Who does Judith Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani think she is? These days, even with her husband, a freshly minted multi-millionaire, far ahead of the competition in the Republican presidential polls, no one, least of all Judith, 52, seems to have a clue. In a way, this is understandable. There have been so many different Judiths. As her second husband, Bruce Nathan, has told friends, “She is in an ever changing mode upward.”…. Today she and Giuliani, when they are not boarding private Gulfstream IV jets to Europe or trying to woo voters, shuttle between a $4 million Hamptons house and a $5 million nine-room Upper East Side apartment near Madison Avenue, its dining room walnut-paneled and crammed with crystal, china, and linen from Scully & Scully. Her annual salary has also improved: $125,000, evidently for helping to write some of the speeches Giuliani likes to give (for which he received $11.7 million between January 2006 and March 2007). This comes as a surprise to at least one of Judith’s acquaintances. Asked if he knew Judith was writing speeches, one former Giuliani aide replied, “Holy cow! God forbid!”
I could care less about Judith Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani or who she happens to think she is. What I’m enjoying immensely, though, is the specter of Republicans eating their young. Rudy Giuliani is about as qualified to run for President as I am, and it’s about time to people were made aware of that fact. ‘Course, I don’t have the $4 million Hamptons house, a $5 million nine-room Upper East Side apartment near Madison Avenue, and regular access to Gulfstream IV’s. I also don’t make more than $10 million a year for giving speeches to drooling, fawning acolytes who think I’m sort of hero because I stumbled around the destroyed World Trade Center site after the 9.11 attacks with a camera lovingly filming my every move. While I don’t think this sort of mean-spirited hatchet job is anything resembling productive- even if true- it is entertaining watching Giuliani’s talking heads spinning as if their very lives depended on it. Hey, c’mon y’all; it’s 15 months prior to Election Day. What else is the media going to do for entertainment?
For a man trying to suck up to “values voters” by trying to portray himself as a “family values” Red Meat Conservative, Giuliani has some SERIOUS credibility issues. Thrice married, pro-choice, and generally socially liberal, Giuliani is busyily trying to contort his public positions into something that’s at least moderately palatable to the Social Conservative wing of the Republican Party. Beyond that, it’s all 9.11, all the time. Perhaps you’ve heard his standard stump speech:
Hello, I’m Rudy Giuliani, the hero of 9..11. I’m running for President because of 9.11. 9.11…9.11…9.11…9.11…9.11…. Oh, and 9.11…. Thank you, and God Bless! 9.11!!
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It’s not as if he has anything else to offer. I mean, has anyone else profited more off 9.11 than Rudy Giuliani? I’m not saying that he immediately saw the profit potential in those terrible attacks, but he’s certainly managed to ride the wave and his reputation as the “hero of 9.11” to an impressive fortune, hasn’t he? Surely, I’m not the only one thoroughly disgusted by this fact?
OK, so the Vanity Fair piece is not particularly flattering. It may even be a hit job and a shining example of attack politics. Pardon me if I’m not weeping for Rudy, though. After all, Republicans are the ones who put the term “Swiftboating” into the American political lexicon. It’s about time that they suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous fortune. Hey, y’all changed the rules of truth and decorum. If you can’t take your own medicine, that’s just too damn bad. Perhaps you should have though about that before you decided to channel the late Lee Atwater.
