Down a Notch or Two

As a New Yorker, this is a movie I welcome.

The two-hour feature is nothing less than a full frontal assault on the civic deification of Rudolph W. Giuliani that occurred in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, when much of the news coverage shined a spotlight on his steady hand.

If the film does not take a wrecking ball to Mr. Giuliani's pedestal, it at least serves as a reminder of all the controversy, all the fighting and all the dirty laundry that defined him before the halo effect set in after the terrorist attacks. If nothing else, the filmmakers say they want to define his public image for voters and the news media before he can define himself as a possible presidential candidate — an approach that prompts the former mayor's aides to call the film a hatchet job.

I say hatchet away. I never understood what Giuliani did in the days after Sept. 11th that made him such a hero. He did his job, that's it. Any mayor reacting to the 9/11 aftermath would have appeared heroic. The GOP made Giuliani their terrorist saviour, but who could blame them since the police state Giuliani ran in New York during his years as mayor is exactly the type of heaven the GOP prays for. The poor shoved under the carpet and the rich moving in wall to wall.

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