SOURCE Italic Institute of AmericaAs former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gets set to host "Mob Week" on AMC from Aug. 1-7, a major Italian-American think tank questions whether Giuliani's overt obsession with anti-Italian stereotypes is appropriate behavior for a potential presidential candidate.
In an article published in the June 22, 2011 edition of Investor's Business Daily, Rosario A. Iaconis, chairman of the New York based Italic Institute of America, said that in the early 1990s, "Rudolph W. Giuliani was a public servant without peer and an incorruptible crime fighter. But that was before he morphed into the man who would be Churchill."
According to Iaconis, "Rudy clearly suffers from Godfather Tourette's syndrome. He kicked off his 2008 campaign by aping Vito Corleone, something columnist Peggy Noonan found distasteful and utterly unpresidential. Indeed, Giuliani delights in depicting the scions of Italy as vulgar Neanderthals a la Tony Soprano and Company. "
Iaconis said, "one can almost envision Hizzoner tapping Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, to be his running mate."
Iaconis added, "Rather than lauding his Italian heritage's seminal role in the formation of the American republic, Giuliani traffics in vile stereotypes. Cicero, Caesar Augustus, Cesare Beccaria and Filippo Mazzei matter little to him. Nor do Medal of Honor winner Salvatore Giunta, World War II hero Louis Zamperini or Ferdinand Pecora, the reform-minded attorney whose investigations helped establish the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1930s."
Iaconis also observed that Rudy's 2008 campaign "collapsed under the weight of its own political ineptitude" and that "Hizzoner is the mastermind who situated a $15.1 million emergency command post —with its 6,000-gallon tank of diesel fuel — at 7 World Trade Center. As for the evacuation plan, 9/11 commissioner John Lehman once described it as "not worthy of the Boy Scouts."
