TheAgitator.com
Giulioussolini
Sunday, December 16th, 2007I’m not the biggest Bill Maher fan, but his “Dickheads of the Year” feature for Rolling Stone is fairly amusing, if not terribly original. But this little factoid on Giuliani floored me:
The year before he was elected mayor, the NYPD made 720 arrests for marijuana misdemeanors. In the year 2000 under Rudy, that figure was 59,945.
You make a serious point about his willingness to jail people for marijuana offenses, but completely undermine it by comparing him to Mussolini. By doing things like this (liberals frequently suggest that Bush=Hitler, for example), the seriousness of the criticism is undercut by the notion that these two people are somehow equivalent. Giuliani is a total jerk – he doesn’t need to be compared to one of the all-time jerks for us to understand that.
‘Twas a joke, man.
Fair enough, but I have to ask, with all due respect: was it really? There wasn’t some slight reason to compare the two in your mind?
My point isn’t that Giuliani is a respectable character, but rather, that he isn’t Mussolini. Conflating the two makes the wrong point, even jokingly, distracts from the real point that Giuliani is a dickhead.
I think the thing to emphasize here is the arrests part. These people weren’t just receiving citations for this misdemeanor — they were being taken downtown. That is like arresting everyone caught speeding.
And yeah, ixnay on the axisway.
Giuliani did “reduce crime” when he was mayor of NYC.
I wonder how much of that crime were misdemeanors that never should have been crimes in the first place?
Wasnt issuing NTA’s for pot part of the broken windows thing? Personally, I think they should just legalize the stuff and be done with it. Or were these people actually taken to the station and booked? Also, what place did Bill Maher put himself in that list?
I’m really amused at the ultra-right-wingers who are whining about the Mussolini/Giuliani joke.
Just because “one of your own” happens to be a pro-police-state, big-government fascist who believes that freedom is about submitting to authority doesn’t mean that he should be immune from jokes, any more than Hillary should be exempt from jokes based on her love of big government and her pandering nature.
Grow a set. There was nothing here to apologize for.
Sadly, I feel that I cannot comment using my real name as I usually do, because the type of person who complains about such things is also likely to be the sort of far-gone wack-job who would turn it into a war.
“My point isn’t that Giuliani is a respectable character, but rather, that he isn’t Mussolini. Conflating the two makes the wrong point, even jokingly, distracts from the real point that Giuliani is a dickhead.”
It only distracts from the real point if you want it to.
Who’s the ultra right winger?
Radley, I would love to hear more about why you’re not a Bill Maher fan.