If you haven't seen it yet, the Village Voice article on Rudy Giuliani's phony claims about 9/11 is a must-read. We already knew that his "broken windows" strategy was probably not responsible for the drop in crime in New York City. And now it turns out that his reputation for effectively fighting and responding to terrorism is also bogus. So why is he running again? And will the press point any of this out?
Update 8/11 11:10 AM -- Ross Douthat makes a good point about the Voice story:
I'm no great Rudy booster, but I'm much, much more likely to take this kind of story with a grain of salt because it appears in an extremely left-wing alternative weekly (but I repeat myself) that did nothing but bash Hizzoner, sometimes fairly but usually not, throughout his mayoralty. Forget [National Review]: There's a whole world of more mainstream liberal publications that would lend far more credibility to a story like this, and that would be happy, I would imagine, to run a devastating takedown of Giuliani's "hero of 9/11" reputation. And so fairly or not, the fact that it didn't run in the Times Magazine or Time or Newsweek or The New Republic or Vanity Fair or Esquire or almost anywhere else makes me automatically inclined to approach it with more skepticism that it may deserve.
So who in the mainstream press is going to follow up on the story?
Blasphemer! Rudy Giuliani personally saved all 3 million people in New York, except for the 3,000 he didn't.
Posted by: Seth | August 12, 2007 at 12:20 AM
Actually, the American Prospect published an excerpt of Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins' book "Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11" in September 2006. While the text of the article cannot be accessed online because of an agreement with Harper Collins, the title and subtitle can be found here: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_real_rudy_090606
The Village Voice article is more or less a summary of the book's main points, which was the basis of the Prospect excerpt as well.
Posted by: Stuart | August 12, 2007 at 07:32 PM
How about offering some substantive criticism of the piece in particular or The Voice in general instead of engaging in broad-brush dismissals? If you're going to smear a reporter and his work, you'll need to give me some more to work with other than "The Village Voice is liberal!"
http://blogoland.blogspot.com/2007/08/irresponsible-criticism.html
Posted by: Jon | August 13, 2007 at 02:39 PM
It's absurd to say I'm dismissing or smearing the piece -- I linked to it favorably. On the other hand, I did think Douthat made a good point -- many people won't take it seriously without confirmation from other outlets. That's why I wrote "So who in the mainstream press is going to follow up on the story?"
Posted by: Brendan Nyhan | August 13, 2007 at 02:46 PM