257.2 - Clown Award: Rudy Giuliani

Clown Award: Rudy Giuliani

Now for one of our regular features; this is the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

Okay, picking this week's clown was ... interesting. I had a couple of candidates but one stood out so clearly that days before doing the show I was sure I had my clown. But at almost the last minute he was outclassed by a pro.

So our wannabe clown is one Ken Taylor, mayor of a rural town in the southeast corner of Arizona. He received an invitation to a meeting of the US-Mexico Border Mayors Association to take place on August 24 in Laredo, Texas. The organization aims to have mayors on both side of the border "speak in one voice in Washington, DC and Mexico City," as one put it, on issues affecting them.

Taylor answered in no uncertain terms that he would NOT - in all caps - be attending because he was deeply, deeply offended by the fact that the invitation was written in both English and, quotng him, "Spanish/Mexican."

"One nation means one language," he declared, "and I am insulted by the division caused by language."

Of course, there are two nations involved here, but it seems he couldn't be bothered reading far enough to realize that, being much too busy being outraged by the fact that anyone would or would want to be able to speak a language other than English.

His defense, no surprise, was to blame the media for taking things "out of context."

Okay, so what was the context that he says was ignored? Taylor said his greatest objection is that the by trying to arrange cooperation among mayors on both sides of the border, the organization is "giving away US sovereignty and making America subservient to Mexico."

Oh yeah, well, that's much different.

By the way, Taylor is mayor of Huachuca City, "huachuca" being an Apache word meaning "thunder mountain." And Huachuca City is in Cochise County. Just what is the "one language" Taylor thinks we should all be speaking?

Okay, given that, how in heaven's name could he not be this week's clown? Because it came in the same week as a true gem.

So the Big Red Nose this week goes to perpetual loudmouth Rudy Giuliani.

On August 15, introducing TheRump at a campaign event in Youngstown, Ohio, Giuliani declared that "Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office."

Let's recall first that Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001. Let's recall next that he tried to run for president in 2008 with a campaign that consisted mostly statements that, as Joe Biden famously put it, "contain a noun, a verb, and '9/11.'"

So whose fault was this latest bit of numbskullery? You know already: it was the media, for failing to realize he was using "abbreviated language," that he meant "the eight years since 9/11" even though that's not what he said. And in fact, several outlets actually jumped to his support over the next day, noting that yes, he had mentioned 9/11 in his speech before he had his senior moment.

Rudy Giuliani

So yeah, okay, the years since 9/11, those were the "eight years before Obama came along." Except, of course, Obama was elected in November 2008, just over seven years after 9/11, not eight, and became president two months later. So maybe it's not his memory that is failing Rudy, it's his skills at basic arithmetic.

But no, a likelier explanation is that he did not forget 9/11, he forgot when it happened - because, like all good right-wing jackasses, it's part of his religion that George Bush could not have been responsible for 9/11. It had to be somebody else's fault.

But even granting all of that, even cutting him all that slack, he is still a doofus.

After 9/11 but before Obama became president, there were at least four attacks on US soil that were declared by the FBI to be Islamist terrorist attacks or were carried out by people who said they were driven by such an ideology. And there are others from the same period which may have been driven by an extreme Islamist ideology.

On top of all of that there is the fact that Rudy the G deliberately limited his oh-so-deep concern about terrorism to "radical Islamic" terrorism because as we all know, no other sort of terrorism counts, no other sort is worthy of attention, no other sort has victims important enough to be recognized - at least by Rudy Giuliani.

So no matter how you look at it, Rudy Giuliani, who earlier this month found TheRump's statement that Obama is the "founder of ISIS" to be "legitimate political commentary," is exactly what he has proved himself to be over these last nearly 15 years: a total clown.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/huachuca-city-arizona-mayor-ken-taylor-rips-invitation-written-in-spanishmexican/
http://www.bensonnews-sun.com/news/article_a96e6968-63bb-11e6-b143-d7fc825a3dfb.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/giuliani_obama_twitter_forgets_911_islamic_terrori.html
http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/16/rudy-giuliani-911-remarks/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/16/rudy-giuliani/aside-from-911-rudy-giuliani-wrong-about-no-terr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States#2000.E2.80.9309
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/08/15/rudy-giuliani-claims-no-successful-terror-attacks-on-us-soil-bef/21452167/