OK, this is getting downright weird. Not one, not two but now three Gail Collins columns within three weeks dealing in one way or another with Rudy Giuliani's sentimental attachments. On November 8th came the suggestively-headlined "Pat Loves Rudy," about the Robertson endorsement. As observed here, that column contained Collins lurid allusion to Rudy "busy committing adultery." Just two days later, as noted here, Collins captioned her column about the Kerik indictment "Rudy and Bernie: B.F.F.’s" ["Best Friends Forever," in the lingo of groovy gals like Gail].
Comes Collins column of today, and wouldn't you know it: Gail is back on the Rudy love-life beat. The ostensible subject of "Rudy’s Security Blanket" is the use of official security details to accompany then Mayor Giuliani to Long Island, assertedly on visits to Judith Nathan, the woman who would eventually become his wife.
Rudy will have to literally and figuratively account for the matter. But Collins seems at least as interested in prurient details as with political implications. Consider these excerpts [emphasis added].
- security details that guarded Rudy when he was out of town pursuing nonmayoral ventures such as golf and adultery.
- his divorce-studded private life.
- what Rudy does behind closed doors
- When he was mayor, his sex life spilled into weird press conferences
- Lately, he’s contented himself with interrupting his speeches to accept strange cellphone calls from the latest wife. [Snippy, snippy, Gail!]
- police guards to protect and transport not only Rudy, his children and his elderly mother, but also both his wife and his mistress.
- city police officers cooling their heels outside his mistress’s home in the Hamptons
- He called his wife, Donna, “my lover”
Let's see: Collins manages to work in "adultery," two uses of "mistress," one of "lover." assorted references to "sex life" and divorces and an allusion to what Rudy does behind closed doors. Was I reading a supposedly serious NYT political column, or did I somehow stumble into an online bodice-ripper?
Yesterday, I noted how newly-conservative Keith Olbermann fretted that Rudy had issues with "infidelity and morality." But Keith's a mere acolyte to the Avenging Voice of the New Liberal Victorians: Gail Collins.
