WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

Okay, now they’ve gone too far.

As my regular readers know, I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I think the guy’s a manipulative blowhard and he’s let his police force become the most out-of-control bunch of thugs in the country that don’t actually play for the NFL.

But when I read about a recent book by a reporter from the Village Voice that purports to be an "investigative biography" of Guilani, I had to gag. First off, I don’t know about you, but, the words "investigative biography" sound to me like a euphemism for "hatchet job." And if what I’ve read about the book is true, it explores new and previously unexplored definitions of the words "bad taste." The book, entitled Rudy: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani, isn’t content to delve into the marital problems of the cancer-stricken former Senate candidate. It goes after Rudy’s dead father as well.

According to the book, Harold Giuliani worked for a loan-sharking outfit in the 50’s and served a one-and-a-half year term in Sing Sing prison after robbing a milkman at gunpoint in 1934. The book by reporter Wayne Barrett claims that Papa Harold, who died of prostate cancer in 1981, "broke legs, smashed kneecaps [and] crunched noses" in the performance of his duties. Hey, well, a guy’s gotta earn a living.

Folks, I don’t know how they do things up in Noo Yawk, but where I’m from, it’s considered more than a little tacky to dig up the dirt on people’s long-dead relatives. Not only is this series of revelations tasteless, it’s particularly pointless in this case. Obviously, the idea was to bolster Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the New York Senate seat, the Village Voice not being known for its objectivity in matters political. But for crying out loud, Rudy’s out of the race by now. Probably they sank so much money into the preparation of the book that they felt like they had to get it out there to recoup the investment.

At least Barrett has the good grace to admit that there’s no evidence connecting Rudy his ownself with organized crime. This may be less a matter of Barrett’s good grace and more a matter of the publisher’s lawyers having good sense, but at least he admits it.

Maybe the deal is that, this being New York and all, it’s hard to get people real excited about extramarital affairs. You need a daddy in the Mob to make people shake their heads and go "tsk, tsk," in New York.

I think it more likely, however, that this has to do with this whole pop-psychoanalysis claptrap we go through with our public figures these days. We want to find out about a politician’s early family life to get some "insight into his soul."

The problem is, it’s looking more and more like a person’s childhood is not a real great way of determining what they’ll be or do in later life. One guy grows up with an alcoholic, abusive stepfather and becomes an abusive alcoholic himself. Another grows up with an alcoholic, abusive stepfather and becomes President of the United States. If the proponents of the pop-psych interpretation of history were correct, Bill Clinton would be slapping Hillary around the trailer park and Chelsea would be wearing a little paper hat and working the french-fry line at the Park-N-Eat in Little Rock. As attractive as that image may be for some, it didn’t happen that way. And in Giuliani’s case, whatever his papa may have done, the last thing anybody can accuse him of being is Mob-friendly.

So, in the long run, questions of good taste are overshadowed by the over-riding question raised by this whole affair, which is: who the heck cares? Frankly, the exploits of the parents of a candidate mean less to me that the price of manure in Wichita. I mean, does anybody really care what George W. Bush’s daddy did for a living?

Oh. Right. Bad example.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.