Are we in the midst of a MAGA reckoning?
Paragons of MAGA -- Giuliani, Carlson and even Trump -- are having a complicated, litigious May.
It has been an open secret for years among the cognoscenti in New York that Rudy Giuliani’s blood type is Shrimp Cocktail Mary. Because, of course, “America’s Mayor” is not averse to an infusion of spirits. But while I assure you that this post is not an exercise in shaming Giuliani on his alcoholism so much as it is the casting a pale yellow spotlight on his shameful behavior in public life as well as some of the depraved things he has done to people over the decades, all the while influencing politics at the highest levels.
But why are we all so surprised? Long-suffering African-Americans of the city of New York are emphatically not surprised at the Rudy Giuliani now on display, sweating profusely, facing civil litigation and disgraced on the public stage. Every month is a new revelation of his — and there really is no other way to put it — degeneracy coming to light. We cannot fail to note that the same sort of reckoning is happening with his friend of 30 years, Donald Trump, thanks to E. Jean Carroll.
But this Rudy is the Rudy that we have always known. And by “we” I mean African-Americans. But no one would listen to us then, when it mattered. When he had a double barreled stranglehold over the media capital of the world and then was “America’s Mayor” and the President’s confidante. The Rudy of the Police riot of 1992; the Rudy of affair with his Press Secretary while Mayor; the Rudy that was so swollen with lust that Sascha Baron Cohen worried for the safety of the actress Maria Bakalova he was directing for Borat 2. And she too was scared of Giuliani — of what he was capable of. But “America’s Mayor,” aided by powerful friends in the media and in politics got through that one relatively unscathed. He had a good run. But now there are tapes.
Once again I reiterate: African-Americans in New York City have always known that the real Rudy was a bigot hiding behind the broken windows theory of policing. James Q Wilson, after all, came from Harvard! So broken windows policing couldn’t possibly be biased. Further, “Rudiani” arrived on the scene when crime appeared to be an entrenched, intractable problem in the City and his interpretation of Wilson’s theory smoothed over the obvious coarseness of his overall project to white residents, allegedly “liberal.” Because, if it comes from Harvard ...
And so, with that mandate, came all that stop-and-friskiness in which hundreds of thousands of young men of color during his tenure — myself included — were treated as guilty until proven innocent every day and night (particularly the nights during the 90s) by thugs in blue, largely from Nassau and Suffolk counties. “Where you headed” they would ask, slowing down the police cars to keep pace and rolling down the windows. “Can I see what’s in your pockets?” “Could you stand to the side and empty out your bag?” The Constitution be damned! And if you had a little weed in your pocket, say, on the way to work, then an invasive stop-and-frisk just might turn into a night in prison.
How many thousands of Latino and Black men lost their jobs — as messengers as busboys — and, if living paycheck-to-paycheck, their housing, for a joint or a dime bag now perfectly legal in a stop-and-frisk? I don’t think we will ever quite know the toll on the already difficult lives of young men of color in America. But I have heard dozens of tragedies of no-longer-young Latino and Black men that lost their jobs, their freedom and in one case the custody of his children because a stop-and-frisk involved the discovery of a blunt of marijuana. “The Giuliani years,” is what we call it in NYC. Years later, as Giuliani was accepting honors and accolades, laurels and knighthoods for being “America’s Mayor” after September 11th, in which he comforted grieving families in the wake of the terrorist attacks, African-American New Yorkers resigned ourselves to the longness of the arc of the moral universe, hoping, someday, that Giuliani would gain some form of comeuppance in this life.
Rudy Giuliani always -- always -- carried about him the drunken air of a sleazy minor character on Mad Men. One that didn’t get much TV time. But he would get cameos at office party episodes. He was not a Roger or a Don or even a Pete. And because of that cold, hard truth he was even crueller. Of the colonial powers in Africa, it was not Britain or France that were the worst imperialists, though they were pretty horrible, to be sure. It was the Belgiums and the Portugals, the minor powers, acutely aware of their place in the pecking order of Europe, that were even more brutal in their treatment of Africans. In that sense, Giuliani is a Portugal. The consequences of his policing, of the tone he set in the city with regards to people — especially young men — of color, was kind of breathtaking in retrospect. That he was able to get away with it in NYC! All under the nose of the New York Times!
One always got the sense that Rudy was a handsy sort of fellow, even before this lawsuit. The sort of chap from whom no cocktail waitress was safe. And that sort of behavior, however rank and deplorable now, in the 1950s, was just “letting off steam,” or “horseplay.” The owner of the bar would buy Rudy a drink and give the horrified waitress the rest of the night off to smooth out the trauma. “She had it coming,” Rudy would say to the laughter of the men as the waitress unsteadily walked out, shaken by the experience. And this is exactly the sort of America that MAGA wants to make great again, where broken white dudes can have unlimited preference to do what they please and women had better shut up and take it as a compliment when a powerful white guy grabs a handful of their bodies. And the coloreds — God bless ‘em — might just catch themselves a beating if they step out of line, with their low intelligence and proclivity to crime. Amanda Marcotte in Salon captures the mood quite perfectly:
After all, what Giuliani stands accused of is what all the right-wing whining and crying about "cancel culture" has always been about: the "right" to drop racial slurs and abuse women — or worse — without fear of social consequence. No doubt that some will take umbrage at this characterization. They'll insist they're not talking about protecting people like Giuliani, who is alleged to have called people names like "c*nt" and "f*g," and who reportedly said Jewish men had "inferior" penises due to "natural selection."
Hey! Freedom of speech! I gotta right!
Marcotte also reminds us that Tucker Carlson, another unrepentant MAGA Man, is getting his comeuppance from, of all places, Fox News. So it stands to reason that something big and interesting is perhaps happening culturally with Trump’s reckoning, with Tucker’s firing and now with Giuliani.
But this is the stop-and-frisk guy. The butt-dialer perpetually in need of ever more and more money and ways to hide it from his ex-wife, the gold-digger. He stands not on the shoulders of giants, this Giuliani; he is, instead, hoisted aloft by the perks of white guy privilege — the diamond-encrusted Yankees ring, standing ovations at restaurants on the upper east side of New York, the private planes, the proximity to the former president and, always, always, the space juice.
This could be a reckoning, but I remain skeptical.
It is only a reckoning if there are actual consequences to this unholy project to claw back at the social gains we have made in terms of human rights. If Trump wins the nomination — and the general election — despite some moral exhaustion from some of the electorate at the sheer amount of litigation leading up to election day, then he is untouched by this reckoning. Similarly, if Tucker Carlson trailblazes some new white nationalist business model at his venture on Twitter, then he too is untouched by this reckoning. And, finally, if Giuliani the ancillary “Mad Men” character come to life gets away with what it appears that he very likely did, then this is no reckoning of MAGA.
It is just a confluence of coincidences.
“Without question, the election was technically free, if practically unfair. Erdogan has used the one-man-rule system imposed in the wake of a controversial referendum in 2018 to stack the system in his favor, castrating the media and stuffing the judiciary and other key institutions with yes-men.” (Al-Monitor)
“In a pivotal Congressional hearing centered on the future of artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, served as the star witness, underscoring the importance of proactive measures to tackle A.I.'s challenges.” (Reliable Sources)
“Last week, a sex tape purporting to feature Muharrem İnce, a third-party candidate in Turkey’s presidential election, circulated online. İnce said that the tape was a deepfake—’This is not my private life, it’s slander,’ he said, according to The Guardian, claiming that the footage had been ripped from an ‘Israeli porn site’—but he dropped out of the race regardless, citing a longer campaign of character assassination." (CJR)
Congress is nervous about ChatGPT influencing elections. (semafor)