The Increasingly Hilarious Tragedy of Rudy Giuliani
This may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when Rudy Giuliani was one of our country’s most admired public figures. In his prime, “America’s Mayor” inspired admiration and praise from both sides of the aisle for waging legal war with the mob and winning, cleaning up a crime-ravaged New York and leading his beloved city through the waking nightmare and enduring trauma of the 9/11 attacks and its endless shadow.
Of course that’s Giuliani’s self-serving version, one that ignores the central role racism and police brutality played in the creation of what is known as post-Giuliani New York. Then again Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Louis CK all ranked high among our culture’s most esteemed public figures as well before their reputations took a turn.
The halo of tragedy protected Giuliani in the years following 9/11 but that was a long, long time ago, nearly two decades at this point. Even in a #MeToo era that has witnessed the downfall of many a formerly respected and powerful man, Giuliani’s tumble from grace is particularly dramatic and steep.
The formerly respected lawyer has endured a veritable gauntlet of humiliations, each more public, unforgettable and hilarious than the last. Fucking Borat tricked him—in 2020, mind you!—when he caught him on tape about to pull out his penis and do God knows what with the fearless actress playing Borat’s daughter.
Then Giuliani legendarily conducted the press conference equivalent of the Star Wars Holiday Special at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a small business located in between a sex shop and a crematorium and then Rudy humiliated himself AGAIN when hair dye began streaking down his face during one of his trademark insane, universally mocked press conferences about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, who actually won in a landslide but has frustratingly been unable to prove pretty much any of his wild claims and accusations.
Giuliani doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t spend years happily crawling through a sewer full of solid shit in search of incriminating information about the Biden family at the behest of a cheap wannabe mob boss like Trump and expect voters to welcome you with open arms and curious minds rather than recoil in horror at your rancid odor and feces-stained attire. Trump dirties everything and everyone he touches. That might be truer of Giuliani than anyone else in Trump’s cursed inner circle.
Trump believes in his personal lawyer so deeply that he is ready, even eager, to finish the process of completely destroying him politically and personally. Trump is forever saying, “This is my guy: we are tied at the hip for ALL of the worst parts of this losing campaign. I don’t want you to even THINK about any of my many failed lawsuits or public humiliations without this guy’s name and disconcertingly vampiric face popping up in your mind immediately as well! Rudy and Don forever, baby! All we do is win, if you disregard our many losses!”
The Lionel Hutz-level incompetent was once revered as a mob slayer. Now he acts like a cheap Mafia mouthpiece for a deluded and myopic “boss” who fancies himself the Teflon Don of politics.
It speaks to how off Trump’s political instincts were in the final weeks of his doomed and ridiculous campaign that he narrowed down his appeal to the most transparently idiotic lies imaginable, namely that affable grandpa Joe Biden, an icon of centrist compromise and corporate conformity since before many voters were born was in fact the instrument for the Communist takeover of the Democratic Party and with it the United States, that COVID-19 was pretty much over and he did a great job with it, everyone agrees, and, finally, that fresh from his crowd-pleasing appearance in the hit film Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, his very trustworthy and ethical friend and bosom buddy Rudy Giuliani had some VERY important and relevant, and obviously true information about Hunter Biden that you were definitely going to want to take very seriously on the basis of the former New York Mayor’s impeccable reputation.
For Trump and Giuliani, it’s forever September 12th, 2001, and the whole world is rooting for Rudy and the devastated, heroic and resilient city he will forever be associated with. Everyone else, however, has moved the fuck on and now see Giuliani largely through the intensely unflattering prism of his partnership with Donald Trump as he loses what little is left of his mind.
This is a total fucking clown show. It is hilarious. There’s a reason “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” merchandise is red-hot this holiday season: Giuliani has gone from being a leader people believe in to someone people hate-follow, not out of admiration, but to see what hilarious depths he’ll sink to in his zeal to overturn a 2020 presidential election whose results are pretty much set in stone at this point, in everyone’s mind other than these deluded bullies.
When hair dye famously dripped down Rudy’s perpetually flopsweat-stained forehead it was as if the toxic black sludge of ugliness and corruption at Rudy’s core was oozing out in the ugliest, most damning and pathetic manner imaginable. I would love to say it’s the final, ultimate humiliation but who am I kidding? This is Rudy Giuliani we’re talking about. Humiliating himself in public in viral, unforgettably, historically humiliating ways is pretty much his shtick at this point.
Rudy now goes through life with an invisible “kick me” sign on his back. The universe, particularly in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen, has gleefully acquiesced on that front. Giuliani’s downfall would be sad if it weren’t so richly deserved and goddamn hilarious.
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang!
Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here