Garrison Keillor slams Giuliani on 9/11

[Cocoa]

Doesn't Keillor realize this is blasphemy?


http://verbumlogos.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_verbumlogos_archive.html#115634791357563135

What they went throughOur countrymen died real deaths on Sept. 11, and we need to listen to their last words.

By Garrison Keillor

Aug. 23, 2006

It was painful to hear the woman in anguish on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, crying, "I'm going to die, aren't I? I'm going to die." Melissa Doi was 32, beautiful, with laughing eyes and black hair. She was lying on the floor of her office at IQ Financial, overwhelmed by smoke and heat, calling for help. And then there was Kevin Cosgrove on the 105th floor, moments before it collapsed, gasping for breath, saying, "We're young men, we're not ready to die." And then he screamed, "Oh my God" as the building started to collapse. It's in their voices, what they went through.

Those were two of the 1,613 calls to 911 released by New York City last week, on almost all of which the caller's voice was beeped out. The city argued that to hear persons in anguish in their last minutes constitutes an invasion of privacy. The truth is that the callers had no interest in privacy, they were desperate to be heard, and censoring them now is a last insult by a bureaucracy that failed to protect them in the first place.

They were people like us; we might have sat near them in a theater or restaurant, asked them for directions on the street. They went to work that fine Tuesday morning and suddenly found themselves facing the abyss, and the first thing we thought, seeing the burning buildings on TV, was "What is it like for the people in there?" We wanted to know.

Then, inevitably, politicians began to seize the day and turn it into a patriotic tableau starring themselves. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who does not appear in a leadership capacity in the reliable accounts of that morning, who was captured on videotape fleeing uptown, soon stepped into the TV lights and put on his public face, and a few days later the Current Occupant mounted the wreckage with bullhorn in hand and vowed vengeance, and the media was glad to focus on the martial moment, the flag waving over the wreckage, the theme of America united -- and the anguished voices from the towers were unheard, the people who fell from high floors and smashed into the pavement were not seen on American TV. The media averted its eyes from the reality of 9/11 and started looking for the message.

<snip>

Mr. Giuliani is still flying around giving speeches on leadership, knocking down a hundred grand per shot, getting standing ovations everywhere as a stand-in for the police and firemen who died in the towers. He has never faced up to his failure to prepare for the attack, even after the 1993 bomb explosion at the World Trade Center, when it was shown clearly that police and fire couldn't communicate with each other by radio. Eight years passed, little was done, and then came the 19 men with box cutters. The 911 operators took thousands of calls and had no information to give. Police helicopter pilots, who had a clear view of the infernos and could see that the buildings were going to collapse, couldn't get word to fire chiefs on the ground, who, unable to see the fire, sent their men up the stairs to die. Official bungling cost those men their lives.

more...

[bluerum]

1. Failure to lead. Giuliani was always a posturing patsy. A fake tough

guy who always let the little guy take the lumps for him.

[whistle]

2. Persons like Rudy Giuliani deserve no public lime light what-so-ever

....and certainly should never be allowed to hold public office of any sort again.

[babylonsister]

3. "The truth is that the callers had no interest

in privacy, they were desperate to be heard..." That got me. They were us, and we could have been them.

No love lost between Giuliani and Garrison Keillor, and that's as it should be.

Keillor explains why, and thanks for sharing!

[NYCGirl]

4. New York icon Jimmy Breslin also dislikes Giuliani intensely:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0307-05.htm

This is only one of many columns where Breslin filets Rudy.

[Dems Will Win]

8. Another Breslin

He was a nowhere guy until the planes hit the World Trade Center buildings. He was a failed mayor, was Rudy Giuliani. He had a commissioner named Harding stealing so obviously that at first people couldn't believe their eyes.

Giuliani had an open fear of blacks that produced the one most memorable sight of the last 10 years in my city.

On the roof of City Hall were cops with rifles. They were ready to rake this small, straggly column of people marching on one strip of Broadway while they pleaded for housing. Many had AIDS and needed assistance. The real trouble with the demonstrators was that some of them were not white.

...........

He wanted an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum closed because it offended his strict Catholicism. And then, with a wife in Gracie Mansion and one girlfriend in a car outside, a friend of mine, a detective, drove in with another girlfriend, and he and the other girlfriend's car nearly hit each other. He marched with his girlfriend in a parade and his kids could watch it on television.

Giuliani wanted a high security bunker, placed 23 stories high in a building at 7 World Trade Center. Anybody with the least bit of common sense knew that the bunker in the sky was insane and the price, $15.1 million, a scandal. But he said it would house "My Police Commissioner" and "My Fire Commissioner." In Giuliani's world, everything was "mine."

And on the morning of Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani's bunker went out into the air like a Frisbee.

The first thing he did, he was telling the 9/11 Commission yesterday, was to go out and search for a new command post. He walked away from the trade center and headed for the command post that made his career: the nearest television camera.

As Giuliani sought fame that morning, the people of the City of New York walked on all the streets, taking them from downtown to their homes. This was a crowd of millions, and they walked with such care and order and beauty that they brought tears to the eyes.

They needed no Giuliani, no cop, no soldier. They needed only their own strength and bravery; yes, bravery, for so many had gone through going downstairs with fires following them.

Giuliani headed away from the World Trade Center. At most, he had paused at the place.
.................

He had not picked up one piece of metal. He had not helped one person out of the smoke and fire. He made no decision about anything except himself.
.........

And yesterday he sat before the 9/11 commissioners and they collapsed in awe. They listened to him give a walking tour of how he tried to find a command center. Not once did anybody ask him about the stupid idea he had had for his first bunker, the one that fell out of the sky. They asked no questions of a mayor whose fire department had no radios that worked when a police helicopter said the north tower was going to fall. And 343 firefighters died. They wanted to hear nothing of blood on Giuliani's hands. They only wanted to hear whatever he had to say and they regarded his words as those of a hero. They had no idea that the guy was a flop who got lucky with an air raid

[philly_bob]

22. About Guiliani's WTC 'command bunker'

I'm glad to see that this text mentions Guiliani's World Trade Center high 'bunker'. City zoning rules which govern the amount of petroleum that can be stored in a building were 'bent' for Guiliani. There was a whole lot of flammable material in that tower because of the Mayor.

I lived in New York at the time. Guiliani, while earnest, reassuring, and on-the-spot, was no hero.

I've been watching Spielberg's TV series "Band of Brothers," and a motif of that series is how the hastily assembled army had to weed out the incompetents and phonies. (David Schwimmer played one, an incompetent stickler for the rules.) Somehow in Bizarro Bush War World, fighting enemies a lot less scary than the Axis, the incompetents get medals and prance about as heroes.

(Incidentally, it wasn't clear whether this text was Keillor's or the poster's. I assume it was Keillor's; thanks for posting it, Dems Will Win.)

[robbedvoter]

26. "and on 911, Giuliani's bunker went out into the air like a frisbee"

You got to love Breslin! This captures it all!

[LibDemAlways]

5. Thank you for this. Sadly, except for a few

of the passengers on United 93, the "faces of 9/11" are largely the faces of the politicians who've exploited the tragedy for their own political gain. Shame on the media for allowing that to happen.

[Timbuk3]

6. K&R

Whenever I think of Ghouliani's speech at Bush-fest 2004, when he said "as I saw those people jumping and heard the sickening thud of their bodies hitting the pavement my first thought was 'thank God George W. Bush is our President'," to a national television audience, I throw up just a little.

This is "Bernard Kerick is a great American" Ghouliani. "I fucked my mistress in the shadow of the WTC" Ghouliani.

The guy's a major creep.

[Qanisqineq]

16. oh god that is disgusting

and I'm sure the republicans just ate it up. Don't they realize how vile a statement that is?

Ugh.

[blossomstar]

7. Keilor (my hero) has hit the nail on the head.... again.

The man is just so right on. He sees it like it truly is. Giuliani is a prancing pansy that loves attention.... you can see it in his posture and facial expression, he literally eats up the limelight.... sickening. So glad he brought up Giuliani's failure to prepare after the 93 bombing... Giuliani should be ashamed. THanks for this post.

[speedoo]

9. Right on blossomstar.

Keillor is a great American and Giuliani is a phony shithead who was a lousy mayor.

And a belated welcome to DU!:hi:

[klook]

10. Utter failure masquerading as heroism

That's what kills me about both Giuliani and Bush -- they both fucked up completely and miserably, and act as though 9/11 is one of their biggest accomplishments.

[roody]

17. It is.

[Elwood P Dowd]

11. But Giuliani says he eats Powdermilk Biscuits and Rhubarb Pie

What's Garrison's problem?

;-)

[pagerbear]

31. He's probably on the Ketchup Advisory Council too.

[saltpoint]

12. It strains any of us to choose the most loathsome Republican in the

public eye these days -- there are so many.

But Rudy Giuliani is right up there.

The man is disgusting.

[wiley]

23. As someone who survived the WTC attack on 9/11

I am deeply offended by any claim that Giuliani is anything other than a conniving, shallow, ambitious, impotent gutter rat. He should be held accountable for the massive incompetence and negligence of his administration before, and after the actual attack. He's respected by some in the business community that salvaged a couple billion after the attack, and despised by anyone who knows what actually happened and still has a soul.

The incredibly brave and courageous brothers who rushed into the burning WTC knowing instinctively that that was going to be their last act of heroism but maybe they could save someone's mother or sister or child deserve every once of credit for their sacrifice. They set an example that few will ever even have the oppportunity to emulate. The tragedy is that this level of patriotism and sacrifice is needed to wrest control of our country from the corrupt, shameless, self-aggrandizing, lying, hateful Republicans who call themselves leaders.


Giuliani is one of the most loathsome pieces of waste to ever soil this Earth. If Bernard Kerik were something of a higher life form than something that one would scrape off the bottom of their shoe, he might even parallel Giuliani.



No strain here.

[saltpoint]

28. Hello to you, Wiley. Thanks for that post. I think we are plainly on

the same page regarding Rudy Giuliani.

His candidacy strikes me as audacious and offensive. I hope enough GOP primary voters see through him fairly soon and remove him from ballot contention long before the Republicans convene.

Republicans are bad enough generally, but throwing Giuliani at us specifically makes it all much worse.

I did not know you were a 9/11 survivor, and I'm glad you're still with us.

[1932]

13. Saunders and Jarding's Foxes in the Hen-house has a couple scathing pages

on Guiliani and 9.11 that will turn your stomach.

[rodeodance]

14. Good for Garrison. He is one of my heros

[flyarm]

15. AND HOW DO WE GET THIS MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF

the midwest..we in NY and NJ and CT understand what a failure this man was and is./.but how do we make those in the Mid west get it??

how do we make those who are clueless about this man aware of his failures ??

i just wonder..it didn't register with those in the mid west that we here in the NY metropolitian area did not vote for little lord pissy pants..it just did not register to them..so how do we make them understand that the people in the NY area..think rudy is a piece of shit?


i just wonder..
fly

[JI7]

18. Giuliani is probably a bigger phony than Bush is

at least with Bush the non whorshippers are willing to admit he is a failure or at least not perfect.

but so far only rare and not widely publicized cases of people telling the truth about the Ghoul. like Jimmy Breslin and Keillor. the whore media refers to him as "the people's mayor" "hero of 9/11" and other shit.

did the Ghoul do anything to defend the 9/11 widows from Coulter's attacks.

such a phony. if a Democrat was in office at the time the whore media would have been going on about how they failed to protect the people.

[bananarepublican]

20. Which is why he shouldn't be swindled into the presidency! n/t

[aaronbees]

19. Right on, Garrison....

Garrison Keillor has such a sence of decency, which is entirely alien to opportunist comedians like Giuliani.

[Vidar]

21. Great one by Keillor.

[The Count]

24. Thank you! Your link doesn't work though.

[robbedvoter]

25. "captured on videotape fleeing uptown"....ha!ha! They're all the same!

Chickenhawks of a feather....Too bad Rudy, you built your bunker downton, in the WTC, you schmuck!
or else we'd have had videos from the bunker from you too!

[grizmaster]

27. That link didn't work for me, but found it on Salon

For those who want to read the whole thing but were having the same trouble as me. (as usual w/Salon you have to click through and ad)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/23/keillor_2/

[Hailtothechimp]

29. Well done, Mr. Keillor.

The "Giuliani as Strong Leader" myth needs to be deflated, and this piece is the opening salvo. Now who has the guts to go next??

[brentspeak]

30. K & R

:kick:

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

32. "the Current Occupant"

bwa ha ha ha
:rofl: