Rudy Giuliani | Screenshot
My then 23 year old Law Student son, took me to this man’s first inauguration in 1994.
Randy was majoring in Public Policy and wanted to do some networking at the reception. I was reluctant to go at the time but went because I supported his career goals.
A year later I moved out of New York City…
Alternet
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has been having the time of his life this week feeling relevant and commenting on the tumultuous events in Ferguson, Missouri. The fact that he has no actual knowledge of the details of the case has in no way cowed the former prosecutor and right-wing lout from speaking out about what it is he thinks black people really need.
Put succinctly, on Sunday, he said they need white people to control them. Particularly, white police officers. The day before the devastating news that police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for killing unarmed teen Michael Brown last August, Giuliani explained that black people need white cops so black people won’t kill each other. Then, a day after the official news that there would be no indictment, Giuliani said he’d prosecute witnesses whose stories contradict Wilson’s account, the details of which make no sense.
Giuliani’s week of fanning the racist flames started on “Meet the Press,” where he was asked to discuss Ferguson and the systemic problem of disproportionately white police forces policing black communities. Ferguson is hardly the only example of a place where the police seem more like an occupying force than an entity serving the community. Just this week, white Cleveland police officers gunned down a 12-year-old African-American child boy a toy gun within seconds of arriving on the scene. Fresh video of the incident seems to show that there was no attempt to talk or disarm the boy of his toy. But Giuliani did not want to talk about this, or Eric Garner, the African-American father from Staten Island who died as a result of being placed in a chokehold, or any of the other incidents in a depressing litany of police overreaction and deadly brutality against black people. He’d rather talk, in a familiar ploy of right-wingers, racists and white supremacists, about black-on-black crime. Here are the lowlights of Giuliani’s oh-so-chatty week.
1. Never mind unaccountable police violence. Can we just get back to black-on-black crime, and why black people need white police officers to control them?
Chuck Todd thought he was doing a segment on the problem of police/community relations. But Giuliani quickly hijacked the conversation to criticize black people, and white people who refuse to criticize black people. “The fact is,” he said, “I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We’re talking about the exception here.”
He tried to keep talking and deprive fellow guest, Georgetown professor Eric Dyson, whom he suspected might not agree with him, of any airtime. Chuck Todd also tried to make Dyson wait his turn. But it was clear he was not going to get a turn, and he wisely cut off Giuliani’s obfuscating diatribe.
“Can I say this, first of all, no black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. Number two, they are not sworn by the police department as an agent of the state to uphold the law,” Dyson said. “So in both cases, that’s a false equivalency that the mayor has drawn, which has exacerbated tensions that are deeply embedded in American culture.”
Giuliani kept shouting about the need for white police officers to keep black people from killing one another.
“Police officers wouldn’t have to be there if you weren’t killing each other,” Giuliani said.
You people.
The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the definitive smackdown of the black-on-black crime canard in a piece called “The Gospel of Rudy Giuliani,” at TheAtlantic.com.
“Yes. It’s almost as if killers tend to murder people who live near them. Moreover, it seems that people actually hold officers operating under the color of law to a different standard. This is an incredible set of insights, which taken together offer a revelation so profound, so far-reaching, that it must not be wasted on our shiftless minority populations. The Gospel of Rudy Giuliani must sally forth across the land and challenge a culture that accepts neighborly violence and differing standards of death.”
It is just so tired, so old and so racist. But for Giuliani and his ilk, it never gets old.
Or as Dyson said, but Giuliani did not hear, “This is a defense mechanism of white supremacy at work in your mind.”
2. How come I don’t get to say the same things Obama says? It’s so unfair. And who elected him?
On Tuesday, two days after that marvelous performance on “Meet the Press,” Giuliani was still under fire for his remarks. This hurt his feelings a great deal and he found it really unfair. What’s with the double-standard, he wondered. “I said the same thing the president of the United States said, and I was accused of being a racist,” he whined to CNN. “The president of the United States said because the minorities typically are subject to more crime, they need law enforcement more than anybody else. When he said it, he wasn’t accused of being a racist.”
Yeah, no fair. And if that law enforcement means brutalizing “minorities” and sometimes shooting them multiple times, then so be it. it’s for their own good.
He then took the opportunity to remind everyone again that black people sometimes kill other black people thereby demonstrating that his thinking has in no way evolved on that matter, despite having it pointed out to him that it is actually not related to the fact that police officers enjoy near impunity for killing black people. While many found Obama’s remarks in the wake of the grand jury decision did not go far enough to condemn police violence, Giuliani resented the hell out of the fact that the president dared suggest that police need to rethink their way of doing things at all.
“When the president was talking last night about training the police, of course, the police should be trained,” Giuliani said. “He also should have spent 15 minutes on training the [black] community to stop killing each other. In numbers that are incredible — incredible — 93 percent of blacks are shot by other blacks. They are killing each other. And the racial arsonists, who enjoyed last night, this was their day of glory.” (Note to Rudy. White people also kill white people. In huge numbers. Something like 90 percent of white murder victims are killed by whites. Big problem.)
3. The grand jury reached the “correct” verdict.
Funny how the once-zealous prosecutor, some have said overzealous, was clearly rooting for no prosecution in this case. But given his expressed views on how black people require white control, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which Giuliani would condemn a white officer for killing one of those “savages.” So, it appears that Giuliani’s racism, white supremacy and love for cops overrides his prosecutorial zeal.
Information and dispassionate analysis is not really needed when you have already made up your mind, and there is little doubt that Giuliani’s mind was made up a long time ago. So he was ready to go when CNN invited him on after the grand jury declined to indict.
“I believe it was a correct verdict,” Giuliani said on CNN Tuesday. “In fact, I think it was the only verdict the grand jury could reach.”
(Note: given the facts that have since emerged about prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s presentation of the case to the grand jury, a presentation that seemed designed to guarantee there would be no indictment, Giuliani could be technically correct on this one. Not that he has in any way criticized McCulloch for making it a slam dunk for the jury not to indict.)
Also, facts and information don’t really enter into Giuliani’s statement. He just knows what is “correct.”
“As a prosecutor, you couldn’t possibly have won that case,” Giuliani pronounced from on high. “They would’ve been destroyed at trial by a halfway competent defense lawyer, because of all the inconsistencies.”
He added: “If you can’t prove probable cause, how are you going to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt when the witnesses are contradicting themselves?”
See how he slings around those legal terms? He went to law school, you know.
4. Officer Darren Wilson had to go on TV to tell his side of the story.
Among the things Giuliani just knows—because he is a superior being—is exactly what was going through Officer Darren Wilson’s mind when he decided to go on national TV to tell his side of the story. Giuliani told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that Wilson felt compelled to come forward and give a TV interview about the night he shot Michael Brown because “he was so offended by the lies that were being told.”
So, it did not have anything to do with, say, money, or a book deal, or just trying to ensure that the whole world knows that Darren Wilson has no remorse whatsoever and would do it again in a heartbeat if given the chance.
Poor Wilson. He and Giuliani agree: he is the real victim here. Now he might have to write a book and everything. That’s hard.
Just for knowing, Wilson’s version of events is getting plenty of airtime without ABC and George Stephanopoulos’ help. It gained the only audience it really needed when prosecutor McCulloch allowed Wilson to testify for hours on end in the “secret” proceedings. Portions of it have been leaked all along as authorities systematically shredded the reputation of 18-year-old Brown in the months leading up to the grand jury verdict. Wilson had his attorneys release his statement. And the whole story, in all its deluded glory, was released by McCulloch in the wake of the grand jury decision. So really, Wilson has had multiple ways of telling his side of the story, and has taken advantage of all of them.
Can’t wait for the book!
5. You know who I would prosecute, though: eyewitnesses who contradicted Wilson’s versions of events.
Normally, so-called prosecutors stick together. But Giuliani confessed he had to part ways with McCulloch because McCulloch was being a little too soft on some of the eyewitnesses who testified about the night of the shooting, especially ones who said the shooting did not go down as Wilson claimed. Because prosecuting witnesses who come forward to testify against police officers is an excellent way to build community trust.
One major point of disagreement is what happened after Brown started running away from Wilson after being shot. Wilson has said that Brown turned around and started charging at him, even though Wilson had already demonstrated he was willing to shoot. Some have pointed out that that does not seem like a very rational thing to do, if you don’t enjoy dying. Some witnesses, including Brown’s companion that night, Dorian Johnson, made statements suggesting that Brown was trying to surrender, begging for his life and even had his hands up. Wilson has said that Brown appeared to be reaching into his waistband when he turned around, which seems like an awfully strange thing to do when you do not have a gun and a furious cop is aiming one at you.
Giuliani told Megyn Kelly he thinks people who said Brown was surrendering should be prosecuted for lying. He knows they are lying because St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said “many” of those witnesses later admitted that they did not actually see the shooting. Also, Giuliani knows everything and can see into the hearts of everyone.
“I disagree with the prosecutor on only one thing,” Giuliani said. “I would prosecute all those people for perjury. To testify falsely in a case in which you can put a man in jail for the rest of his life is an extremely serious crime.”
Host Megyn Kelly suggested that eyewitness testimony can be unreliable because people “may believe they saw what they didn’t see.” (She too can see into other people’s minds.)
“It’s not unreliable,” Giuliani disagreed. “These are people who are friends of his, these are people who have an ax to grind.”
Whereas, Darren Wilson has absolutely no reason to lie, whatsoever.
