David E. kindly brought this NY Times story to our attention. It seems that Rudy!® hauled out a cell phone in the middle of his address to the National Rifle Association in order to take a call from his wife, in what has to be one of the most endearingly down-to-earth moments since he appeared in drag, or posed nude for Edmund Joseph Sullivan’s Skeleton with Roses illustration.
But what really gives the story that Larry Davidesque flavor of flopsweat-encrusted whimsy is all the effort Rudy’s campaign put into manufacturing what turns out to be a bit of premeditated serendipity. According to the NY Times:
Was the call a genuine intrusion by an adoring wife? Or a campaign stunt meant to soften his image before a potentially hostile crowd, and show Judith Giuliani in a warmer light?
The campaign insisted Friday that the call caught Mr. Giuliani off guard. “It was a moment of candor and spontaneity on the campaign trail,” said Maria Comella, a campaign spokeswoman.
But it was not the first time Mr. Giuliani has interrupted a campaign stop to take a call from his wife just as he was making a speech. In June, visiting a community of largely Cuban immigrants in Hialeah, Fla., .
As his supporters chanted, “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy,” he hushed them, flipping open the phone and revealing that it was his wife on the line. Maybe a little cheesy, but the crowd loved it.
On Friday, however, there was awkward laughter.
And after The New York Times noted the previous cellphone interruption in a blog posting on Friday after the speech to the N.R.A., the campaign of a Republican presidential rival, Mitt Romney, wasted no time in finding video and sending reporters links to YouTube, where both calls could be seen side by side.
Courtesy of TPM, here’s the video:
David E. sums it up:
[I]f I’m reading between the lines here, Rudy’s wife calling him mid-speech — and his taking the call — was genuine when he did it for the Cubans. It went over so well that the campaign staged it this week when he was speaking to the NRA, but it didn’t play quite as well.
Reminded me of the lobster scene toward the end of Annie Hall, when he tries to recreate the great moment he had with Annie earlier in the movie with a new girl.
And when he tries, of course, to re-experience that wacky moment of romantic chaos, his new date dumps cold water on the proceedings by taking a blase puff on her cigarette and observing, “You’re a grown man. You know how to pick up a lobster.”
My advice to Rudy!®, if he intends to meticulously re-enact other moments in which he accidentally appeared human, is to lay off Annie Hall for awhile and start cribbing from Groundhog Day instead. After all, if you’re going to condemn yourself to perpetually relive the same day, you might as well learn how to play the piano and do chainsaw ice sculpture in the bargain.
Rudy is about as “genuine” and “heartwarming” as mAnn Coulter as shim drains the blood from yet another Young Republicunt virgin, with crimson dribbles careening down shim’s manufactured (and shockingly low-rent) “tits.”
Left by Anntichrist S. Coulter on September 22nd, 2007