He Had to Go There

Republican presidential hopeful former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani gives a thumbs up to supporters at Florida International University in Miami, Monday, Jan. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
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Wayne Barrett is an elder statesmen and giant of the New York City press world. And he’s got a file on Rudy Giuliani. In fact, it’s probably not a file it’s the file on Rudy. It’s probably even fair to say he’s not a fan of the former Mayor. He used the file to compile “Rudy: An Investigative Biography.” And after Rudy again castigated the President as a half-breed outsider who wasn’t raised “like us” and isn’t “like us” at all, Barrett, apparently had to pull out the file.

As for the President’s young single mother who raised a son who went on to accomplish a number of firsts before becoming the first African-American President of the United States, Barrett notes …

Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being “brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country,” a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy’s uncle.

Normally it would be ungenerous to raise Rudy’s father’s role as low level mob muscle and convict. But then again, Rudy had to go there.


Giuliani’s second wife, Donna Hanover, tearfully discusses the dissolution of her marriage which she first learned of from a Giuliani press conference.

And when it comes to love, Barrett can’t help unloading there either. Rudy not only loves his country (though Wayne finds some iffy quotes there), he just loves love. In fact, he loves so much he’s been married three times. And he loves so much his marriages overlap with each other, with the new wife starting as a mistress vis a vis the old wife.

I’ll be honest: Barrett can do this much better than I can. Read his piece here.

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