Matt Taibbi Took Rudy Giuliani’s Crass Nastiness and Made Something Funny Out of It — and a Comment about Evolving Prejudice

© 2015 Peter Free

 

23 February 2015

 

 

A good laugh lightens despair

 

For instance, these paragraphs from Matt Taibbi — who addressed Rudy Giuliana’s comment about President Obama not loving the United States:

 

 

[First, the funny:]

 

I feel sorry for Rudy that he can't love this country the way it is. I love America even with assholes like him living in it.

 

In fact, I'm immensely proud of our assholes; I think America has the best assholes in the world. I defy the Belgians or the Japanese to produce something like a Donald Trump. If that makes me an exceptionalist, I plead guilty.

 

[Then the serious:]

 

It's not easy to love America and hate half the people who live there. It requires that you spend a lot of time closing your eyes and wishing history had happened differently, which, at least in my limited experience, doesn't work very well.

 

And that's not something to gloat about, either. A lot of people in this country think like Rudy, and if our present doesn't work for them, the future won't work for any of us. We're all going to end up miserable together, and that sucks.

 

© 2015 Matt Taibbi, Rudy Giuliani, American Soviet, Rolling Stone (21 February 2015) (extracts)

 

 

Over time

 

Guys like former mayor Giuliani are eventually going to lose their access to the microphone. The demographics of their audience will have vanished. And the media will no longer profit from sowing their mean-spirited stupidity.

 

 

The moral? — Humanity may not overcome it instinct toward prejudice, but what Americans are bigoted against is going to change

 

Rudy’s stenchy example of missing soul is eventually going to be buried under the sediments of overlying progress. Along with the equally putrid American Confederacy to which he speaks.