Every time I've gone to New York City I've had a great time. I'd love to live there for a few months. Based on what I've read, I credit Rudy Giuliani with making the city safer for tourists, although he may have done so with a too-heavy hand. I was impressed with his early response to the attacks of 9/11 (which he later parlayed into a multi-million dollar business), prior to which I'd thought his attempts at censorship were the acts of a man so obsessed with power that he willfully ignored the law. When he was booted out of the executive mansion for screwing around on his wife, I liked that he moved in with a gay couple who, it turned out, were long-standing and good friends. He was unabashed and open about it. "Good for him," I thought.
So I'd seen him as an interesting and complex character, an egotistical and untrustworthy power-monger but with some redeeming qualities.
He ran the worst presidential primary campaign in recent memory.
And now, he's shown his truest colors, by being a last-minute no-show at his gay friends' wedding. Didn't even have the decency to call them himself:
"Rudy and Judith were both invited with a beautiful written invitation by mail," Koeppel told the Post. "His secretary called Thursday and said he was not able to come to the wedding and wished us all the best."
Nice. His secretary.
I think it's a semi-big deal. Admittedly I don't know exactly how close their friendship is (was); but he made no attempt to hide or discount it at the time. As mayor of NYC, a liberal bastion, he had no problem letting it be widely known that he had gay friends, and lived with them; a counter, perhaps, to his other transgressions, particularly ones involving the law. But then he ran for President, and you can't be seen as open-minded and expect to get the Republican nomination. And now he's considering running for Governor. Primary colors, once again.
I don't really care about Rudy one way or the other; but it says much not only about him, but about the party whose nomination he'd be seeking: his calculus is that they'd rather see him as a man who'd dump on long-time friends, decent guys by all accounts, than attend a same-sex marriage.
Tough choice, eh? Friendship or fame. Integrity or self-interest. I'd like to think I'm not the sort who'd hurt friends for my own aggrandizement. Or, at least, that I'd make the damn call myself.
.
He's a MAN Sid, 2 guys kissing is just creepy... Or maybe he had somethin better to do, I know I'd find something.
ReplyDeleteWhen Lindsay Lohan and Pink tie the knot he'll be there...
Whens the last time your lover Barak showed up at a SSM?? Oh yeah, they creep him out too.
Frank
Helloow, DrekMan!
ReplyDeleteDid he have his secretary call when he needed a place to live?
Or did he just show up with his six inch heels and golf clubs when his wife kicked his sorry ass out?
How did this republican straight arrow come to know a gay couple anyhow? Do you know any? Just wonderin'.
I've heard that men who "Feel Creepy", when men kiss, are kind of shaky in their sexuality? Just thinkin'.
Does the word 'sexuality',by itself, bring up those creepy feelings? Just askin'.
But he did wish them 'All the Best...' sounds all kind of confused doesn't he?
He, and others like him, would probably feel a lot better if they just came out. Just sayin'.
EugeneInSanDiego
Its a Southern Thang Sid,
ReplyDeleteRudy could be honest and tell them he didn't want to be grossed out on a nice weekend, and that drive to Connecticut is a Bitch, and SSM is illegal in New York, and who knows, he might want to run for mayor again, but he didn't want to hurt anyones FEELINGS or Lie, so he just took the easy way out. You'd call personally? Good on ya.
Frank
There's a quantitative study showing a positive correlation between self-reported anti-homosexual views* and penile tumescence in response to viewing gay porn.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, men who are at base heterosexual don't really respond one way or anther to images of homosexual behavior. Closet-cases, on the other hand, get woodies.
*see, e.g., comment by Drackman, upthread.
Spiny Norman: thanks! That's a great link, and, based on what we constantly see (those who rail against it....), it's not at all surprising. Perfect, really.
ReplyDeleteNorman, is that you??
ReplyDeleteI could just say "I know you are but what am I?" but your arguments more flawed than Michael Jackson's nose...
Ummmm how can I put this delicately?? Any guy that'll let someone measure his penile tumescense while watching Gay Porn, is probably, I don't know...
"Queer as Ping Pong Cleats" comes to mind...
Your Control Groups not really too well controlled...I mean, maybe you get off measuring penile circumference while guys watch gay porn, but most straight guys don't...
Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Frank
Drackman: defensive.
ReplyDeleteSad.
This guy is sitting at the bar one day and falls into conversation with the man on the next stool. He is grievously offended to realize that his neighbor is trying to pick him up.
ReplyDeleteHe slips a beer bottle into his pocket and follows his companion into the alley. His companion begins fellating him. Quietly he eases the beer bottle out of his pocket and slowly lifts it above his head. He pauses, drops the bottle, grabs the homosexual's head, and says, "No, I'll shake him to death!"
(This is funnier when you act it out.)
Whoops, that was me.
ReplyDelete--Sam "Neurofibrillary Tangles" Spade
Helloow, DrekMan!
ReplyDeleteThanks for explaining the southern thing about southern sensitivity and all that.
It must have been very difficult for Rudy having to live with people who disgusted him.
So nice of him to politely accept their hospitality, if nothing else... while lying to them so as not to hurt their feelings. A real gentleman.
Knowing the South, as you seem to, there's another "Southern Thing" you might have experienced and care to comment on, for our enlightenment:
Mules: "The farm boys first girlfriend." Are we talking girl mules here or boy mules?
Does penile tumescence come into this, so to speak; does talk of mule sex cause woodies and creepy feelings as well? Would scientific measurements be frowned upon.
Do the farm boys talk about their mules in the locker room? May one go steady, and are some mules considered "Fast."
Is mule date rape common?
EugeneInSanDiego
We don't really know his reasoning. A personal call would be nice. Perhaps awkward.
ReplyDeleteSometimes with what we see as the obvious...there is more background to... that would change our previous opinions if we knew.
One night I was registering a NYC cop who lived up here. We got to talking and he was telling me that Rudy Giuliani was responsible for cleaning up NYC.. of crime and even the car window washers. (annoying -washed without asking then expected tip)
Anyway... he totally cleaned up 42nd st and Disney went in there. he said that he was tough on the prostitutes. The cops had to chase them off one corner but they'd always settle on another corner, but Rudy was relentless and the cops has to stay on them and they eventually gave up and moved on.
Eugene,
ReplyDeleteyou asked "Is mule date rate common?"
Ask your Mother.
Frank
Helloow, DrekMan!
ReplyDeleteActually I asked:
Is mule date rape common...?
not:
"Is mule date rate common?"
So, as you suggested, I emailed mom,(she's a psychiatrist) and she noticed the confusion about the rates of raping and dating mules.
She said: "It iss all zer, but tell your friend he iss not to worry, because such confusions is common among zee mule fetishists."
"Zis is because relations with zee actual womens are rare among das self loathing homophobic individuals, with homosexual arousals zey are either unawares of or is denying."
Thanks for the suggestion.
EugeneInSanDiego
Somehow I can see EugeneInSanDiego discussing mule rape with his mother. After sex, that is.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" dissing Eugene.
ReplyDeleteGood God, too chickenshit even to use a nym . . . got to be anonymous to summon up the nerve to post.
Man up, you coward. Real men and women post their names.
Spiny Norman, thanks for the link. Good to see data/facts to support my longtime conviction that the worst homophobes are closet cases.
You can expect to see me slapping homophobic posters upside the head a lot more from now on. My dear cousin, a gay man who came out at 19, died last week of a heart attack. He was 51.
I blame the damn homophobes for his death. He wanted more than anything else to be a husband and father, the kind of stand-up family man his father is. God in his inscrutable wisdom wired him up gay. And then brought him into the world 50 years too soon. No, I don't understand it.
But if he'd had a family, his husband or his children would have been on the lookout for signs of ill health, and he might not have died too soon.
So a pox on all those damned homophobes.
Leigh...
ReplyDelete"If he had a family"?!?!?
You were his COUSIN for cryin out loud... down South we consider Cousin's Family... And go ahead and make jokes, you don't see us whining about the illegality of Cousin-Cousin marriage...
Frank
Frank, I see you still regard consistency as a virtue. God forfend you should pass up an opportunity to be an asshole.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin and I were close. But I live with my husband and children.
I wish he could have done the same.