Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York, introduced as “America’s Mayor” began his speech accepting the DMD Humanitarian Award rather humbly. “It’s very nice of you to be in New York City,” he said to the packed luncheon audience at the DMD New York conference on Monday at the Javits Center.
Then, he quickly reverted to the New York wise guy. “Spend money,” he quipped. “That’s easy to do in New York–and then we tax it.”
After making a crack about mafioso John Gotti, famed Gambino family don, who died last week (“The best I can say about him is he died in jail”), Giuliani launched into a rousing talk defending the American way of life.
“I believe we were attacked [on Sept. 11] because of our beliefs and philosophies,” he said.
“We are not one ethnic group; we are every ethnic group,” he said. “We are not one race. We are not one religion. We are a country that believes in political freedom, economic freedom, and as free an economic system as you can have.”
“‘They stand for the opposite of those ideas,” Giuliani declared, never identifying the enemy by name.
The nation should respond by never compromising, he said. “There is no room for compromising with people who want to destroy you.”
Also, he said, the American philosophy should be spread. The nation must also prepare “relentlessly” for the possibility of being attacked again. “Then, we have to relax and go about our business,” he said.
He said relentless preparation helped New York through the attacks of Sept. 11. After taking office as mayor, Giuliani had instituted an emergency preparedness plan.
How to get through the rough times ahead? “You have to believe that we are right and they are wrong–and then you need a sense of humor,” the former mayor advised.
He recalled the Friday after Sept. 11 that President Bush visited Ground Zero and stood among the workers in the ruins. After the president spoke, construction workers came up and hugged him. When one especially large man embraced the president with particular zeal, a Secret Service officer who Giuliani knew, turned to the mayor and said, “If this guy kills the president, you’re finished.”
Then, the mayor and the president proceeded by car up the West Side Highway to the Javits Center where families of the missing were waiting. Some 20,000 people lined the highway with signs declaring support for President Bush.
Giuliani said to Bush, “I don’t know how to break this to you, Mr. President, but none of these people voted for you and only five of them voted for me.” (He explained in an aside to the audience that people in the West Side of Manhattan act “completely the opposite of the rest of the country.”)
Recalling the heroics of Sept. 11, he said, “New Yorkers didn’t react the way we did because we are New Yorkers
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