By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 5, 2007
Rudy Giuliani, who is now the Republican presidential front-runner (according to absurdly early polls), has a problem. And it's not just that he may be too liberal on social issues for GOP primary voters.
The former mayor's earliest adversary is the New York press corps, and its depiction of what has come to be dubbed the 9/10 Rudy.
Every White House contender must deal with a home-state media contingent that knows his or her flaws and foibles. But Giuliani came to power in the nation's biggest media echo chamber, where hordes of journalists remember his personal and political difficulties before the Sept. 11 attacks gave him a heroic aura.
"Anyone who lived here at the time remembers the 9/10 Rudy: strong on crime and the economy, yes, but arrogant, bullying, and terrible on race and civil rights. . . . The rest of America sees a far different Rudy," says a New York Magazine cover story.
In Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter says: "His ridiculously thin skin and mile-wide mean streak were not allegations made by whiners and political opponents. They were traits widely known to his supporters."
Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg writes: "Giuliani was a frustrated and not very popular mayor on Sept. 10, 2001. Today, most New Yorkers do see him as a hero, but also as a self-sabotaging, thin-skinned bully. To put it more bluntly, we know he's a bit of a dictator."
Tony Carbonetti, a senior political adviser to Giuliani, says some New York journalists have been "writing . . . forever" that the ex-mayor has no national future and are trying "to make sure it comes true. Sometimes people you did battle with for eight years want to go out and make names for themselves."
But their arguments are a "farce," says Carbonetti: "What was wrong with the 9/10 Rudy? The New York success story all took place before September 11."
Such media broadsides are nothing new. When Bill Clinton ran in 1992, the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat had already branded him "Slick Willie," and the managing editor called him a "dirty rotten scoundrel." In 2000, John McCain's feud with the Arizona Republic -- which questioned whether his "volcanic" temper rendered him unfit to be president -- led the candidate to ban the paper's reporter from his bus. In 2004, when the Boston Globe reported that John Kerry had Jewish grandparents and suggested he may have falsely implied that he was of Irish ancestry, then-campaign manager Jim Jordan called the paper's coverage "distorted, insignificant, irrelevant and vindictive."
When a presidential candidate surges in the polls, reporters generally parachute into places such as Little Rock, Austin or Boston to dig into his record. But in Giuliani's case, journalists at the top news organizations simply have to search their memories.
"I can't write a story about Mitt Romney's term without doing a lot of research," Weisberg says in an interview. "But the Giuliani story was very top of mind for me. The argument was already in my head."
A Newsweek cover story out today says Giuliani -- who once appeared in fishnet stockings with the Rockettes and dressed up for a press dinner as Marilyn Monroe -- may have a tough time selling himself to conservatives.
Some of the media critics, like Weisberg, are liberal columnists. National Review Editor Rich Lowry, another New Yorker, says commentators on the right have more than offset the criticism. "Most of the conservatives who are enthusiastic about Giuliani live east of the Hudson River, and they love what he did in the city because they saw it up close," he says. "It's accounted for a lot of his conservative buzz."
The Big Apple critics generally credit Giuliani with cracking down on crime and rallying the city after 9/11. But they cite plenty of unflattering incidents, from Giuliani's public war against his second wife, Donna Hanover, during their divorce to his close relationship with his former top cop, Bernard Kerik, who was eventually convicted of taking $165,000 in gifts from a company seeking city business.
The journalistic detractors also say Giuliani drove out an earlier police commissioner, William Bratton, after he was hailed as a crimebuster on the cover of Time. Giuliani even went to court to stop New York Magazine from touting itself in bus ads as "possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for."
There is a sense of disbelief among some writers and columnists that their Rudy -- a man of great strengths and equally great flaws -- could become president. The New York Magazine headline reads: "Him?"
Thanks to the all-important polls, the conventional wisdom -- that Giuliani's candidacy would fade once conservative voters realized that he supports abortion rights, gay rights and gun control -- seems less certain. And that means the country will be getting an earful from New York journalists who have plenty to say about America's Mayor.
Surprise Trip
After a secret trip that was weeks in the making, Brian Williams has become the first broadcast network anchor to visit Iraq since Bob Woodruff was wounded there 13 months ago.
"This is something he wanted to do," NBC News President Steve Capus said yesterday. "He felt very strongly that he wanted to go." While he is apprehensive about the trip, Capus said, he takes comfort from the fact that Williams is "not a cowboy."
"We absolutely thought about it and didn't make a flip, snap decision," Capus said, adding: "You don't make a decision like this based on ratings."
In a posting on his blog from Baghdad, where he will be anchoring this week, Williams wrote: "It is the story of our time, it dominates our news coverage night after night, and as a journalist I believe it's important to see and touch this story first-hand . . . I'd be lying to say that the wounds suffered by my friends Bob Woodruff and Kimberly Dozier didn't weigh heavily on my mind."
Apple of Their EyeA new video on Apple's Web site features interviews with top executives of washingtonpost.com, who talk about their work -- and their fondness for Macs.
"We've been able to do laptop editing in the field with Apple products," says Tom Kennedy. "Our team has been using Apple for a long time. . . . It's just second nature," says Rob Curley.
The video, produced by an Apple team as part of a series of corporate profiles, sounds very much like a product endorsement for a company that is covered by The Washington Post. But Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, says that was not the intent. He says he agreed to the Apple video as a way of touting The Post's Web site, and that the Apple team chose to highlight brief comments about Apple products that his staffers made during long interviews. Brady calls the video "out of whack" but did not say he regrets doing the interviews.
"I realize it gives people the impression there was some kind of relationship there, but there's not," Brady says. The video, he says, was "a good opportunity to talk to a Web-savvy audience. The Post covers a lot of companies that it interacts with. This wasn't about Apple. If someone came to us and said, 'We want to do a four- or five-minute piece about how The Washington Post uses Apple products,' we wouldn't have done it."
And what does Apple get out of it? The company does the weekly "customer profiles," says Apple spokesman Steve Dowling, to "show how top creative professionals are using our products in their everyday work."
Bloody MetaphorJohn Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico.com, has admitted authoring the latest Republican talking point. Quite inadvertently, of course.
While editing a story on Democratic strategy for Iraq, he junked the lead as "too bland" and wrote a "snappier" one: "Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options."
Republicans, and several news outlets, seized on Harris's "slow-bleed" phrase, using it to brand a plan by Democratic Rep. John Murtha to place restrictions on President Bush's ability to send additional troops to Iraq.
Harris expressed some "remorse" in his Capitol Hill newspaper, saying: "This was a decision -- made on the fly and under deadline -- that I would have taken back in the morning." While Murtha can defend his own proposal, says Harris, "I'd prefer not to hand his opponents ammunition in the form of evocative but loaded language."
It was loaded, no question about it. But Harris deserves credit for fessing up.
Naked TruthTalk about not protecting your sources! Women's Wear Daily reports: "Jane editor in chief Brandon Holley said the magazine has apologized to 53 young women who volunteered to be in an anonymous photo shoot of their breasts for inadvertently exposing their identities in an e-mail."
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