‘America’s mayor’ has become a global punchline
Rudy Guiliani was once the mayor of New York and the toast of the town. His handling of September 11 garnered him the nickname “America’s mayor” and made him a household name around the world. He received an honorary knighthood from the British queen, who wished him “less stress in his life.” He was hugely respected.
I know you probably know all this already. I just think it’s worth repeating because Giuliani’s past life seems utterly inconceivable now. The idea that people once took him seriously seems unbelievable. After all, the only time the disgraced lawyer is in the headlines any more is because he’s done something creepy, bigoted, ridiculous and/or possibly illegal.
There was the time, for example, that he got punked by Sacha Baron Cohen (AKA Borat) and was filmed lying down on a hotel bed, hands down his pants, while chatting to a very young looking woman he thought was a TV journalist. There was the time he held a bizarre press conference for the Trump campaign at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philadelphia near a sex shop, a crematorium and a jail. And the time he spent months trying to help Trump subvert the 2020 election. Which then led to him getting sued by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading misinformation about its software. These, I should add, are just a handful of inglorious moments he’s racked up in recent years.
Now Giuliani is back in the headlines because a former employee, Noelle Dunphy, is suing him for “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” including “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks”.
This week we got unexpected insight into the nature of these rants when audio transcripts of Dunphy’s exchanges with Giuliani were filed in a New York court. They are … quite something.
Let’s start with the sexism, of which there’s plenty. One section of the transcripts show him referring to Dunphy as “big tits” and saying: “Come here, big tits … your tits belong to me. Give them to me … I want to claim my tits. These are my tits.”
In another section of the transcripts, Giuiliani says he gets turned on by how smart Dunphy is, and makes sure she knows this is rare for him. “I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.”
Then there’s the homophobia and the antisemitic jokes. In one part of the tapes Giuliani calls Matt Damon a “faggot”. In another section he muses that “the way – the way natural selection works … Jewish men have small cocks because they can’t use them after they get married. Whereas the Italian men use them all their lives so they get bigger.” This came immediately after ranting about Passover. “They want to go through that freaking Passover all the time,” he said. “Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. OK, the Red Sea parted. Big deal. Not the first time that happened.” (Alas, he didn’t provide any context on previous Red Sea partings.)
You can read the entirety of the transcripts here if you’d really like to punish yourself. Suffice to say the former mayor of New York does not come out looking very good.
Giuliani’s descent from “America’s mayor” to a global punchline has prompted much analysis over the years. There’s a constant refrain of: “What happened? How did Giuliani go from hero to crackpot?” In the end, I think that while Giuliani’s fall from grace has been dramatic, it’s not really a huge mystery. Far from being a hero or unique talent, Giuliani has always really just been a mediocre white guy who failed up for much of his life. He gets a lot of credit for helping turn crime around in New York during the 90s but, the truth is, he was only marginally responsible for that. Were it not for 9/11, his mayoral career would probably not be regarded in the light it is now. “It’s callous to put it this way, but September 11 was a lucky break for him,” the New Yorker wrote in a 2022 profile. “It gave Giuliani’s career new life.”
This latest disgrace seems like a death knell for Giuliani’s career. Trump may be able to claw his way back from scandal after scandal but the former New York mayor lacks those Teflon qualities. Giuliani has set his reputation on fire and there is no coming back.
Italy is waging war on lesbian parents
In January, Italy’s far-right government started limiting the parental rights of same-sex couples and mandating that only the biological parent could be recorded on the birth certificate. Now, Giorgia Meloni’s government is going even further and retroactively removing non-gestational mothers from their children’s birth certificates–an unspeakably cruel thing to do. If Italian leadership thinks that DNA is what makes a parent, perhaps they should start paternity testing every child in Italy just to make sure the right father is on the birth certificate. After all, a 2005 study found that one in 25 fathers may not be the biological parent of the child they think is theirs. In other news, Joe Biden was cozying up with Meloni last week. It seems that as long as Italy supports American foreign policy positions, Biden will happily turn a blind eye to Meloni’s mounting homophobia.
Mexican city of Chihuahua bans performance of misogynistic songs
“Violence against women has reached levels that we could consider like a pandemic,” mayor Marco Bonilla said in a video introducing the new law. Now, any musician performing a song promoting violence against women will face hefty fines, with money raised donated to women’s programmes and domestic violence shelters.
Henrietta Lacks’ family settle lawsuit over ‘immortal’ cells
In 1951 tissue was taken from Lacks without her consent during a medical procedure to treat her cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital. Lacks died of the disease age 31 but her extraordinary “immortal” cells have lived on, fueling important medical research. And, of course, making biotech company Thermo Fisher a lot of money. Now Lacks’s family has settled a lawsuit accusing the firm of unjust enrichment.
AP Psychology is ‘effectively banned’ in Florida because of gender and sex content
Psychology is now officially too woke to teach, apparently. Pretty soon the only thing that public schools in Florida will be allowed to teach will be creationism and country dancing.
Women’s World Cup 2023 hailed as ‘most successful in history’ at halfway point
Turns out investing in women’s sports is a canny business move. Who’d have guessed!?
Urban Company lured women into the gig economy, then pushed them out
Tech company launches with big promises about saving the world and empowering women; tech company ends up being exploitative and only concerned about profits. We’ve heard about a million variations of this story. The latest iteration concerns India’s Urban Company and is brought to you by Wired.
Why men have the most to gain from watching Barbie
“What sets Barbie apart is its introduction to the mainstream of an idea introduced by feminists like bell hooks – that men too can benefit from feminism and are actively harmed by the capitalist patriarchal systems,” writes Akin Olla in the Guardian.
Tomato girl summer is all the rage right now
According to the powers that be (TikTok influencers), strolling around fruit markets with a raffia basket and a pair of espadrilles is the thing to be doing this summer.
The week in pawtriarchy
A Chinese zoo recently issued a statement denying that some of its bears could be humans dressed in costumes. Media visits have been arranged so that reporters can verify the 100% bear, 0% humans for themselves. Meanwhile, over in Japan, a man has reportedly spent almost $16,000 on an extremely realistic border collie outfit and gets taken out on walks. His unusual hobby made international news but, he told one reporter, he doesn’t talk about it much with his friends ‘because I am afraid they will think I am weird.”
