Guiliani on Film

I just watched the video Giuliani Gets Exposed As Fraud by Firefighters, which has been up on UTube for over a month. For such a short video, it’s quite powerful, and I got emotional watching it. But let’s be honest here, I would never vote for Rudy Giuliani anyway. No, he doesn’t strike terror into my heart like some of the other candidates, and I do approve of some of his more edgy fashion choices (see above). But I’m a left-leaning centrist, and while once or twice in the past I’ve voted for moderate Republicans I can’t imagine doing it again unless the current political climate drastically changes. Polls indicate that I’m with the majority in that attitude. Turns out that most of us have somehow failed to appreciate the last seven years of corruption and bungling, or at least not as much as Fox News has hoped we would.

But I wish that most Americans would grasp the real lessons we should be learning from our current problems as a nation, and the lesson is surely not that Republicans are bad and Democrats are good. One of those lessons is front-row center in the Giuliani video. Once I dried my eyes over Rudy’s vicious, uncaring attitude towards fire fighters and his stereotypical Republican big-business centric corruption, I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that I had seen this somewhere before. Actually, we have all seen it before. Remember swift-boat veterans against John Kerry, John McCain’s illegitimate black child, the Clinton’s murder of Vince Foster? As I look fondly back at those stories and smile in anticipation of more as we approach the 2008 election, I can’t help but ruin my own good time by wondering if maybe I should start to reject all smear campaigns, even when they’re directed at someone like Rudy Giuliani.

But first I needed to ask, is this video informative or is it just part of a smear campaign? Well, here’s some information missing from the video. What is Giuliani’s own explanation for the defective radios provided for the fire-fighters? As mayor, would he actually have been aware of such a detail? Who was the decision-maker responsible for accepting the no-bid contract for the radios? Why did the city prohibit further excavation of the ruins of the twin towers – was it really because gold had already been recovered or did they have new information about the risks? I don’t have the answer to any of those questions either, and for all I know, Giuliani may well be an evil wealth-and-power driven maggot who prioritizes special deals for the makers of defective equipment over the lives of fire-fighters. I’m just saying I didn’t learn anything from this video that proves it. So gosh, unless someone offers me the facts, I guess I’ll just have to vote for some other candidate for the pathetically old-fashioned reason that I don’t like Giuliani’s platform.

Sure, it would be dull, but isn’t it just possible that the U.S. could be a better place if everyone voted for candidates based on their platforms and their proven records instead of reacting to unsubstantiated rumors? After all, when we need entertainment, we’ll still have Fox News.