Did Rudy Giuliani's most destructive act take place in 1996?

We hear a lot in recent days about Rudy Giuliani's acts in the end stages of Donald Trump's political career, from his activity in Ukraine that helped lead to Trump's impeachment to his current inept attempts to throw out hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes as Trump refuses to accept his overwhelming loss (in the Electoral College as well as the popular vote) to President-Elect Joe Biden.

But what I've been thinking about today is the action of Mayor Giuliani's that may have done as much as any other to lead Trump to the White House in the first place.

In 1996, the Fox News Channel was started by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, with its main studio in New York. However, it was not immediately available in any major television markets, including New York City. There was no internet method of getting video news in 1996, so Fox News was even more invisible than Trump's current favorite online right-wing channel, OANN, to the vast majority of Americans. The only cable provider in NYC was Time Warner, and they said they had a waiting list of 30 other cable stations vying for space and they didn't have room for a nascent cable news channel from the Australian owner of the New York Post.

"It began with a phone call to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Sept. 20 [1996], an entreaty that would soon mire City Hall in a feud between two media conglomerates. On the line was an old friend of the Mayor, Roger Ailes, a former Republican political consultant who is now chairman of the 24-hour news channel started by Rupert Murdoch." --New York Times, November 4, 1996

It could be just that Ailes was an old friend, or that Rudy's second wife, Donna Hanover, was then working at Murdoch's local station, WNYW-5, or that Rudy saw Fox as a national stage for his own presidential ambitions, or that he was unselfishly trying to save a few hundred NYC media jobs for a fledgling cable station, but the fact remains that he went to bat -- hard -- to get Fox News on New York's only cable provider, engaging much of the mayor's office and staff to do so, and he was ultimately successful. 

On a personal level, this has stuck in my head (and craw) because in the same year, 1996, Rudy sold the television station I watched most regularly, the city's PBS station WNYC-31, to a private buyer who immediately stopped showing BBC & PBS programming (he also sold my favorite radio station, WNYC-FM and AM, but those airwaves were bought by a foundation that kept the call letters and they have remained the city's main outlets for National Public Radio content.)

We'll never know if the struggling brainchild of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes would have survived its infancy if it hadn't been able to move into the New York cable market, but maybe more importantly, we'll never know if tri-state real-estate con man Donald Trump would have become PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP without the Trump/Fox feedback loop that created his political "philosophy" and gave him a similarly-brainwashed audience for his political ambitions. Even though Trump had shown some of his political leanings publicly as early as 1989 when he lobbied heavily for the killing of the (innocent) Central Park Five, he was mainly a tabloid punchline for his marriages and affairs and bankruptcies and real-estate battle with Leona Helmsley; it's hard to imagine Trump becoming TRUMP without Fox News. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a real possibility that Fox News never would have appeared on the television screens in the Trump Tower penthouse without the heavy-handed intervention of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It may be one of Rudy's greatest crimes.

The Soundtrack for the Trump Era?

In case you had any doubt about Rage Against the Machine being in the running for the most appropriate soundtrack of the Trump era, look at Giuliani's appearance at the beginning of this 1999 Michael Moore-directed video for "Sleep Now in the Fire," and the bizarre campaign poster that makes a prophetic appearance at the 1'04" mark.


Rage may not be touring or recording now, but we have their songs being given new life by Brass Against the Machine. This version of "Wake Up" was just posted ten days ago.

So which decade is Melania Trump living in?

 According to an article in the French edition of Le Huffington Post, many are reminded of 1980s soap operas when they see the First Lady's new official portrait, but according to Germany's Der Spiegel, it's the 1990s (and PhotoShop) that are evoked by this bland glamour shot.

So, which is it?

Click Here for the Der Spiegel article.

Click here for the Le Huffington Post article.

I thought it was the 1970s.

'Ambulance Blues' is the song of the night

In the car tonight I listened to all of Neil Young's On the Beach, one of my favorite albums since I first bought it on vinyl in 1974.

These last lines from the last track are stuck in my head. I want them stuck in yours too.

I never knew a man

could tell so many lies

He had a different story

for every set of eyes

How can he remember

who he's talking to?

Cause I know it ain't me,

and hope it isn't you.

21 years ago today.

Here's Jerry Garcia's last performance with the Grateful Dead, a month before his death on August 9, 1995.

Part 3 of One Voter's History with "The Lesser of Two Evils"

Click Here for Part One: 1968, 1972, 1976
Click Here for Part Two: 1980, 1984, 1988

1992

The height of new technology in 1992, Jerry Brown
included a toll-free 800 number on everything.

1992 was another year in which the candidate I supported in the primaries lost. (The background music for the writing about this year is R.E.M.'s Out Of Time.) The Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton clashes, some of which involved Hillary's law firm weren't the only similarity with 2016. Jerry Brown was also a precursor of Bernie Sanders in his attack on PACs, his $100 cap on contributions solicited from small donors with his ubiquitous 800 number, and a no-frills campaign in which he stayed in supporters' houses rather than fancy hotels (cf. the photos of Bernie flying coach and carrying his own bags). Since his first round as California Governor, I always liked Jerry Brown's style that was totally out of sync with conventional politics and conventional American lifetyles. I wasn't a fan of Bill or his centrist path, and I was disappointed when he got the nomination, but I voted for him. I didn't see it as a case of  "the lesser of two evils." It was more a case  of "the leftest of two centrists," and note that's 'leftest' as in 'most left'; there were no leftists involved on either side. George H.W. Bush had lost my vote for good when he gained the support of 90% of Americans with Operation Desert Storm.

1992 is also the rare classic case of the third party helping rather than hurting the Democrats. Ross Perot got almost 20 million votes and Bush only lost to Clinton by about 5 million. If some of those Republicans had voted for "rightest of two centrists" rather than the shiny little nut from Texas, George the First would have easily won re-election.

1996

I voted for Clinton/Gore over Dole/Kemp in 1996, but I don't remember much more about it than that. I remember having one Clinton/Gore pin similar to the one pictured here, but I haven't stumbled on it or anything else from that year. (This entry will be too short to require a change in soundtrack on my turntable, but if I did pick something to represent 1996 for me, it would probably be Blur's The Great Escape).

It might be worth mentioning that Ross Perot ran again in '96 and got 8 million votes, enough to swing it as he could have in 1992 if his voters had gone Republican. Also, the Green Party's candidate in '96 was Ralph Nader, who came in fourth with 685,297 votes.


2000

This is the year we'll hear about most in 2016 if it seems as though a significant number of hardcore BernieOrBusters will be voting for the Green Party's Jill Stein or the Libertarian Gary Johnson. (My soundtrack for 2000 is, of course, Kid A.) Early in the primary season, I thought I'd be voting for New Jersey's Senator Bill Bradley over Al Gore, but by the time the New Jersey primary came around Gore was unopposed and I didn't even vote in the meaningless preliminary round.

I had no problem voting for Gore over Nader and Bush in the general election, but others did. Nader got just under 3 million votes nationwide, but - most importantly - he picked up 97,488 votes in Florida, which Gore only lost by 537 votes (though even that thin Bush margin needed an assist from a Republican Supreme Court). If a miniscule percentage of those 97,488 who felt their votes didn't count except to "send a message" had voted for the major party candidate closest to their views, George W. Bush would not have been able to gain the White House (even with help from the Supremes).

Adding insult to injury, of course, is the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote by over 450,000 votes nationwide.

Try to imagine a situation in 2016 where Donald Trump loses a key state by less than a thousand votes, or loses the electoral vote after winning the popular vote. Will he, a conspiracy theorist who already claims the system is rigged and fixed, go quietly? Will his supporters, more conspiracists and heavily-armed white supremacists and motorcycle gangsters, go quietly? Do we want to find out? It's important that Donald Trump be crushed decisively in November, and not only to show the rest of the world that he only represents a fringe of America. Ralph Nader in 2000 is still the best lesson we have for why it's sometimes necessary to choose the lesser of two evils rather than send a message that no one hears (unless it blows up the side you're closest to).

Happy 86th Birthday to Jasper Johns

This 1999 print was made by Robert Rauschenberg from a 1955 photo of his partner Jasper Johns (nicknamed Jap) with an iconic painting in its studio.


Robert Rauschenberg, Jap (Ruminations series, 1999)

"Giuliani Über Alles" by Hasidic New Wave

With Rudy Giuliani in the news again this week for his political commentary about our current President who doesn't love America in quite the same way Rudy does, we've had this little ditty from the late nineties stuck in our head:

There's a more polished version of this song at the end of Kabalogy (which is also worth it for 'The Frank Zappa Memorial Bris'), but this first public performance of  'Giuliani Über Alles' has a great energy:



If more recent memories of the man who has made a career out of being "Mayor 9/11" have driven any thoughts of his earlier association with police brutality and killings out of your memory, and if you don't know what the line about a "plunger up your ass" is about, then you need to read again about the torture of Abner Louima in 1997 followed by the police shootings of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and Patrick Dorismond in 2000 in Rudy Giuliani's NYC. Without his ability to form a new reputation on the wreckage of the World Trade Center, unrestrained NYPD abuse, brutality, and killings would be his only legacy.

Who Knew Newt Was Into Sharing the Wealth With the Poor

Daily Negations by
Lagowski & Mumma

I picked up this old book from 1996 this morning to look for the Daily Negation for January 5th (maybe because I was simply in too good a mood today). It seems that Newt Gingrich was a good tool for bringing a person down even 15 years ago. Here's the negation for January 5, "Entitlements", starting with a quote from Newt delivered before the House Ways and Means Committee on January 5, 1995.

And in 2012 he just wants to give them jobs as janitors.