I can't deny that I dislike Rudy Giuliani. On the other hand on the list of Conservatives worth detesting he barely registers. I mean, the guy could turn a cake recipe into a tribute to 9/11. And his subsequent reduction into deranged conservative apoplexy anytime he approaches a mic is quite remarkable, and was not much of a stretch for me, either. But as far as Conservative blowhards go, he has been rather forgettable.
So when I came upon the comments that have since blown up in the mediasphere where he said that "Obama does not love America," it did not strike me as overly hyperbolic. Not for him, anyways.
But over time, the fact that he continues to stand by his statements almost astounds me, the way I feel when I see someone cuts me off to get stuck at the same red light. And I live in Philly and so that does happen a lot.
So, not being one to always go by what other people say, I decided to see if I could get a better understanding of the actual context in which Giuliani made his statements.
Most pundits have resorted to tenuously tying his statements to race, so I wondered if there really was anything to that notion, and if not, what was he really trying to convey.
After getting a better idea of the context, what doesn't bother me is the racial undertones. What really bothered me the most, is the underlying implications that seems to drive his worldview. Those are, in my mind, most worth addressing, and calling Giuliani out on.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
Of course, Rudy Giuliani was not making this speech publicly, in front of throngs of Americans of many types and colors.
These was probably one of the most plutocratic crowds you could ever get.
John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket owner and former Republican mayoral candidate in New York, is sponsoring the occasion, which will feature a roundtable discussion among Walker, the hosts, and a mix of wealthy financiers and political personalities.
Among those planning to appear: investment banker Lewis Lehrman, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and philanthropist Jimmy Kemp, the son of Jack Kemp, the late New York congressman who ushered Reagan’s tax reforms through Congress.
The setting was in a famously upscale Manhattan establishment, where the only listeners were some of the wealthiest Republican donors. To top it off, some of the economists we have to thank for, of all things, Reaganomics.
Laffer is best known for authoring the “Laffer curve,” an argument for increasing federal revenue by lowering taxes. Moore, a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer and founder of the Club for Growth, now works at the Heritage Foundation. Kudlow, a fixture on cable television, was one of Reagan’s advisers on fiscal and economic matters.
So here is what Rudy Giuliani was saying: When Rudy says "America," What he really means is "Big Money." When he says Obama wasn't brought up to love this country, what he really means is that Obama is not giving due reverence to the millionaires and capitalists who make their money on the backs of other people.
And you know what that means? Those of us who aren't wealthy, who aren't millionaires and can't afford to buy our way into places like the 21 Club: We are not real Americans.
He doesn't see the problem with saying that Obama doesn't love America, because in his mind, the only America that matters is the rich. And you know what? I don't think Obama loves that America either. And some of you here may challenge me on that.
But I reject the notion that Rudy Giuliani and his ilk can equate America to the 1% and act like that is how the rest of us see things and will be ok with that. The people in that room do not represent America.
Sure, the people in that room who listened to Rudy Giuliani talk represent certain aspects of America. And just like all of us human beings have flaws that go along with our characters, America has some shady aspects that come along with it and we must acknowledge that.
But with Giuliani's statements, he simultaneously demoted the rest of us to lower status and also signaled that we don't matter. "That America" that makes up the working class, the downtrodden, the tired and huddled masses, it's alright if Obama does good things for them. Or doesn't, who cares. But if it's not "Our America" that he ultimately answers to and pays supplication to, then clearly he does not love us as much as a President should.
This is what Rudy Giuliani meant, and continues to stand by, and for some reason this isn't the main rhetoric we are hammering him on.
His later statements, where he explains how saying Obama does not love America is not a racist thing to say, seems to support this mindset.
“From the time he was 9 years old, he was influenced by Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist,” Giuliani said. The ex-mayor added that Obama’s grandfather introduced him to Davis, a writer and labor activist.
Giuliani also said another bad influence on Obama was Saul Alinsky, a community organizer whom the ex-mayor called a “socialist.”
Might as well go by McCarthy, version 2.0.
So essentially, what Giuliani's remarks boil down to is that Obama does not love America because he has communist leanings. But last I checked, a person's loyalty to their country is determined by their service to that country, not that person's political leanings, especially if said country is supposed to be one of free speech. And when that country is made up of a lot of struggling, hard-working, blue-collar middle class types, there is bound to be a lot of communist-sounding rhetoric that makes sense. And the only way to construe "Being Communist-ish means not loving America" to be possibly true is if the only America Giuliani was talking about was the 1% of America that doesn't care about the average worker.
Look, I know that there are detractors even on the Left who are not fans of everything Obama has done. And I am sure there are still people who would rather focus on the racial aspects of Giuliani's remarks as being the most noteworthy.
But to allow the notion to go unchallenged, that Obama does not love America, it doesn't just tarnish all that Obama has accomplished. It doesn't just go beyond clashes in ideology.
It is an insult to all upstanding Americans, those of us who are not the ultra rich and affluent.