In a wild instance of the universe finally trying to make up for the measure of humor that has been stolen from us this year, on Saturday Rudy Giuliani gave a Very Important Press Conference at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons… Total Landscaping Company.
Some people have suggested that the president-deselect tweeted it out before making sure the Four Seasons was bookable, and then the broken, chain-smoking Trump staffer who is tasked with papering over reality to match whatever he blurts out had to scramble to find something to make it true. Others suggest that some hapless lackey called a Four Seasons without checking to make sure that it was the Four Seasons and some hilarious staffer saw the marketing opportunity of the millennium and went ahead and accepted the booking.
It doesn’t matter which is correct. This is a gift from our very best trickster gods at the top of their game, and we must simply accept it and clutch it to our hearts in joy that, by whatever miraculous path, Rudy Giuliani gave what he claimed was a press conference of crucial national importance in front of a landscaping company which was, in a painfully on-the-nose reflection of his recent career, tucked between a porn shop and a crematorium. And, honestly, I can’t fault Giuliani for being porn-adjacent. I’ve been there, and it’s a space where plenty of people make a far more honest living than Giuliani has been lately. But I’ll tell you from experience: It’s not a place you want to accidentally end up.
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When I, as a grown adult, had to take a job clerking at a video store that made most of its money through porn rentals, one thing was clear: It was time to re-evaluate my life trajectory and make some hard adjustments. I did some hard-nosed thinking about where I wanted to be, asked a few friends for advice, and ended up writing a book about my old job. I believe that Giuliani's appearance beside Fantasy Island is a long-overdue sign from his own better angels.
It’s hard to even process how different Giuliani’s career and national reputation would have been if he had simply shut the fuck up after 9/11. Very few New Yorkers who lived under him would have been convinced, but if he had simply taken some sinecure corporate position somewhere, the rest of the nation would have remembered him as vaguely heroic, even if they couldn’t point to why. Instead he’s the nutball who’s known for shouting incoherently and peddling “evidence” so obviously cooked up by the GRU that Fox News wouldn’t touch it.
Listen to your porn-adjacency, Rudy. It’s time to change course.
Being not quite at a porn shop is a perfect metaphor for Giuliani in another way. When I was clerking, I spent a lot of time handing people what they thought they wanted. But in fact, it was only something that would distract them for a few minutes. It might even leave them feeling sad and hollow. For a lot of my customers, often the ones who craved it the most urgently, the porn they wanted was a shadow of the deeper substance they really needed.
That’s what Rudy Giuliani, who Disneyfied Times Square and fought to purge the city’s sex shops, has been reduced to. The right-wing press wants real dirt on Joe Biden and legally sound reasons to throw an election that hasn’t gone their way. Instead, America’s (former) mayor is offering dubious laptops and accusations of election fraud not backed by any evidence. There’s no money shot here, just a lot of pointless-to-follow plot.
Sir, your accidental porn-adjacency is a powerful message from the universe. It’s time to re-evaluate your life and make a radical change in your course.
Or at least shut the fuck up.
