Heather Hurlburt on Rudy Giuliani's efforts to re-invent himself as a Red Sox fan: "That would be the sports equivalent of, say, wrapping yourself in a major national tragedy for purely political reasons? Getting married three times and then discovering that other people's behavior puts our social fabric at risk?"
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Chutzpah
24 Oct 2007 02:44 pm
Comments (26)
Close italics tag, please.
Close italics tag, please.
"How come long face, italics?"
You blog, me read, not right comment good...
Dude, I know true blogging is an editor-free medium, but if you're going to do it FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BECOME A BETTER PROOF-READER.
I can handle, for the most part, the constant spelling mistakes, sentences that begin with one thought and then trail off into incoherence because you changed your focus mid-stream, etc. That's part of the charm of reading someone's mostly unfiltered stream of consciousness.
But when you make your entire site unreadable because you can't be bothered to double-check your HTML tags it pushes past "idiosyncratic" and into the realm of "annoying."
What JB said.
Can a random commenter insert a closing italics tag and have it work? Let's find out -->. Italics?
The natives are restless . . .
Wrong tag... try again with a close em -->
Sure. The powers that be fix the tag right when I'm in the middle of an experiment! Bleh!
I tried a "close italics" tag in a comment above Curt (the second of my doubled comments), and it didn't work. Some powers are beyond mere commenters.
I tried a "close italics" tag in a comment above ..
Interesting. Looking at the source it seems that when commenters put in a stray closing tag it gets stripped out. But when Matt put in a close 'e' instead of the close 'em' that was called for it didn't get stripped.
I say 'interesting' from a distinctly geeky perspective of course.
Though born in Boston, but I know this: as a New Yorker, there is only one time can you root for the Sox: and that's when they are playing the Mets. And there is no requirement that you do so!
And I don't get his explanation, that he's an American League fan, and would always take the AL team over the NL team, unless it's the Mets! Now I love the DH as much as the next guy, but can you love the DH so much that it overcomes Bosox hatred? I mean of all people, shouldn't Mr. "God hates weasels and the people who own them" know that hate beats love 9 times out of 10?
This better have some cockamamie relation to 9/11 or I'm going to puke.
This better have some cockamamie relation to 9/11 or I'm going to puke.
Giuliani's just standing in solidarity with Boston--a city that had its airport victimized by two groups of Sept. 11 hijackers. His courage in rooting for the Red Sox is doubly impressive in light of Colorado's sad failure on that terrible day. Where was the North American Aerospace Defense Command (headquartered just 80 miles from Coors Field) when Rudy and his fellow Red Sox fans needed it most?
Seriously, I always liked that Giuliani, as mayor, never tried to play both sides of the Yankees/Mets rivalry--he was straightforwardly a Yankees fan. I can't tell if he's become more of a shameless panderer or if he just thinks people in New Hampshire are more gullible than people in New York City.
What the Red Sox fans fail to appreciate is that the Yankee fans don't hate the Red Sox nearly as much the Red Sox fans hate the Yanks. Everybody seems to have this idea that the Yankees fans loathe the Sox like there's no tomorrow. But that's not true at all. There's so little time to loathe the Red Sox, and their one championship in the last XX years, when you've got so many rings to keep up.
And I say this as a Mets fan.
I agree with Al, but I do think there's a big distance between (on the one hand) hating the Red Sox with something less than an all-consuming fury and (on the other hand) rooting for them to win the World Series.
In my own limited experience the only times I've heard Yankee fans root for the Red Sox is when they're playing the Mets or when a Red Sox ALDS win would set up a Yankees/Red Sox ALCS.
This is about one thing and one thing only: New Hampshire.
And I don't get his explanation, that he's an American League fan, and would always take the AL team over the NL team
I don't think this is completely incoherent. As a UW fan, I hate me some Oregon Ducks, but I pretty much always root for Pac-10 teams in non-conference games.
Anybody listen to the Bill Simmons podcasts? Simmons has had his Yankee-fan buddy John O'Connell on all the time this season to talk about the Yanks and Sox.
And on yesterday's podcast, O'Connell said the same thing as Giuliani - he's an AL fan, so will root for the Sox over the Rockies. Simmons was incredulous. I really don't think that Sox fans understand that their own hatred for the Yankees is just not reciprocated to the same degree.
As a Yankees fan, it's not that I loathe the Sox, it's that I enjoy seeing Sox fans suffer.
Surely, now the entire media machine will really chew Rudy out for this and call him a great big phony who will do anything to get elected. I mean, they did this to Hillary for saying she was both a Cubs and Yankees fan growing up, and the media is nothing if not even-handed in its treatment of Democrats and Republicans when it comes to stuff like this.
Is anyone brave enough (or dumb enough) (or wicked enough) to offer him tickets at Fenway?
Unfortunately, the type-casting is already over. Romney has cornered the market on "great big phony who will do anything to get elected" stories, while Giuliani is critiqued more often for being weird and insane.
But in this case I think the type-casting is apt. Clinton claiming to be a Cubs fan and a Yankees fan was probably just pandering. But it wasn't crazy, and I could even see a die-hard Cubs fan in the 1950s "rooting" for the Yankees in the Series as a way of rooting against more successful National League teams like the Dodgers and the Giants. It doesn't quite capture the situation to say that the Cubs and the Yankees don't have a rivalry--the Cubs haven't even made the World Series since two years before Clinton was born, and the two teams haven't faced off for the championship since 1938.
On the other hand, Giuliani claiming that he feels solidarity with the Red Sox goes beyond pandering and into the realm of the weird and insane. A perfect fit for his image and, as far as I can tell, his actual personality.
Surely, now the entire media machine will really chew Rudy out for this and call him a great big phony who will do anything to get elected.
Maybe you didn't see the front cover of the NY Daily News calling Rudy a "TRAITOR!", and the Post, calling Rudy a "RED COAT"?
I guess I didn't, Al. Kind of a reflex to assume that this stuff will never swing against a republican, because it almost never does. I stand semi-corrected, but I'll wait and see if this story gets the kind of national play that Clinton's Cubs/Yankees comment got.
As for the phoniness claim--I definitely think it's possible and not that uncommon for someone to be a fan of more than one team, esp. and AL and an NL team at the same time.
My mom and grandmother, for example, can both claim to be long-time Yankees and Braves fans. They only became Braves fans when the Braves moved to Atlanta, giving the south its first baseball team, and that's only been since, what, about 40 years ago?
I'll give anyone, even a lunatic like Giuliani, the benefit of the doubt when they talk about something personal and inconsequential like sports fanship.
I believe what Rudy wanted to say is that he has no respect for a bunch of yokels in flyover land, so of course he's rooting for the Sox. That might not go over well though.
Comments closed November 07, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
How come long face, italics?
Posted by Rihilism | October 24, 2007 2:47 PM