[NYTr] Deconstructing Rudy

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl - Nov 14, 2007

TruthDig - Nov 10, 2007
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071110_deconstructing_rudy/

Deconstructing Rudy

By Bill Boyarsky

The limitations of the old-fashioned mainstream media prevent it from
portraying the true horror of what a Giuliani administration would mean
to the United States and the rest of the world.

Such a huge media failure prompted filmmaker and political activist
Robert Greenwald to make and distribute powerful, short documentaries
built around the theme of the real Rudy Giuliani.

It's a timely effort.  Giuliani has a substantial lead over his
Republican competitors in national polls and was endorsed this week by
televangelist Pat Robertson, a leader of the Christian right.  That may
help Giuliani among religious conservatives. They don't understand that
he is really a mean-spirited, dictatorial boss and not a true believer
in their hard-line religiosity.

For Giuliani has the dangerous ability to say outrageous things-his
defense of torture, for example-in a reasonable tone.  Television's
short and superficial interviews permit him to get away with it.

Print does somewhat better.  A recent New York Times story on Giuliani's
friend and onetime police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, was a powerful
argument against electing the ex-mayor as president.  So was "Grand
Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," a book by Wayne
Barrett and Dan Collins, which was excerpted in the Village Voice.
Kerik has been indicted by a federal grand jury for tax fraud,
obstruction of justice and lying to the White House. He pleaded not
guilty.  But these are exceptions.  The story of the real Rudy has a
hard time making it to the states where the presidential election is
being fought: Iowa, New Hampshire and the big states holding their
primaries on Feb. 5.

Today's news media do not have time or money for reporters to burrow
through the labyrinth of New York politics and government to tell the
country how Rudy ran New York.  Instead, political reporters and
pundits yap on "Hardball" and other television shows and confuse
readers and viewers with analyses that change with bewildering speed:
Hillary is winning.  Hillary blew it.

That's not how Greenwald feels the story should be told.  Greenwald dug
deeply into his subjects for his documentaries "Iraq for Sale: The War
Profiteers"; "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price"; and "Outfoxed:
Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." He wanted to do the same with
Giuliani.

Greenwald had read about Giuliani's New York reign.  His friend, music
business executive Danny Goldberg, told Greenwald that it was important
to explain how bad it was.  So, Greenwald proceeded in a manner
designed for the Internet with short documentaries on the theme of "The
Real Rudy."

His Giuliani is not the reasonable candidate from the television
interviews. Instead, Greenwald shows a headstrong boss who played
favorites, punished dissenters and made decisions damaging to the city.

One of these short documentaries tells the story of how Giuliani put the
command post in the World Trade Center complex before Sept. 11, even
though the area had been attacked in 1993.  It was wiped out on the
fatal day.

I found another documentary, "The REAL Rudy: Radios," especially moving.
Firefighters and their spouses who lost family members in the World
Trade Center on Sept. 11 told how the police and fire departments could
not communicate with each other because the Giuliani administration had
given them radios operating on different frequencies.  As a result, many
firefighters did not receive the order to evacuate.  I have seen stories
about this, but nothing I've read has the impact of the simple words of
a mourning father, mother or sister seated in a kitchen or front room.

Many other people had the same reaction, signing petitions urging the
New York City Council to investigate the radio situation.  The
documentary "raised important questions," said Councilman Eric Gioa,
chair of the council's investigations committee.  He said he'd do
everything he could to get answers.

Greenwald told me, "We have been able to use all our skills to tell the
story and put the spotlight on his [Giuliani's] running for office
where he should be running and hiding in the closet."

The documentaries are posted on Greenwald's Brave New Films site and
move through the Internet like a virus, via YouTube, blogs and e-mail.
A network of progressive organizations spreads the word.  Greenwald's
associate, Jim Gilliam, has developed software that allows anyone to
easily host a screening.  Communications director Leighton Woodhouse
spends most of his time pitching the documentaries to bloggers and Web
sites.

"In July, September, October, we got more than a million views for our
combined videos," Greenwald said.  He's working on putting the
documentaries on cell phones.

"This would not have been possible in the old media landscape.  There
would have been no way to do the Giuliani piece or to get the bloggers
to write about it or to do the investigation."

When I was a newspaper reporter, we investigated candidates.  One, two
or maybe more reporters would check out the candidate's life in a
process called a "scrub." After a time the "scrub" would appear, so
detailed and long that readers probably put it aside to read at a later
time, which seldom arrived.

Greenwald operates like a tabloid --- bang, bang, bang-firing away with
hot information in small doses.  It's a guerrilla operation, raising
money for each short documentary, keeping production costs low and
using the Internet for distribution and advertising.

Purists will protest that his advocacy isn't journalism.  But it is.
He's a throwback.  Greenwald is a crusader demanding attention, just as
the old-time muckraking editors did a century ago, except that his
message is carried on the Internet rather than by newsboys on street
corners.  He's found the best way to tell the story of the real Rudy.