Flashback: In 2000, Rudy Slammed Hillary For Playing Allegedly Pro-Drug Song At Campaign Event
Here's a fun little item to send you off into the holiday. Not surprisingly, it involves Rudy, whose antics never fail to disappoint.
Rudy Giuliani surprised a lot of people the other day when he defended Barack Obama for admitting to past drug use. Rudy suggested that it would be a mistake for a candidate to be judged on the basis of a "mistake" like this.
As many have pointed out, Rudy was apparently making an appeal here for folks to be tolerant of his own imperfections. And so, in light of Rudy's sudden tolerance towards past candidate drug use, we thought it would be worth recalling another drug-related Rudy episode.
Few will remember this, but back in 2000, when Rudy was running for Senate against Hillary, he created a big controversy by attacking her not over drug use, but because of the mere fact that she played an allegedly pro-drug song at a campaign event. The song was Billy Joel's "Captain Jack," which contains this lyric: "Captain Jack will get you high tonight and take you to your special island."
At the time, Rudy claimed there was no excuse for playing the song at the event. He said: "The message that got out, and they say by mistake -- and sometimes, if you read Freud, that can be the most powerful message -- the message that got out by mistake is, `Let's say yes to drugs.'"
Relatedly, Ben Smith adds the trenchant point that Rudy's crime-fighting strategies were built on intolerance of extremely minor pot possession charges, for which people got locked up sometimes for a full day.
Oh, well. Garden variety Rudy shenanigans. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!












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