Urban Dictionary colloquially defines a ‘poser’ as: ‘1. one who pretends to be someone whose [sic] not; 2. who tries to fit in, but with exaggeration.’ Chances are good that you know more than a few people who have fit into these descriptions at one point or another, but have you ever wondered what became of them?
Here is the good news: after multiple days of research I have discovered that all of these agitating ticks of whom we had the misfortune to associate ourselves with, turned into someone more or less like Rudy Giuliani. Here is the evidence:
It was this past Friday when the presidential hopeful’s speech to the National Rifle Association was pierced by his ringing cell phone. For most people this would be enough to kill the chat, but for a charismatic character like Giuliani, the speech wasn’t truly dead until he decided to actually pick up the phone. The crowd reportedly groaned as if they had just been shot by Giuliani’s action, but America’s mayor went unfazed. Ironically, the cell phone went off right when he was beginning to broach the topic of the Second Amendment (you know, the whole part about the ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’), but we will get to that later.
‘Hello, dear,’ Rudy greeted his wife, ‘I’m talking to the members of the NRA right now. Would you like to say hello?’
Now that’s how you get votes. At first glimpse, we see Rudolph the Red-Nosed Republican speaking at the NRA and charming the crowd with words to his wife. The good ol’ family values right-winger is at home speaking to his adoring crowd of armed citizens. However, if we educate ourselves with some history behind this situation, we can sink to a deeper level of this conservative lovefest.
Here, where the actual apples of our American apple pie lie, is where the scene begins to shatter. The right-wing politico on the NRA podium is the former mayor of what is arguably America’s most liberal city and was strongly in favor of gun control throughout his two terms in New York. Moreover, the wife on the phone is not Regina Peruggi whom he parted ways with in 1982, nor Donna Hanover who divorced him in 2002, but Judith Nathan whom he began seeing in 2000 (so much for the ‘family values conservative’). While Mr. Giuliani’s political worth should not be judged based on his personal history, it is plain to see that his record resonates with no one who was sitting in the conservative NRA audience ‘ regardless of his efforts to show up and persuade them otherwise.
Toward his credit, Giuliani has shown himself to be a political mastermind in between building a reputation on both his post-9/11 fame as well as New York City’s great achievements in crime reduction during his mayoral terms. Yet it is noteworthy that while a few years ago Rudolph W. Giuliani stood in front of the smoke plumes at ground zero with the total support of Americans across the nation, come November this selling point will have to be rethought. Many voters who are thinking of placing a ballot in his direction will have to seriously review his character, which has been simply massacred over this campaign, and see whether they can live with the idea of rewarding such a phony. If you thought posers were aggravating to deal with in high school and college, just wait until you see them on the Presidential Campaign trail.