American Politics Journal -- Giuliani, The Modern Vicar of Bray



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Giuliani, the Modern Vicar of Bray

by Tamara Baker

Mon., Feb. 21, 2000 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- There is an old English song, "The Vicar of Bray", dating from the early part of the 18th century.

The original vicar, of the village of Bray on the Thames, near Windsor, was probably one Simon Aleyn, who by dint of his wonderful ability to turn coats when necessary, maintained his position through many political and religious changes from 1640 to 1688. His talents in this area gave rise not just to a song, but also to a proverbial saying, that 'the Vicar of Bray will be Vicar of Bray still'.

As the chorus has it:

"And this be law, I shall maintain
Until my dying day, sir
That whatsoever king may reign,
Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir."

The best-known modern American version of the Vicar of Bray happens to be the current Mayor of New York City, one Rudolph Giuliani. (And judging from the nasty tone of his political discourse, "bray" applies there as well.) As you well know by now, he's running against Hillary Clinton for Moynihan's seat in the Senate. As both a political contortionist and a dirty campaigner, his only competition comes from the Bush family.

Example #1:

In the fall of last year, Rudy the G. made a point of hitting all the national talk shows attacking Hillary for her husband's having given clemency to Puerto Rican FALN members in US jails. Rudy accused her of being soft on terrorists.

How interesting that Rudy would do this, being that as recently as July 1999, less than four months previous, he was marching in New York City parades urging Hillary's husband to give the jailed FALN members that very clemency he now criticizes.

Example #2:

Rudy's favorite knock against Hillary has always been his claim that she is an out-of-state "carpetbagger" with no real connection to the Empire State.

However, back when Rudy was a liberal Democrat in New York City in 1964 (more on this later), he avidly supported the Senatorial campaign of Bobby Kennedy, even though RFK was himself from Massachusetts, not New York. The young liberal Democrat Rudy assiduously pointed out that Rufus King, one of New York's earliest Senators, was himself from Massachusetts, just like Bobby Kennedy.

Example #3:

1964 was perhaps the high-water mark of liberal Democratic politics in America. Rudy was a Democrat so long as they were in power, but he wasted no time in courting Ronald Reagan in 1980, and got plum jobs with the Reagan Administration as a result. Not only that, he ensured his ability to advance up the political ladder.

Example #4:

While the esteemed Mr. Giuliani tries to stampede New York Jewish voters into believing that Hillary Clinton is anti-Semitic, Rudy himself has no qualms of conscience about getting comfy with REAL Nazis like Jörg Haider of Austria and right-wing Uncle Toms like Roy Innis.

The New York Observer's Joe Conason lets the Haider cat out of the bag in two recent articles on the subject.

Here's some selections from the first one:

New York editorial writers constantly scold Hillary Rodham Clinton for blatant ethnic politicking, for blithely consorting with demagogues and other dubious characters, and for exploiting her office to promote her personal ambitions... So imagine the First Lady's confusion as she watches Rudolph Giuliani commit all those supposedly forbidden acts-- and get away with it.

The most recent opportunity to observe this double standard came on Martin Luther King Day, when both of the likely Senate candidates marked the birthday of the civil rights martyr by appearing in public with disreputable pretenders to the King mantle. Mrs. Clinton chose to attend a King holiday ceremony sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton, in a show of respect meant to dissuade the rowdy reverend of any lingering impulse to disrupt her campaign. And quite predictably she was publicly embarrassed at the event after one of Mr. Sharpton's fellow loudmouths, an obscure preacher from Queens, made a reference to Jewish employers who had once fired him.
Although Mrs. Clinton wasn't present during the offensive remarks and obviously had no responsibility for them, she was duly excoriated in the press for her mere presence in the same venue with the onetime sponsor of the Tawana Brawley hoax. Not even the recent attempt by former Mayor Edward I. Koch to rehabilitate his old nemesis was considered a mitigating factor for the First Lady.
Fair enough -- except that almost nobody seems to have noticed the very peculiar company the Mayor kept on that same symbolic day. Passing up a King celebration in Brooklyn, Mr. Giuliani was instead among the featured guests at a dinner sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality, a former civil rights organization that has long since been transformed into something quite different by its chairman, Roy Innis. While various respectable figures find it convenient to sponsor this event every year and thus pay their dues to the late Dr. King, no one who knows anything about both men can imagine that King would be anything but appalled by the stridently right-wing Mr. Innis. This year's dinner was billed as a tribute to Ronald Reagan, a lifelong opponent of civil rights whose Presidency was marked by numerous attempts to roll back the historic advances for which Dr. King died.
Of course, Mr. Giuliani is an ardent Reaganite himself, so he can be expected to pretend that it is appropriate to mark King Day by honoring the former President. Perhaps the Mayor can even be excused for propitiating Mr. Innis, a chameleon politician who once proudly defended the bloody Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (and who has never apologized for doing so).
That fiasco is old news, however, and Mr. Innis has moved on to newer but no-less-sinister stunts. The latest involves a visitor from Austria who happened to be sitting on the dais behind the Mayor at the CORE dinner on Jan. 17. His name is Jörg Haider. For now, Mr. Haider's title is leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, that troubled nation's rather successful party of the far, far right. If his call for new elections is successful, Mr. Haider may soon become Chancellor -- with echoes of another race-baiting politician from Austria who became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Mr. Haider became notorious for praising the Waffen SS and the labor policies of Adolf Hitler, and his popularity in his homeland is based largely upon his willingness to bash immigrants and whitewash the Nazi past.
His party is literally crawling with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, but Mr. Haider has shrewdly sought to clean up his own image in recent months by explaining and apologizing for his past gaffes. In this effort he has been assisted by Mr. Innis ever since they met last November. So far, the Mayor has said nothing about Mr. Haider's presence at the CORE dinner. Nor did he respond when Mr. Koch and Representative Charles Rangel issued a statement questioning his strange silence about the Austrian rightist. Evidently, Mr. Giuliani sees no profit in speaking out now as he did when Yassir Arafat and Fidel Castro dared to show up on his turf.

Rudy's tomblike silence regarding both Mr. Haider's Nazism, and Mr. Innis's efforts to cover it up, still held as of Joe Conason's second article, which ran a week later:

Two weeks have passed since Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attended a gala dinner marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., where another of the honored guests on the dais was one Jörg Haider, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party and the idol of Europe's far right. So far, Mr. Giuliani has kept his opinion of Mr. Haider to himself, although the growing likelihood that the Austrian politician will negotiate an important role in a new coalition government has provoked angry denunciations from London to Jerusalem. The European Union has threatened reprisals against Austria if Mr. Haider succeeds, with member states saying that the country's ambassadors would receive only perfunctory courtesies. Portugal has announced that it will not conduct "business as usual" with a government in which Mr. Haider is included. The Government of Israel also has talked about reprisals, and the United States has expressed deep concern.
But despite challenges from former Mayor Ed Koch and Representative Charles Rangel, the Mayor of New York -- who rarely hesitates to comment on foreign affairs of interest to his constituents -- has said nothing except that he didn't know Mr. Haider had been invited to the Jan. 17 event sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality. This alibi has been accepted with unaccustomed meekness by the city's Jewish organizations, usually so fierce and voluble whenever a politician betrays any hint of softness on anti-Semitism.

Mr. Conason, being the fair-minded bloke he is, helps to defend Rudy a touch, even as he provides an explanation for the failure of the bulk of New York City Jewish leadership to call Rudy on the carpet over this:

...Of course, no sane person thinks that Mr. Giuliani endorses the Haider viewpoint on Nazis, immigrants or any other issue. Perhaps the city's Jewish leaders are simply giving a reliable friend the benefit of the doubt (although Jews are hardly the only group with an interest in combating neo-fascism).
But Mr. Koch offers another, bluntly unflattering explanation for the discreet silence of the Jewish community regarding the Mayor and the Austrian. "They're afraid!" he exclaimed. "They will do anything they possibly can to avoid criticizing him, for fear that he will use his power to punish them. They are reluctant to say something critical even in a social setting, because they're afraid it will get back to him." There are bigger things to worry about in this world than the wrath of Rudy, and one of them is about to happen in Vienna.

It is common knowledge in the City of New York that Rudy Giuliani doesn't let any sense of morals act as a brake on his urge to power. Locals who cross him wind up paying for it, big-time.