VOICES
Rudy Giuliani, Media Saint
Quick, name the modern mythological figure: a talented young man of modest origins leaves home on a quest. But what begins as a genuine desire to help the powerless soon morphs into something darker, as the man, through a combination of ambition and loss, learns to stifle his empathy in his search for order. Destined to go down in history as a distrusted imperial force, he saves himself and his reputation by doing The Right Thing at a moment of climactic violence.
No, it’s not Darth Vader. I’m actually describing Rudy Giuliani, not that you’d know it from the coverage he’s gotten lately. To those of us who have written about him and experienced his volatile paternalism firsthand, the current orgy of adoration — fueled largely by the myth-making abilities of the news media — is somewhat disturbing.
Giuliani’s legend has taken on a life of its own. He has become “America’s mayor,” and Time declared him the most important newsmaker of 2001. As in all love affairs, we tend to see only the good, and gloss over flaws as if they don’t exist. Rudy’s accomplishments have been widely acknowledged. Suffice it to say that he’s credited for the city’s falling crime rate, cleaning up Times Square, bringing business to the city, and generally restoring the sense that New York, long thought ungovernable, is manageable under the right manager. And after September 11, of course, he said and did everything right.
But what’s left out speaks volumes. On September 10, Rudy Giuliani was a lame-duck mayor whose history of histrionics and familial soap-operatics ensured that any future political efforts would be scrutinized by a skeptical press. On September 12, he was a hero. And the press, ever ready to embrace the accepted script (Bush the dullard, Gore the dullest) has ensured that Giuliani will be remembered not for his seven and a half years of controversy and combat, but for his three months of Churchillian leadership.
Distance seemed to hinder journalistic ability to see the whole Rudy. USA Today, in its December 28 mayoral term wrap-up, called him a “rock star” (as did The Houston Chronicle) and, while acknowledging to some of his periodic controversies, focused mostly on his “glow.” It did not mention his abysmal failure to address such problems as the chronic shortage of affordable housing or the huge budget hole he left his successor, which economists agree would have been gaping even without September 11. The Boston Globe, in its end-of-Rudy’s-term piece on December 27, said “Giuliani’s legacy will be one of compassion when it was needed most,” largely forgetting that, for 15/16ths of his mayoralty, he was known for everything but his compassion. The only negative aspects the Globe addressed were the more sensationalistic milestones, such as his crusade against “indecent art” or his nasty public feud with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Donna Hanover.
It’s not just the news pages that were stuck together with the effusion of Rudy love. A farewell editorial in the December 29 St. Petersburg Times devoted one sentence to acknowledging Giuliani’s efforts to silence dissent and “impose his aesthetic tastes on the city,” without hinting at any of his other shortcomings. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in a December 28 editorial, “A Great Leader’s Farewell,” dedicated just two sentences to Rudy’s darker side. And the Tampa Tribune on January 2 said he did a “remarkable job as mayor,” called him heroic, and said New York’s minority communities “unquestionably benefited” from his policing policies. The Tribune did not address the crux of his difficulties with those communities, nor did it cite as one of the possible clues to those difficulties, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s report that illegal racial profiling was widespread under Giuliani’s stewardship.
Not everyone got it wrong. The New York Times published on December 31 a long and detailed analysis of Giuliani’s eight years, and spent a good deal of time addressing the fact that he left the public schools worse than he found them and excluded almost all of the city’s blacks and most of its Hispanics from municipal decision-making. Jack Newfield, in the pages of Newsday and The Nation, also mapped the under-explored areas of Giuliani’s reign.
But what about Giuliani’s penchant for secrecy (his tight-fisted control of public information was infamous, and often ruled illegal), his role in the city’s skyrocketing homelessness (higher now than when he took office), and the influence peddling and cronyism (Jimmy Breslin’s latest book, The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, gets to some of this) that marked his administration? The devil, they say, is in the details, and the details of Giuliani’s time as mayor have been largely left out of the most recent first draft of history. Let’s hope that the moonstruck press does its job and tells the full story when Giuliani’s rising star carries him toward higher office.
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