Chris Matthews: Craving a Pinch of Rudy Giuliani's 'Fascism'

February 20 2007
Counterbias.com
by Dr. Andrew Bosworth & John Calvin Jones
 

On the February 7, 2007, edition of MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews heaped praise on GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Matthews called the former mayor of New York City, former federal prosecutor, and Reagan’s special envoy to Haiti, “the kind of gutsy, street-corner politician we all grew up with” who “stood on the corner during the fire and told us what was going on.”

Matthews said that he would like “[a] guy who wasn’t on the ranch during Katrina -- who was out on the street corner answering questions.”  Matthews added: “I’m so sick of Southern guys with ranches running this country. I want a guy to run for president who doesn’t have a [expletive] -- I’m sorry -- a ranch.  Wouldn’t that be good?”

Matthews again touted the progress Giuliani made in improving olfactory conditions in New York City, asserting that “subways didn’t smell like pee anymore” and that “[e]ven the phone booths in New York have always smelled like pee.” Matthews made similar claims on the February 5, 2007, editions of MSNBC Live and Hardball, both noted by Media Matters for America. Matthews also claimed that Giuliani “made you feel like you had a right to walk the street safely” and added, “I think the country wants a boss like that, you know? A little bit of fascism there. Just a little bit. Just a pinch of it.”

Giuliani knows a lot about pushing and encouraging pinches and slaps of fascism. 

Lessons on Torture and Murder by Rudy

In April 1982, as 2,100 Haitians sat in an American prison, their reward for escaping the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, then Associate Attorney General of the United States, Rudolph Giuliani, told the courts and the public that these people should be repatriated because, as Giuliani put it, “The refugees had nothing to fear from the government of Jean-Claude Duvalier” (roving bands of the Tonton Macoute notwithstanding). 

In statements to the federal courts and the press, Giuliani said that dictator “Baby Doc” Duvlier had personally assured him that Haitians returned from the United States were not persecuted. “Political repression is not the major reason for leaving Haiti,” Giuliani concluded.

Years later, as mayor, Giuliani would let another group of blue-uniformed thugs torture and terrorize Haitians and Black people, as he unleashed the NYPD to enforce “Giuliani Time.”  

In 1997, after Justin Volpe had raped Abner Louima, who required surgery to repair a ripped colon and a set of new teeth (knocked out with a feces covered nightstick). Giuliani sided with lying cops who tried to cover up the horrific abuse. I guess Giuliani felt that the city should not have paid Louima $8.75 million in compensation for the night of hell – but then again, Giuliani did not have to pay the bill!    

In February 1999, after four of Giuliani’s thugs gunned down an unarmed, African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, from point blank range – only hitting Diallo with 19 of 41 shots from a distance of five feet, Giuliani defended their poor marksmanship; efforts to have the trial removed from NYC and then the acquittal of thugs who assassinated an innocent. The city settled for $3 million.

When New York’s murder machine killed Patrick Dorismond, we really learned what Giuliani’s pinch felt like … and we could imagine what Il Duce might bring to the nation as president. 

In March 2000, Plan Giuliani encouraged two cops to descend like vultures on a couple of marks. An undercover cop approached Haitian immigrant, Patrick Dorismond, and a friend and propositioned them to buy some marijuana. (I think Giuliani would call this detective work). Dorismond and his friend responded in a way that would make Nancy Reagan proud – he said “No.” But moreover, Dorismond tried to get the “drug dealing scum” away from him and began to attack the drug pusher! What was Dorismond’s reward for being the object of a sting? He was assassinated – shot pointblank in the chest, because he REFUSED to buy drugs from a cop! As an epilogue, the city paid the family of Dorismond a $2.25 million settlement.

Those are the hallmarks of Giuliani time. Cops who gun-down innocents, try to peddle drugs, and rape men in handcuffs.

9/11 Rock Star?

Let’s move beyond one facet of the criminal record of Giuliani and look at events that made the lispy womanizer a media darling. How did the Mayor handle 9/11? In reference to 9/11, Matthews made the claim that Giuliani “is a front-runner because the voters like this guy because during 9-11 he was the one guy there on the street corner, not hiding like all the other pols did.” 

Yes, I remember it well … Giuliani was out front, with then EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, whose credentials were that: (1) she had lost an election; and (2) had served as Governor of New Jersey – a high-polluting state.  Claiming the the air was clean - with reassurances from Whitman and Bush, Giuliani pushed New Yorkers to return to work – while the fires still raged and toxics filled the air. After nearly three weeks, when chemical tests showed that the air in New York had asbestos, fiberglass, and dust from pulverized computers, glass and concrete - levels that are now manifest in respiratory ailments, sick-leave, disability and death, the “guy on the street corner” said:

“Although they occasionally will have an isolated reading with an unacceptable level of asbestos … it’s very occasional and very isolated. The air quality is safe and acceptable.”

In legalese we call this type of fraud, criminal conduct. But then again, such trivializing of an environmental disaster like the implosions of WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7 symbolize the care that neo-cons, the petroleum industry, Big Pharma, and agri-business have for our environment and planet. Il Duce has shown his stripes. He supports dictators, does not mind sticking the public for the bill when SWAT teams and delusional cops gun down the innocent, encourages the drug war and all its inherent corruption (once at a fund-raiser in South Texas, Giuliani he told attendees that we could stop drugs entering the US from Mexico by getting better human intelligence, i.e. more cops inside the cartels?!), likes to commit adultery, shows loyalty to his sex partners by putting them on the public payroll, and ignores or denies environmental catastrophes. Yes, this is exactly the kind of person whom Chris Matthews and Imus would applaud. I knew the press was filled with liberals. Then again could I expect anything different from Matthews, a guy who worked for Tip O’Neill and wrote for a paper in San Francisco?

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This article was originally published at Virtual Citizens.
 

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