Giuliani Gibberish

Giuliani Gibberish
Robert Schlesinger

The annals of political rhetoric are full of forgettable phrases and more than the average amount of vacuous rhetoric. H.L. Mencken once wrote of Warren Harding that his inaugural address was "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it," that it drug itself out of the "dark abysm ... of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh."

Few high-profile pols plumb that particular abysm these days, but Rudy Giuliani's ad-writers seem intent on exploring those lost lingual lands. His latest ad, running in Florida (of which he is running for president), asserts that on -- wait for it -- 9/11, "When the world wavered, and history hesitated, he never did."

Ignore for a moment the Rudy-was-stronger-than-the-rest-of-the-world rhetoric. History hesitated? What in heaven's name does that mean? Time was in danger of grinding to a halt until History's Mayor sprang into action? This is what's commonly known as ... gibberish. Gold-plated nonsense.

This follows on his ring-in-2008 campaign ad which, talking about the Benazir Bhutto assassination, bemoaned "a people perverted."

As Josh Marshall noted:

"The whole people is perverted? Depending on how you interpret the ad, Rudy's either saying that Muslims as a people have been 'perverted' or the people of Pakistan are perverted.

"Either way, that seems more than a little problematic."

Giuliani's bizarre primary rope-a-dope -- sit on the sidelines and yell 9/11 in the hopes that it will cause the rest of the field to fold -- has drawn plenty of chuckles, but I for one hope he lasts long enough to produce a couple more nonsensical pearls.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schlesinger/giuliani-gibberish_b_82280.html