A few words about Giuliani...

There seem to be a lot of posts about Rudy Giuliani and his prospects as a presidential candidate going up today. Jonathan Alter talks about Rudy's temperament, Ezra Klein discusses his autocratic tendencies, and over in Lollipop Land, the Moron Faction at The corner weighs in with just how bright Rudy's prospects are with the people in this country who, as a rule, hate New York City and everyone in it (sheah, dream on, J-Pod).

So I figured I'd post some of my favorite Rudy memories, just to remind everyone that as much of a Fascist as they imagine Bush to be, Rudy stands a chance of being the real deal. His is a rare combination of ego, thin skin, and petty vindictiveness that the current resident of the White House can only aspire to. My fave Rudy moments:

Item: In 1986, Rudy and 'Senator Pothole' Al D'Amato decide to show how tough they are in battling the scourge of NYC at the time - crack cocaine. So they break into an evidence lockup, steal a couple of Hell's Angels colors, put them on and head off to Harlem to buy crack. The pictures were front-page news in the NY Post the next day, even though the stunt resulted in no arrests. What's more, the Angels, who are fiercely protective of their colors, sued the city for breach of trademark. And won.

Item: In 1998, New York Magazine did a bus ad buy in which they called their magazine 'possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for.' Giuliani responded by ordering the ads pulled from all MTA buses, and the resulting case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Giuliani lost.

Item: In 1999, Giuliani went after the Brooklyn Museum of Art over an exhibit that he found distasteful, ultimately throwing up barricades around the museum to prevent people from attending the exhibit and cutting off the city's funding to the museum. He then raised the stakes by claiming as mayor he was the museum's 'landlord' and threatened to evict the museum from city-owned property. After tying up a federal court for nearly six months, funding was restored to the museum and both sides of the suit had to pay their own legal fees (The museum spent over $1 million and NYC never revealed how much it spent).

Item: In 2001 Giuliani, clearly by this point fully believing the 'America's Mayor' hype, threatened to mount a legal challenge against NYC's mayoral term-limits law if the candidates in the mayor's race didn't give him a 3-month extension as mayor of NYC. NYC, in return, told him to go fuck himself, with the state Senate and Assembly telling Rudy to just retire and be done with it.

I could go on, but you get the idea. This is a guy who threw some pretty sharp elbows when he was mayor, often because his sensibilities were offended or someone was having a joke at his expense.

Do we really want this prick running the whole fuckin' country? Don't. Think. So.