Rudy Giuliani is not special, & he is not above the law.
I can hardly believe what Giuliani has turned into: it's like he is trying to out-crazy Trump, in his own style of "Me Too."
Trump: "I'm crazy!"
Giuliani: "Me too! Me Too!"
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To me, it looks as if they are cracking up.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote an essay titled, "The Crack-Up." In today's slang, we say "meltdown."
[excerpt from "The Crack-Up" -- Esquire magazine] ---------------------------- Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once.
There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation -- the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible" come true.
Life was something you dominated if you were any good.
Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both.
It seemed a romantic business to be a successful literary man -- you were not ever going to be as famous as a movie star but what note you had was probably longer-lived -- you were never going to have the power of a man of strong political or religious convictions but you were certainly more independent.
Of course within the practice of your trade you were forever unsatisfied -- but I, for one, would not have chosen any other. ---------------------------- [end, excerpt]
My dad used to quote that part about holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time....
When Fitzgerald says a writer is "forever unsatisfied" in the practice of his trade, it reminds me of filmmaker Woody Allen, who has said that with each movie -- you think it's going to be great while you're working on it -- but the movies never measure up to be as good as you hoped, thought, aimed... so you make another one and do your best with that....
When Fitzgerald talks about cracking up -- not being as good as you used to be -- being sort of broken, I think of something Keith Richards said in a documentary about Tina Turner -- how she left an abusive marriage and went forward to survive and have her own successful career -- he referred to her progress, in his gravelly voice and juicy-tart accent, as "...just -- not lettin' life take over from you"....
...Sort of -- the opposite of giving in to a "crack-up" or "meltdown"...
Something else F. Scott Fitzgerald was famous for stating, in his notes on The Last Tycoon:
"There are no second acts in American lives."
Usually when people bring up that quote, they are affectionate and respectful toward Fitzgerald but then say very enthusiastically that the topic of their discussion escapes that categorization. ("So-and-so had a second act! Such-and-such a person had two second acts!"
Two examples of this:
Tina Turner
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis)
It seems like Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump should have maybe decided to be happy with their "First Acts" and then just let it lie.
Because it isn't just right now, it's been for some number of years, for both of these folks, that if you listened to what they were saying and observed their actions and attitudes, it's like -- "OK, is this a second act, or a dumpster fire?''
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On You Tube, type in
Burton Cummings - Stand Tall - 1976 Album Cut
and Play.
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{"The Crack-up" - February 1, 1936}
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