Taibbi

Matt Taibbi, the most dead-on gonzo reporter working today, hits another homer in this week's Rolling Stone with, "Giuliani: Worse Than Bush". You can read to the end to get the whole "worse" part, but it's a damning portrait of an amoral political opportunist who cashes an an accelerated World Trade Center clean-up by flouting OSHA rules to get it done faster and ruining the health of the workers to do it:

For starters, Rudy tried to use the tragedy to shred election rules, pushing to postpone the inauguration of his successor so he could hog the limelight for a few more months. Then, with the dust from the World Trade Center barely settled, he went on the road as the Man With the Bullhorn, pocketing as much as $200,000 for a single speaking engagement. In 2002 he reported $8 million in speaking income; this past year it was more than $11 million. He's traveled in style, at one stop last year requesting a $47,000 flight on a private jet, five hotel rooms and a private suite with a balcony view and a king-size bed.

While the mayor himself flew out of New York on a magic carpet, thousands of cash-strapped cops, firemen and city workers involved with the cleanup at the World Trade Center were developing cancers and infections and mysterious respiratory ailments like the "WTC cough." This is the dirty little secret lurking underneath Rudy's 9/11 hero image -- the most egregious example of his willingness to shape public policy to suit his donors. While the cleanup effort at the Pentagon was turned over to federal agencies like OSHA, which quickly sealed off the site and required relief workers to wear hazmat suits, the World Trade Center cleanup was handed over to Giuliani. The city's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) promptly farmed out the waste-clearing effort to a smattering of politically connected companies, including Bechtel, Bovis and AMEC construction.

The article begins with a very odd and revealing moment on the campaign trail and also covers Rudy's dunce-hatting of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) at the first Republican Presidential debate. Not to be missed, if you really want to know why New Yorkers were glad when Mayor Giuliani finally -- after suspending the election of his successor on his own edict -- left the job.

I'm not sure what it will take to dislodge the current lazy mainstream media story that Rudy was the hero of 9/11 (read the article to learn more reasons why not), but meanwhile former Vice President Al Gore has a new book out about the fundamental cracks in our democratic discourse, The Assault on Reason, and the old lazy mainstream media story about him being, uh, too smart has again reared it's Medusa-like head. Per Paul McLeary at the Columbia Journalism Review:

Milbank gives us an account of a recent speech by Gore that reads almost like a parody of everything we read about the candidate back in '00.

Milbank said that during the speech, Gore "waxed esoteric," "waxed erudite," and "waxed informed," as if these might be bad things to have happen during a speech. Milbank then quotes several audience members who gush over how smart Gore is, concluding that "therein lies a problem for the Gore '08 bubble." Can't be too smart, now, or else you'll look like an egghead, right?

G*ddamn America and its anti-intellectualism.

Remember what happened when we didn't go for smart?