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.
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