MY NEW HERO
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) dipped into American history to deliver a devastating takedown of Rudy Giuliani’s ongoing attempts to show President Barack Obama is insufficiently patriotic…. “Rudy Giuliani questioned how much, or even if, President Obama loves America. Maybe he thinks he loves it 3/5 as much as Giuliani & his pals,” tweeted Cohen, who represents a heavily black district in Memphis. Cohen, of course, was referring to the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise during the 1787 U.S. Continental Convention, which determined how slaves would be counted when determining population for legislative representation and taxation.
It’s not exactly a stretch to believe Giuliani’s comments about the President to be contemptible and gratuitously insulting. When you consider the source, though, you realize that Giuliani’s a pathetic attention whore looking for anything that will deflect the spotlight onto him. That he’s garnered way too much attention for his ignorant comments about the President is an indication of just how low our public discourse has sunk. The only thing missing was the old (in Internet terms) claim that “Obama loves America like O.J. Simpson loved his wife.”
I do have to applaud Rep. Cohen for finding a creative and erudite way to skewer Giuliani without sinking to his level. It’s easy to resort to innuendo and cheap personal insults- Giuliani is living proof of that- but a real put-down requires skill and grace and the willingness to not take yourself too seriously. Cohen seems to have succeeded on both counts…and he gets extra credits for referencing the Three-Fifths Compromise. I wonder how many Americans could have honestly said they knew what that was before Cohen’s tweet?
Obama wasn't brought up like you and me, says deranged son of convicted armed robber http://t.co/oYrr9aGvs1 pic.twitter.com/7PnPHzkRyJ
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) February 20, 2015
I suspect there will be a well-deserved parking space waiting for Rudy Giuliani in Hell once he sheds his mortal coil. He’ll neither be missed nor long remembered. What’s sad is that he could have parlayed his leadership of New York City post-9/11 into an elder statesman’s role. Instead, he chose to travel the path of an embittered, angry racist who seems to believe that the chair behind the big desk in the Oval Office is rightfully his. Except for his work post-9/11, Giuliani will be chiefly remembered for his ugly, mean-spirited racist lunacy and for presenting a sizable target for Rep. Cohen, who knocked it out of the park and demonstrated conclusively who’s the bigger man.
Rudy Giuliani is a racist and a simpleton who’s evidently too stupid and or/self-absorbed to realize what a pathetic self-parody he’s become. And I hope this is the last time I’ll ever feel moved to mention Giuliani again. With any luck, he’ll die a bitter and broken man, and the world will be better off for it.
The recurring theme that Barack Obama “hates America” because “he isn’t like us” is the worst sort of racist dog whistle politics. Unable to propose workable alternatives to his programs or defeat him on substance, all angry Conservatives really have readily at hand are racism, innuendo, and and cheap personal insults. Not that Obama is the first Democrat to be subject to the Right’s “politics of personal destruction,” but no President has ever faced the degree and volume of calumny and hatred that he’s been subjected to. To his credit, he hasn’t responded in kind- not even close- which I suspect only fuels the flames of the Far Right’s hatred. After all, the game’s no fun if the object of your derision refuses to play along.
Through it all, Barack Obama has conducted himself with surpassing grace and dignity. No matter how thoroughly vile the tactics employed by his detractors, this President has kept his attention focused on things that actually matter. He’s not stupid; he has to be aware of the ugliness and the racism directed at him for the past six years. That he’s chosen to rise above it speaks to a strength of character few Presidents in our history have demonstrated.
I’m not certain that Rudy Giuliani is even 3/5 the man Barack Obama has demonstrated himself to be.
