Tuesday, January 08,

"Italian-Americans Rip Rudy as an UNCLE TOMASO," blared the Boston Herald - Washington Post

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Richard Cappozzola, author of Five Centuries of Italian Americans, single handed got the attention of two important East Coast Dailies.

Richard lives near Orlando Florida, and is an unrelenting indefatigable well intentioned  Italian American Activist.  Kudos!!!!!!

 

I like the  Power of Many !!!  But here, The Power of One,  Impressive

 

 

Bad Press? Giuliani Gets It Good

Washington Post

By Howard Kurtz
Staff Writer
Monday, January 7, 2008; C01

SOMERSWORTH, N.H. -- After months of stories about his questionable clients, his crooked former top cop, his onetime mistress and his slide in the polls, Rudy Giuliani was hit by yet another negative headline here last week.

"Italian-Americans Rip Rudy as an UNCLE TOMASO," blared the Boston Herald's cover, citing a single activist who doesn't like the way Giuliani jokes about mobsters.

The former New York mayor assumes that bad press comes with the presidential campaign territory. "I never see myself as a victim," he says in an interview. "I don't like seeing myself that way. . . . There've been negative stories about everyone. Maybe it's more a function of being a front-runner."

At a policy level, though, Giuliani is convinced that he and his GOP brethren don't get a fair shake. "I think there is a liberal bias in the media toward Democratic approaches and Democratic candidates," he says. "Republicans have to go against the grain when we're talking about Republican or conservative solutions. . . . I've encountered that from the very beginning."

Giuliani has his share of self-inflicted wounds, and the less than sympathetic coverage is amplified by a campaign style in which the onetime prosecutor gives little ground and doesn't hesitate to throw punches. He generates few warm-and-fuzzy stories because of his no-nonsense demeanor on the trail, a largely humorless approach in which he talks terrorism and taxes but not about himself.

Giuliani shakes few hands after speaking, often departing within one minute. Last Wednesday, after a speech at a World War II museum in Wolfeboro about his call to expand the military, he slipped away to do interviews with conservative radio hosts Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Prager and with Fox News.

Addressing 40 people at a Somersworth restaurant featuring a $7.49 lunch buffet that includes whoopie pie, Giuliani answered questions from two disabled people -- who asked how he would help people like them -- with bloodless policy talk. Giuliani did not inquire about their conditions or express any sympathy. He did, however, take a stand on a pamphlet containing his 12 commitments, saying: "It's like a contract. If I don't do it, you can sue me."

While other candidates appear softened by the presence of family members, the Boston Globe ran a piece last week noting that Giuliani's third wife, Judith, has largely been absent from campaigning.

And then there is his temerity in arguing that he can win the nomination without strong showings in Iowa (where he finished sixth, with 3 percent of the vote) and tomorrow in New Hampshire -- a strategy that runs smack into the media's conventional wisdom. "Most national political reporters write off or disparage his chances of winning," Time's Mark Halperin reported last week.

As if to underscore his unorthodox approach, Giuliani campaigned here the day before the Iowa caucuses, which he essentially blew off, and then jetted off for a campaign swing through Florida.

In a news conference at the restaurant, one reporter cited a poll that gives John McCain the lead among Republican voters nationwide, saying: "You've always led in the national polls. How do you explain that?" Giuliani said he was not good at explaining polls.

Another reporter, noting that nearly all his rivals were in Iowa, said: "Are you worried about how the media spotlight on those candidates is affecting you here?"

"We're doing okay," Giuliani said.

From the moment he entered the race, many pundits insisted that conservatives would abandon Giuliani once they learned more about his liberal views on abortion and other social issues. When he continued to lead the field, reporters and commentators began questioning how he could survive expected losses before getting to his preferred battlegrounds of Florida on Jan. 29 and several mega-states on Feb. 5.

The media narrative for Giuliani is that he's built his candidacy around one event, his response to the attack on the World Trade Center. He did little to dispel that notion in New Hampshire, talking about "the 9/11 generation" and likening today's challenge of fighting "Islamic terrorists" to that facing those who won World War II. He has little hands-on foreign policy experience, but he has succeeded in defining himself as the man who most wants to stay on offense against terrorists.

Whatever the subject, Giuliani is a constant target of investigative reporters. There was even media skepticism about the recent illness -- described as a severe headache -- that sidelined him for a couple of days. But after two decades' sparring with the tabloid-tough New York press corps, he seems to relish the combat, keeping up a steady round of interviews and news conferences.

On the day Giuliani declared his first mayoral bid in 1989, the New York Daily News reported that the Manhattan law firm he had recently joined represented the Panamanian government of strongman Manuel Noriega, all but overshadowing the announcement. Similar questions have dogged his presidential campaign, such as a recent New York Times story on his firm Giuliani Partners' representing Purdue Pharma, which last spring admitted misleading doctors and patients about the painkiller OxyContin and paid penalties of $635 million. Giuliani has declined to reveal his firm's client list on grounds of confidentiality.

Another constant source of coverage involves his personal life. In 1997, when NY1 cable reporter Dominic Carter asked Giuliani about rumors that he had had an affair with a staffer, the mayor accused him of having "no decency." Giuliani's messy divorce from Donna Hanover in 2000 turned his life into a soap opera for the press.

Last spring, after a spate of snarky pieces about his wife, Judith, Giuliani urged reporters to back off, saying: "Attack me all you want. . . . But maybe, you know, show a little decency."

In November, when the Politico reported that Giuliani had billed obscure city agencies thousands of dollars in security costs for Judith Nathan while she was his girlfriend, he branded the report false and accused the paper of a "political hit job."

During an hour-long interrogation by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" last month, Giuliani became the first presidential candidate ever to be asked: "Would it be appropriate for a president to provide Secret Service protection for his mistress?"

In late December, the Times carried a small article reporting that Giuliani did bill his own mayoral expense account for security on trips to the Hamptons to visit his then-girlfriend while their relationship was still secret. That generated little follow-up. "At least they had the decency to straighten it out," Giuliani says, although advisers grumbled that the story was buried on an inside page.

Profile pieces rarely fail to mention the controversies stemming from his mayoral tenure, such as the criminal charges against his friend and former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik. And journalists never have trouble finding former city officials to badmouth their onetime boss.

In a New Yorker piece last week, Jerome Hauer, former head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, now a Hillary Clinton supporter, was quoted as saying: "From my perspective, Rudy would be a very dangerous president." Rudy Crew, a former schools chancellor, said of his falling out with Giuliani: "It's tragic how wounded this man really is. And wounded people inevitably wound other people."

If Giuliani is steamed about such stories, he isn't letting on. "Being from New York has its pluses and minuses," he says. "You get a lot more attention for the successes. You get a lot more attention for the mistakes. And then you get some that maybe aren't even mistakes, but they're painted that way."

Asked for examples of what he deems biased coverage, Giuliani says that whenever he argued for vouchers to allow students to attend the school of their choice, "we were attacked -- I hate to overgeneralize -- by the liberal media, or some big portion of it, for wanting to destroy public schools. . . .

"If I say something like 'you can't take any military option off the table with regard to Iran,' all of a sudden . . . that's seen as wanting to go to war."

On the night that Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses, Giuliani did a round of television interviews that seemed designed mainly to keep him in the public eye. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked whether he should have devoted more resources to Iowa. MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked why New York reporters "don't like you much" and whether "you're getting screwed by the press." Fox's Alan Colmes said: "Have you been hurt by the stories about Bernard Kerik, by the stor ies about your relationship with Judi Nathan using police cars when you were dating her?"

Since then, Giuliani has suffered a worse fate: garnering little coverage from journalists chasing other candidates. (One exception was yesterday's Washington Post piece: "As N.H. Voters See Less of Giuliani, He Drops in State Polls.") The question is when, and whether, he can grab the spotlight back

 

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