The Giuliani Speech
Matt writes:
Speaking as a native New Yorker, may I say there’s perhaps nothing more absurd than watching a former mayor of New York City sneer at people who like cosmopolitan towns.
Well, I disagree — Giuliani was sneering at people who sneer at towns that aren’t cosmopolitan enough, and he can do this comfortably because he is so closely identified with America’s biggest, (arguably) most cosmopolitan city. The message: wait, you think Wasilla isn’t cosmopolitan enough? Funny. I think you’re a snob and an ass. But at least Matt is referring to the speech that I saw.
Andrew, on the other hand, seems to be referring to another speech entirely:
The one moment that stays with me tonight, oddly enough, was not Palin’s speech. It was a line from Giuliani, a New York mayor with a young second third wife and gay friends, mocking a “cosmopolitan” who was brought up by a single mother. It was that Barack Obama’s rise could “only happen in America.” And it was designed to mock him, the first African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States.
This strikes me as a misreading of the “not cosmopolitan enough” line. I find the second sentence perplexing. Yes, Giuliani has a colorful personal life and he is tolerant of lesbians and gays, to his great credit in my view. But given that Giuliani never referred to Obama’s upbringing as the child of a single parent, I don’t get how he was “mocking a ‘cosmopolitan’ who was brought up by a single mother,” rather than the media elite.
The post also implicitly suggests that one is not permitted to poke fun at the first African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States. Or you can’t poke fun at someone who was raised by a single mother. Which is convenient.
I think that Matt and Andrew Sullivan are wrong and you are right; I do think they’re misrepresenting what Giuliani was saying, just like you’ve said. I just also happen to think that Giuliani is wrong to insinuate that liberals (or cosmopolitans or elites) generally have disdain for “the salt of the earth”. Further, it continues to depress me that it’s just taken for granted that it’s horribly wrong for cosmopolitan people to consider the other side rubes or hicks, but it’s perfectly fair for the rural (or whatever) people of this country to have disdain for the cosmopolitans and elites.
— Freddie · Sep 4, 04:34 AM · #
The actual words were: “She’s been a mayor. I love that. I’m sorry that Barack Obama feels that her hometown isn’t ‘cosmopolitan’ enough. I’m sorry, Barack, that it’s not flashy enough.”
The tone it was uttered in was meant to be offensive, because it was a set-up for his next line: “Maybe they cling to religion there.”
Giuliani said some reasonable things, but for me they were drowned out by his repeated sarcasm and mocking tone. The same thing happened for me with Palin’s speech. In fact, neither speech sounded reasonable (syn. adult) and as a result, I was appalled. That the audience cheered them on reminded me of nothing so much as a pack of vicious teenagers picking on someone they didn’t like. Far from convincing me, it made me physically ill. They are not the type of people I admire. If politics in this country cannot be conducted thoughtfully, rationally, and reasonably, without recourse to straw man arguments and other forms of fallacious reasoning, there is no hope.
— CHART · Sep 4, 04:43 AM · #
Poking fun can be done kindly, or it can be a very small person’s form of humor.
— CHART · Sep 4, 04:45 AM · #
Reihan, I think this further evinces that Andrew has lost — or, perhaps, surrendered — all credibility. In my humblest opinions, he ought no longer to be affiliated as respectable an organ as Atlantic Monthly, for his every word, by virtue of his position, debases such a fine publication.
— Nathan P. Origer · Sep 4, 05:23 AM · #
“If politics in this country cannot be conducted thoughtfully, rationally, and reasonably, without recourse to straw man arguments and other forms of fallacious reasoning, there is no hope.”
It seems like they try to put on an entertaining show for t.v. I wonder what it’s like when there aren’t any cameras.
— Joules · Sep 4, 05:36 AM · #
Surely it won’t be much longer until bloggers and media types finally realize that whatever Andrew Sullivan may have once had, it’s long gone?
— Russ · Sep 4, 07:30 AM · #
It’s good to see you take the gloves off with Andrew. I know how much you respect him but he has just been a caricature of himself since he caught the Obamania — and the persona he exhibited before that was also very caricature-like. I go to his blog and I see a caricature of a caricature of a very talented, very arrogant person. And it doesn’t make for very good reading.
— PEG · Sep 4, 10:13 AM · #
Andrew has truly gone around the bend — it’s really quite sad, as he used to be such an interesting and informed voice.
it continues to depress me that it’s just taken for granted that it’s horribly wrong for cosmopolitan people to consider the other side rubes or hicks, but it’s perfectly fair for the rural (or whatever) people of this country to have disdain for the cosmopolitans and elites.
I don’t think “fair” has much to do with it, rather it’s simple electoral math. If all the rural folk vote for McCain and all the cosmopolitans vote for Obama, guess who wins the election.
— right · Sep 4, 11:36 AM · #
I saw the speech on PBS and thought the content was OK, but hated it for the (admittedly dumb) reason that Palin was by far the worst major speaker at either convention at reading off a teleprompter. She kept looking over and scanning ti as she read and it broke the flow badly for me. Although I suppose that was mitigated on the video by the fact that her youngest daughter, and her solicitation for the baby, are frickin’ adorable.
Guiliani landed some solid blows. I was wondering why there had been no comment on Obama’s pretty sharp shift on Georgia after his own acceptance speech. Maybe I’m biased because I had been looking for that, and Guiliani decided to own it. He is an effective surrogate, though.
Sullivan, Sullivan, Sullivan. Fortunately computers here block his blog (but not the other Atlantic ones). He has become among the foulest, most amoral mudslingers in American politics. Even Karl Rove would blanch at scoring political points of dubious value and no substance by attacking someone through impugning the mothering abilities of her daughter and the parentage of her developmentally challenged son (though I recognize some people gotta wonder as a purely philosophical matter, mind you what’s wrong with attacks on retarded babies and demands for obstetric records). I swear the guy sometimes reads stuff clean backwards to support his biases. I’ve little doubt there’s some damn clever Oakeshott derived covervatism-of-doubt Christian reason why this is all cool but I wouldn’t touch the guy with a ten foot pole.
Although I think I’ve lost some respect for Ross Douthat on this, too. He’s complaining about tasteless items in a blog on Slate, and in the Times and Post, while conveniently ignoring that the blog next to his own, front-paged on a magazine where he sits as an editor, is eagerly shoving this trash and much much worse out the door as fast as it can. That’s a pretty glaring omission, and it’s not exactly standing on principle.
— Sanjay · Sep 4, 12:54 PM · #
Sanjay,
you must have missed the line about “colleagues I used to respect” in this post by Ross Douthat
It was pretty obvious who he was referring to and didn’t need to be elaborated on in the post about “publications I normally admire” that you mentioned.
— Mike D · Sep 4, 02:06 PM · #
For Reihan, why is it okay for Giulianni to make up a fantasy about Obama sneering at Wasilla. When did this happen? It’s a lie. Certainly if Giulliani can make up such a fantasy then Sullivan can throw in the stuff about the single-mom. The two criticisms seem to be operating in some sort of meta, unspoken plane anyway.
As for Sullivan, I always laugh when people are suddenly shocked at his frenetic hyperbole and lack of a superego controlling his id. He’s been like this since the beginning. He hasn’t changed. He just overdoes it a bit. He’s sort of like Sarah Palin that way really. But it makes him a very successful blog rockstar (if that’s possible). I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by him even when he was a Bushie and going full-throttle on the ridiculous Iraq war.
— KJ · Sep 4, 02:11 PM · #
Come on. In examining the trees, you’ve totally bypassed the forest — at least in this post. Guiliani and the Republicans are trying to stoke the flames of the culture wars with lines like that. You criticize others for being disingenuous about Guilani’s message/intent about “cosmopolitanism,” yet you give a pass to its thrust. Democrats aren’t saying Wasilla isn’t cosmopolitan enough to give Palin political experience; they’re pointing out the absurdity in saying that being mayor of a town of 6000 gives someone executive experience enough to then be Vice President. That’s a valid point. I cn’t tell you how many conservative pundits I’ve read who’ve tried to paint the picture of Palin as having decades of “executive experience,” and gloss over the fact that being mayor of a very small town is a significant chunk of that. The Republicans have obviously figured that their only defense is class/culture/regional warfare. Again — though it’s been noted so many times — I can’t help but think of the irony of their tagline, “Putting Country First.” BS.
— saxon conrad · Sep 4, 02:23 PM · #
Sullivan has been appalling recently, particularly with the Trig-maternity smear. I thought Douthat was actually rather cutting in referring to Andrew as a colleague he ‘used to respect’. I feel the same way; Andrew’s always been excitable, but he’s been on a binge lately and I am surprised that an ostensibly ‘respectable’ high-brow publication like the Atlantic hasn’t exercised any editorial control.
— kab · Sep 4, 04:17 PM · #
I can criticize Andrew, but I think he deserves to be cut some slack. Don’t you know anyone who’s gotten very invested — maybe overinvested — in an election? I don’t like everything he’s been writing either, rest assured, but he is my friend.
— Reihan · Sep 4, 05:11 PM · #
There’s invested, Reihan, and there’s invested.
If you have the moral fiber of an ant-lion or better, you wouldn’t have used that infant the way Sullivan tried to (let alone that even if it had panned out, I don’t see the gain). You don’t hurl the accusation, and you don’t play cutesy hypothetical games just askin’ about why that kind of attack is filthy, because, fuck, my five-year-old can tell you why it’s filthy (ignoring for the fact that orphans have some kind of special moral dispensation from abusing the retarded that I can’t claim to grasp). Is Sullivan so vested in this thing? Well, shit, why is he vested in it? Because anyone who’d defend that attack has no damn business telling me about how government or anything else should be standing up for the weak, or helpless, or lost.
Nobody (smart) is going to tell you to make some kind of break with Sullivan or kick him or call him a neener-head or whatever. Friendships are funny things. Each is different. I had a long-term close friend who kept making comments about Arabs that made me uncomfortable in front of an Arab friend of ours. I told him, he kept doing it. I told him again, he kept doing it. Now we haven’t spoken in a couple years. I don’t know if I played it right.
But I do know, that I geuinely feel I owe my friends to tell them when they’re stepping into terrible places, and I have to do it in ways loud and clear enough that they can hear me. Again, though, no two human relationships seem to me to work the same and in all likelihood I’ll end up knowing people to whom that doesn’t apply.
— Sanjay · Sep 4, 07:49 PM · #