After careful consideration, Mike Barnicle has figured out why Giuliani questioned President Obama’s patriotism. In an article for the Daily Beast, Barnicle says Giuliani questioned Obama’s love for the nation, not for the reasons he clearly outlined, but because he is a “nut boy” full of “bitterness and a contempt that borders on hate” who engaged in an “off-the-cliff assault” against the President as part of a “loud, please notice me, clown act.”
And he might be racist. Barnicle went to former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs for the usual race-baiting:
“Going after patriotism is one thing,” Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary, was saying, “but the really, really bad stuff is, ‘He wasn’t raised the way you and I were.’ There’s only one connotation for that kind of stuff and that’s directly out of what some people were saying in the Alabama of the 1960s.”
Barnicle drew parallels between Giuliani’s “fall from grace” and that of the legendary Jake La Motta, the “Raging Bull” whose career began to nosedive following his middleweight defeat at the hands of Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951. Hoping to regain success, La Motta jumped divisions, only to find himself out of his league and out of the sport altogether. He was eventually reduced to obscurity, desperately chasing his once celebrity status, struggling with alcohol and marriage troubles all the while.
Barnicle spun Giuliani as a past-his-prime political boxer, “Punch drunk and clinging to a sad celebrity.”
Now, in this corner, wearing completely contemptible trunks, from the village of his own mind and memory, we have Rudy Giuliani wallowing in a bucket of resentment. He too is out of his league, punching way above his class.
In the other corner was Obama, and Barnicle recycled bits of his 2004 convention speech where Obama associated “my story” with the American story. Obama proves his patriotism with words. There is no need for the journalist Barnicle to investigate whether or not Obama matches words with deeds because the President already said he loves America and that ought to be good enough for us.
His judge will be history. The verdict of his daily fight against constant opponents named global terror, fear, economic inequality, global warming, inequitable tax codes, inadequate health care, an incompetent Congress and a claque of politicians determined to destroy rather than simply defeat him will be rendered on some day down the road.
The clock on Rudy Giuliani’s end of days began ticking as soon as he walked out of City Hall. He ran for president once, his candidacy going up in flames nearly the moment he first opened his mouth. Now he’s opened it again and all that emerges is bitterness and a contempt that borders on hate. What a brutal end; a self-inflicted TKO.
Why wasn't this taken into consideration when people launched personal attacks against President Bush, that his opponents wanted him destroyed, not merely defeated?
