Spencer Ackerman reflects on Rudy Giuliani’s media-abetted rise in New York.
The New York media's relationship with Giuliani was not outwardly fawning and featured the performance of skepticism. They scrutinized and published treatises about his incorrigibility. Their discomfort intensified as Giuliani grew bolder. He pulled stunts like trying to change the city charter to stop a political enemy from becoming mayor if Giuliani won an anticipated Senate bid, and that provoked backlash. But most journalists treated Giuliani's incorrigibility as a feature of his political appeal, necessary for his great works. With the exceptions of real ones like Wayne Barrett, they tended to portray his authoritarianism, openly discussed as such, as an operatic joke, Rudy being Rudy. As so much of the national press lives in New York, it followed the local media cues about Giuliani. Narratives are made by such things.
A similar dynamic was apparent during Donald Trump’s rise to prominence back in the 1980s and 1990s. Here’s the Washington Post in 2016:
In the 1980s, when reporters called the Trump Organization to request an interview with the boss, they were sometimes referred to a spokesman, instead. That a busy and image-conscious executive such as Donald Trump would place a buffer between himself and the media was hardly unusual, but there was a twist: The spokesman, John Barron, was actually Trump, hiding behind a fake name.
Barron (also spelled “Baron” in some press accounts) appears to have been Trump’s go-to alias when he was under scrutiny, in need of a tough front man or otherwise wanting to convey a message without attaching his own name to it.
Remarkably, Trump kept up the charade for a full decade, as reporters unwittingly quoted Barron as if he were a real person.
And who could forget the story about the New York Post’s “Best Sex I Ever Had!” cover?
Sitting in Nachman’s office while he was editing one of my pieces, I heard his secretary yell, “It’s Donald.” Nachman motioned me to “shhh” and put Trump on speaker. “Those fucking bitches,” Trump bellowed. “I want a front-page story tomorrow.”
Jerry calmly replied, “Donald, you just don’t demand a front-page story. There has to be a story.” “For all the newspapers I’ve sold for you, you should give me one.” “That’s not how it works.” “What gets a front-page story?” Donald asked.
The veteran newsman contemplated the question. “It’s usually murder, money or sex.” Donald fired back: “Marla says with me it’s the best sex she’s ever had.” Nachman’s face lit up like a firecracker. “That’s great!” he said. “But you know I need corroboration.”
“Marla,” Trump yelled into the background. “Didn’t you say it’s the best sex you ever had with me?” From a distance, we heard a faint voice: “Yes, Donald.” Only years later did we learn that Trump sometimes impersonated voices to reporters. I still can’t be sure whether the voice in the room was really hers.
Anyway, Rudy and Trump both had their mugshots taken at an Atlanta jail this week.
I’m not sure I have a point here. Just a few scattered thoughts.
* New York is supposed to be the media capital of the world. Lots of people in my profession make it their goal to get there — sometimes even moving there straight out of college to gut it out in the biggest arena available. But it’s not really a “best of the best” situation there, is it? Or, at least, maybe it wasn’t during the 1980s and 1990s when Rudy and Trump were dominating the scene.
* But they were apparently fooled by, or happy to go along with, Trump’s made-up stories about his sexual prowess. And they never thought to check the identity of the PR guy to one of the world’s most famous men whom they had never apparently met in person.
* New York’s a big town. But it’s not that big a town.
* Similarly, the papers in NYC were building narratives about Giuliani that ultimately resulted in the whole “America’s Mayor” thing.
* A few weeks after 9/11, I drove to New York to see the wreckage for myself and talk to people. Leaving town on a Saturday morning, I found a jazz station on the radio. The format seemed to be something like this: Play a jazz song. Take a call about how Giuliani was terrible. Play a jazz song. Crap on Giuliani. Repeat. This was at the height of his fame. I’d had the sense, from my perch all the way out in Kansas, that Rudy was — deservedly — unpopular with the city’s minority population. But until that moment, I’d not really heard it in such raw terms.
* I’m thinking about my old paper, the Marion County Record, which has been much in the national news lately because its journalism irritated the powers-that-be so much it brought on a police raid.
* Marion is not the media capital of the world.
* I’ve lived in a big city and plenty of small towns. Both have their charms. So I’m not going all “try that in a small town” about this. What I’m saying, though, is that the folks who ascend to “elite” levels are sometimes every bit as provincial as the rest of us. Sometimes, it looks like, they treat the whole thing as a game that everybody’s in on.
Sometimes, though, they’re rubes.
And when they are, well, that has some big consequences.
My mother moved from NYC to Louisville with her family in 1945, when she was 9. I grew in a typical 1960s, middle-class, middle American superb. I remember my Mom telling me that New Yorkers were often far more provincial than people in the rest of America. When I went to college in the northeast, I met a number of people who showed just how provincial New Yorkers could be. Fortunately, most of my friends broadened their horizons in college, but they had already made the choice to move away from NYC for school.