Sep 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Cosmopolitanism
Speaking as a native New Yorker, may I say there’s perhaps nothing more absurd than watching a former mayor of New York City sneer at people who like cosmopolitan towns.
34 Responses to “Cosmopolitanism”
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Amazing how sensitive they are to women’s issues now, too.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Hey, but at least 9iu11iani didn’t go to Yurrup and get no fancy ideas, as Huckabee said Obama did when he went and visited gay commie Muslimosexual Europe-land.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
CNN showed a black delegate booing when Giuliani said that. Didn’t know there were any black delegates!
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I hate seeing him talk shit about the profession of community organizers - a profession pretty fucking essential to the health and well-being of large cities like New York.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Amusing that Giuliani was poking fun at Obama’s comments about religion. Coming from a guy who took communion from the pope when he was specifically asked not to.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I hate seeing him talk shit about the profession of community organizers
The job of a community organizers is to help the citizens effectively bring down pressure upon their elected representatives to finally do their damn jobs and deliver for their constituents. That’s why people like Giuliani hate them.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 pm
absurdity is the new patriotism
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
It’s only nonsensical unless, say, an abiding hatred for New York and New Yorkers was an animating principle of the Giuliani administration.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
As many are saying about Sarah Palin, many (goddamned far too many) people judge candidates by how much they remind them of themselves. This is both a dumb test rooted in primate clan-centric morality, and is very easy to fake (see,…well, you know, the teetotaler people wanted to drink-with).
Lots of people in the Red Zone basically hate “New Yorkers”, that is to say the cosmopolitan (especially the rootless types), the black, the brown, and the multitude of immigrants.
A mayor who both can claim a lot of people heinously dead under his watch for sympathy, but who basically seemed to think of much of his citizens the same way these Reds do, starts in a great position…it took Giuliani’s arrogance, greed, tone-deafness, and mild (at least in public, around Republican) social liberalism to cripple his run.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Here’s a fun fact. New York City has more policemen (37,838) than Wasilla has residents (5,469). New York City has more firefighters (14,226) as well.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:16 am
One can understand why Romney does it. He at least has a future in the party, so it may be worth it to shed his liberal Northeastern Republicn roots. But Guiliani spent $60 million on a single measly delegate, and he’s the first in line to do all the dirty work that the GOP asks of him. Then again, there’s evidence that he is this resentful, vicious way by nature, and would do it all for free.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Sullivan’s take is worth repeating, I think:
September 4th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I actually found Rudy’s speech very off-putting. It was red meat, but dripping blood. If you’re a base voter you loved it, but it actually scared me as the crowd chanted and roared, as Rudy sneered and attacked. If I were a moderate, I’m not sure I’d like the tone at all.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Lest we forget, the word “cosmopolitan” has some nasty baggage indeed. It was a scowl-word among totalitarians of the last century. Broadly, it referred to everything that fascists hated; more narrowly, it was a code word for “Jew.”
September 4th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Rudy used it as a dog-whistle for “mixed race,” knowing that many in the hall have heard various theories about race mixing and miscegenation.
It usually is used to be an anti semitic slap
But Rudy knows that hate is fungible
September 4th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Right on about “cosmopolitan” = “jew”
September 4th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Comment is on the mark about “cosmopolitan”. And “community organizer” now = “nigger” in the Atwateresque GOP world.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Wait… cosmopolitan is code for Jew? I thought it was code for European and/or gay (amounting to the same thing– sissyboys not from Real America)?
September 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Broadly, “cosmopolitan” is the whole constellation of things fascists hate: people who are liberal, intellectual, insufficiently patriotic, arts-loving, enjoy the contact between ethnicities and cultures and ideas (with the ever-present threat of miscegenation), are literate, see nuance and think things through (and are therefore lacking in patriotic fighting spirit), are not “manly men” if they’re male and don’t keep to their place if they’re female, and prefer the rule of law to rough justice.
If any big-city mayor were to use that word as a scowl-word, it would be Giuliani. While he was mayor, he tried to shut down the the Brooklyn Museum–a world-class art museum–because of a single painting, on temporary exhibit, that could be misrepresented as offensive to Catholics. (Not all Catholics: the Speaker of the Council was a devout Catholic who went to Mass every day, and he defended the museum.)
September 4th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Stalin used to attack Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans.” It has definitely been used as an anti-Semitic slur. I don’t think he was necessarily using it against New York Jews, but piggybacking on the history of anti-Semitic Otherness used in the term and applying them to Obama.
The thing is, most people know Giuliani from SNL. Does not compute.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
So now Obama is Muslim and Jewish?
September 4th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Stalin took a page right out of the fascist playbook, and so did Giuliani. Whether or not he was referring covertly to New York Jews, in using the term “cosmopolitan” he almost certainly had in mind what the Nazis thought both Jews and liberals to be: agents of social breakdown, bearers of the acids of modernity, enemies of the institutions that make society both stable and good, esp. the family, religion, and government. IOW, those who have no deep roots in any place or nation and seek to force everyone to live by abstractions rather than by the life-sustaining traditional folkways.
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