Talking Is an Art Form for N.Y.’s Mayor

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t get out this way very often. He’s got a city to run. He is the 107th mayor of New York City and a man who might run for the U.S. Senate next year against a potentially new New Yorker.

“I’ve lived in New York all my life,” Giuliani volunteered on a brief Southern California visit a few days ago.

He resisted any temptation to add: Unlike some people. . . .

“I was born there. I went to school there. I work there,” Giuliani continued, breaking into a wide grin when this 25-words-or-less recitation of his life’s history ended up getting a laugh.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name was never spoken, but the mayor’s point was made. Should they clash in New York’s 2000 senatorial race, you can be sure that the newness of the newest New Yorker will be a point Giuliani will make repeatedly.

The other Clinton contemplating a move to New York, he did mention by name.

“It was Bill Clinton who, in January 1991, famously declared to a standing ovation that the era of Big Government was over. Well, he said it. And we believed it. Didn’t we?

“Do we?”

This, too, got a laugh.

Giuliani found himself doing quite well in this room, thousands of miles from home, speaking before a receptive audience of supportive Republicans and more than a few transplanted New Yorkers.

“I wish I could take you all back on the plane with me,” the mayor said.

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When you live and work in New York, the mayor is in the middle of some kind of muddle every day.

When you live and work in Los Angeles, you could go a month without mentioning Richard Riordan’s name.

New York is no day at the beach.

Elected there in 1993, Giuliani took on the toughest job in the toughest town. He needs no reminder of this, but nonetheless found one Thursday upon spotting a national magazine’s cover on display at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, where Giuliani was to lecture.

It was a 1990 cover story that depicted New York City as a crime capital and a city with far too many inhabitants on welfare.

Giuliani’s objective was to change all that. To not go running to Washington begging for more federal funds. To clean up the streets and put more people to work.

“When you look at a sign on an office in New York today,” he says, “notice that it doesn’t say ‘Welfare’ anymore. It says ‘Job Center.’ ”

A sign of further concern to Giuliani in recent weeks has been the one posted just outside an art museum in Brooklyn.

It reads: “BE WARNED.”

Graphically explicit artwork now featured in a sensationalistic exhibition known (aptly) as “Sensation” greatly offended Giuliani. It turned him into Rudolph the red-faced mayor.

He called it “sick stuff.” He vowed to cut off the city’s $7.2-million annual funding to the museum, which had everybody spinning in sin city. A firestorm of controversy surrounded the exhibition, which opened Saturday.

Nowhere in the City Charter is it mentioned that the mayor gets to decide what is or isn’t art.

Giuliani nevertheless contended that he had “a general rule of thumb that I follow . . . anything that I can do is not art.”

The mayor is a man of many talents, but apparently one of them is not being able to draw a can of Campbell’s soup.

It was inadequate, in Giuliani’s opinion, that the museum’s warning sign out front cautioned visitors that something provocative was on display behind its doors.

His supporters congratulated the mayor for having the courage to fight against indecency. Some of them offered this support on radio stations featuring some of the most indecent language you have ever heard.

Giuliani’s detractors immediately came to the conclusion that his next flight out of La Guardia or JFK would not be to, say, Los Angeles, but to Florence, where he would implore museum curators to hang a pair of pants on Michelangelo’s David.

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Being outspoken is an art form in itself.

Giuliani says that he vividly remembers when Reagan-- whom he once served as associate attorney general--was going face to face with Communist leaders over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The week before his biggest showdown with the Soviet leaders, ABC-TV aired a special movie called ‘The Day After’ that was so bad [in its depiction of nuclear disaster], teachers had to ask children not to watch it.”

Good thing that Giuliani wasn’t in charge of ABC’s program funding at that time.

The man does speak his mind. Maybe this is a habit that natural-born New Yorkers pick up more easily than others.

For example, the mayor came up with a parting shot for one of the new New Yorkers before catching a plane back home.

“Bill Clinton will turn over an American military less developed, less funded and with much lower morale than when he took office,” Giuliani said. “The next president is going to have to totally rebuild our foreign policy.”

And this was just a first strike in an upcoming war of words between New Yorkers. Be warned.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail:

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