cone does not have to worry much about leaks to the press, or even whistle-blowing.
People can screw up, or fail to achieve their missions, knowing the guy at the top will protect them as long as they put his well-being ahead of anything else. When disaster strikes, the whole world may be falling apart, but they will all be clumped together, walking north.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10collins.html?hp
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 10, 2007
The past seven years have given us some helpful hints on what we want to avoid in the next president. I’m starting to make a list.
Quality to avoid No. 1: Loyalty.
Whenever you read that a candidate “values loyalty above all else” — run for the hills. Loyalty is a terribly important consideration if you’re choosing a pet, but not a cabinet member.
How about if this time we try for a president who would recruit gifted people who can accomplish great things, as opposed to a room full of dopes who will never write tell-all memoirs?
Loyalty is on our mind today because of the indictment of Bernard Kerik, the really, really loyal former New York City police commissioner. Rudy Giuliani, who was entirely responsible for Kerik’s meteoric rise from mayoral chauffeur, has not seemed to draw any great lessons from his protégé’s spectacular fall. Giuliani did say that he made a “mistake in not clearing him effectively enough,” which sounds as if he is kicking himself for not sending a second squad of detectives out to interview Kerik’s neighbors. In fact, the lapse in the “clearing” procedure involved Giuliani ignoring the city investigations commissioner when he arrived with the news that Kerik was involved with a company suspected of having ties to organized crime.
Giuliani claims not to remember this moment in the vetting process, which seems sort of strange for a guy who made his career prosecuting the mafia and those-who-had-ties. The former mayor does, however, have a bad memory. We know this because he obtained an annulment of his 14-year-long first marriage on the grounds that he had forgotten that his wife was his second cousin.
On the terrible day of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerik was with the mayor as Giuliani left the disaster at ground zero, searching for a telephone to contact the outside world. Also loyally at the mayor’s side were three deputy mayors, the fire commissioner and the head of the Office of Emergency Management. They all walked north, in a little command-clump, intent on the central mission of protecting their main man. You would have thought, really, that the protecting job could have been done by youthful aides while the alleged leaders tended to the fire, emergency and police problems downtown.
But if anybody had stayed behind, focusing on the wider city rather than the man who had plucked them all out of obscurity and given them everything they had, how would he know they were loyal? The ties forged in that clump of commanders catapulted them into extremely well-paying jobs in the firm of Giuliani Partners and convinced the mayor to propose Bernard Kerik as the next chief of the Department of Homeland Security, a position for which he was approximately as well qualified as I am to be quarterback for the New England Patriots.
Giuliani had a great police commissioner, Bill Bratton, during his first term when all the critical crime-fighting apparatus for which the administration became so famous was put into place. But Bratton was not particularly loyal, in the sense that he did his job well, then enjoyed taking credit for it himself. And so he was gone.
There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani’s famous book “Leadership” that is titled “Loyalty, the Vital Virtue.” In it, he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city’s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding’s father, Ray, was the chairman of the city’s Liberal Party, whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor. “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics,” he said.
For some mysterious reason, the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family. Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding, giver of the Liberal Party endorsement, not only by giving his qualified son a good job, but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son, Russell, who wound up embezzling more than $400,000 for vacations, gifts and parties. We will not even go into the pornography part, except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer, only a few were of children.
The Giuliani version of loyalty, which bears a terrifying resemblance to the George W. Bush brand of loyalty, is entirely about self-protection. An administration safe beneath the loyalty cone does not have to worry much about leaks to the press, or even whistle-blowing.
People can screw up, or fail to achieve their missions, knowing the guy at the top will protect them as long as they put his well-being ahead of anything else. When disaster strikes, the whole world may be falling apart, but they will all be clumped together, walking north.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10collins.html?hp