Comments on Required Reading
Hmmmm...
You know Gitai, I'm a Taibbi fan too (although I can never get his name right) and I was gonna link that article earlier this week, but I chose not to because there's really nothing to the article. He does a lot of name calling, lists off some of Giuliani's evil lobbying contracts and talks about deaths and illness from 911 clean up. But it wasn't much new info. When I first saw the headline I was psyched, but then I read the article. Not one of Taibbi's strongest efforts.
Contra Josh, I thought it was a great article. Sure, there's nothing new for the politically informed, but I thought it was enough to remind everybody else that, in spite of Giuliani running on the vague impression that he was some sort of 9/11 hero, he really doesn't deserve the credit. And on all sorts of issues, both related and unrelated to 9/11, he's been a rolling disaster of self-serving governance. Taibbi's style is well suited to Rolling Stone -- it's the sort of article that would have made HST proud.
Giuliani told Peter Jennings in a live ABC interview on September 11, 2001 that he was warned that the World Trade Center towers would fall before they did.
In that interview, he said:
"I went down to the scene and we set up, uh, headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner and the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management. And we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse."
Last month, Giuliani was confronted by a young lady who said she was family of a WTC collapse victim and wanted to know why, since as he reported to Peter Jennings, he knew the towers were going to collapse, the people inside weren't notified, and who else knew about this.
Giuliani responded:
"The fact is, uh, I didn't know the towers would collapse."
At a press conference after the last Republican debate, Giuliani's press secretary had freelance reporter Matt Lepacek ejected and arrested for trespassing because Lepacek asked who told Giuliani and why the towers' occupants were not warned.
Does anyone else find this disturbing?
REPORTER 1: Mr. Giuliani, how do you plan to deal with the upcoming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security funding crises?
GIULIANI: 9/11.
REPORTER 2: Mr. Giuliani, what is your position on the proposed over-hall of the nation’s immigration system?
GIULIANI: 9/11.
REPORTER 3: Mr. Giuliani, since you’ve been divorced several times and are estranged from your adult children, do you feel it’s appropriate for your party to criticize families other than married heterosexuals?
GIULIANI: 9!!!! 11!!!!
(The crowd convulses and goes wild).
Here's video of the questioning and police involvement and video of Lepacek talking to other reporters after being arrested and released. Notable: 1. Other reporters were warned not to ask any more questions about 9/11; 2. The reporter was roughed up and had his camera broken by some combination of the police and secret service.
Taibbi is not HST. No one is. He may wish to be. You may wish him to be. And yes, he covers politics for RS. But that's it.
Taibbi couldn't carry Thompson's coke spoon.
Res Ipsa Loquitor.
Someone tell me that a Presidential candidate's staff having police remove and arrest a reporter at a press conference after that reporter asks questions about the candidate's contradictory public statements about his foreknowledge of an otherwise-unexpected disaster that resulted in the deaths of several thousand people is not newsworthy, and I'll shut up about this.
Here's video of the May confrontation during which Giuliani says he didn't know the towers would collapse, in direct conflict with his earlier statement during the Jennings interview.
@6 The man dropped acid while interviewing a Kerry communications director. That's gotta count for something.
Christ -- sure he's not HST, but he's probably the snarkiest and sharp tongued writer on the scene these days. You should check out some of the stuff he wrote for the eXile in Moscow years ago. Truly venomous and well informed.
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