The motion picture Rudy, about an undersized, overachieving, walk-on football player for Notre Dame University has a lot of parallels to the current Rudy dominating the headlines. The criticism for the movie generally centers around the mythology of Daniel ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger. The one shining moment, to steal from a well-used song adopted by the same NCAA that led to Ruettiger’s fame was not quite the tear-jerking dramatic moment of ethos re-created in the movie. Rudy Giuliani the former Mayor of New York, presidential candidate and now a counselor for the President is living a life of mythology except for his one shining moment. New York City and America will be forever grateful for his leadership through one of the darkest moments of modern American history.
A memorable line from the movie comes when Rudy is told by the head groundskeeper— Fortune, in an effort to inject some stirring reality into his life, “Oh you are so full of crap…you’re five-foot nothin’, a hundred and nothin’…” Those words, with a little tweaking, could apply to Mr. Giuliani. The opening, you are so full of crap can be left alone, follow that with you’ve spoken five days of nothin’ with hundreds of words of nothin’ and you have the Giuliani week that was. Starting with his appearance on Fox’s Sean Hannity show, Rudy has tossed out the garbage, wallowed in the trail of litter and left behind an odoriferous scent that is smelling up every living room with a TV in the country.
He has been called out by a President, defined by his own lying nature, as not having his facts straight, contradicts his own arguments, sometimes within the same paragraph, and demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the law. It cannot be forgotten that Trump’s string of failed lawyers have been hired, fired and coaxed into offering up resignations by the man who told us during the campaign he would hire the “best people.” Maybe during the interview process, he did not use the “best words.”
Movie-Rudy tried and tried to gain entrance into Notre Dame spending years studying at Holy Cross, rejection after rejection. New York-Rudy failed as a Presidential candidate, then vying to be Trump’s Secretary of State, and U.S. Attorney General, rejection after rejection. Giuliani claims he turned down those positions, but reporting is to the contrary. By the way, despite the sports world treating the movie like it is sports blasphemy, I love the movie and cry at the ending everytime. I will not cry the day Rudy Giuliani, who captained the harsh treatment of people of color on the streets of New York, leaves the public stage.
In movie-Rudy’s climactic scene, the diminutive Ruettiger entered the game with the crowd chanting his name, made the game-ending sack of the quarterback and was carried triumphantly off the field to the strains of composer Jerry Goldsmith’s inspiring score. In reality, movie-Rudy sort of fell on the pile at the end of the game. Well, New York-Rudy has added little to the discourse of American politics and was brought in to only pile on.
Vote in ’18 for Change.