The Trump & Rudy show: When art imitated life
A tweet about "The Godfather" starring Rudy Giuliani, a 2001 parody. Some of the skit's actors were later convicted of crimes.
Daily Point
Prescient casting long ago for Rudy & Donald
Bewilderment and tut-tutting from former fans and political associates of Rudy Giuliani is an old story by now. This week he’s charged as a criminal defendant in the Georgia 2020 election-theft case, and barring surprises, he will be caught up in court for some time to come.
Looking back, there were moments when the news media and public at large might have divined a future that would have the former New York City mayor embroiled with law enforcement rather than identifying himself with it.
For decades, the annual New York City Inner Circle satirical show has included time for the politicians being lampooned to make a presentation responding in kind. In 2001, Giuliani’s last year in office due to term limits, the show featured a presentation that after all this time might not look quite as counterintuitive as it once did. They did a rendition of "The Godfather," from which the ex-prosecutor had been quoting through his political career.
It’s the cast of the old skit and their epilogues as real-life perps that draws the eye this week.
Playing himself was the late Ray Harding, the Liberal Party leader and close Giuliani adviser, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in a deal by which he admitted having taken $800,000 for doing favors for disgraced and convicted Alan Hevesi, who was city and then state comptroller.
Playing former Rep. Rick Lazio was Lillo Brancato, the Sopranos actor and heroin addict who four years later was charged but then acquitted in the slaying of 28-year-old police officer Daniel Enchautegui. That incident stemmed from a robbery near the officer’s home in the Bronx. Brancato’s accomplice fired the fatal shot, and he was convicted of attempted first-degree burglary.
Also playing himself was the late longtime Queens Assemb. Anthony Seminerio who died in federal prison in 2011 where he was serving a sentence for influence peddling.
Playing an “enforcer” was Bernard Kerik, then police commissioner, a longtime Giuliani aide and friend, who served time after pleading guilty in 2010 to tax fraud, making a false statement on a loan application, and making false statements to the federal government while being vetted for President George W. Bush’s homeland security chief. President Donald Trump later pardoned him.
As if that were not portentous enough: The year before, in 2000, Giuliani famously appeared in drag in a videotaped sketch with his future client Donald Trump, then a citizen, real estate mogul and campaign contributor. In it, Trump fondles “Rudia” in Marilyn Monroe-style garb — in a department store.
Eerily, a jury in a civil case just three months ago found Trump had sexually abused a magazine columnist during the mid-1990s — in a New York City department store. Does parody imitate life or vice versa?
— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com
Pencil Point
Crime and astonishment
Credit: PoliticalCartoons.com/Dave Whamond, Canada
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Final Point
Long Island SUNY's 'top performer,' chancellor says
SUNY Chancellor John King, right, meets with the Newsday editorial board Monday. Credit: Newsday / Amanda Fiscina-Wells
Eight months into his tenure, SUNY Chancellor John King visited the editorial board earlier this week for a discussion that ranged from the Supreme Court’s decision barring affirmative action programs in higher education to how AI could be used in the state’s medical centers, such as Stony Brook University.
King has completed his visits to all 64 SUNY campuses, and the one thing that stood out in his meet-and-greets with students was “how everyone seemed to come from Long Island.” The two top feeder counties are Suffolk with 46,934 students and Nassau with 30,133 students, according to SUNY fall 2022 enrollment data. Westchester was fifth with 15,399.
That means Long Island is overperforming with 24% of all SUNY students who are New York residents coming from Nassau and Suffolk, which comprise only 14.7% of the state’s population. What surprised King even more was how few students were from New York City, which he said was an area ripe to target to increase enrollment.
Another fascinating statistic was that one-third of all New Yorkers with a college degree graduated from a SUNY institution. However, the 360,000 students enrolled in four-year degree programs is dwarfed by the 1.3 million in noncredit workforce development programs.
King is excited about all the possibilities for Stony Brook University, which he said is poised to ascend to the top ranks of public universities. Two challenges are finding the right leadership for the climate solutions center on Governors Island that SBU will anchor and ensuring that James Simons' extraordinary $500 million donation is properly leveraged to make the school a flagship of the system. “The goal is to make Stony Brook the next University of California at Berkeley or the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill,” King said. Part of that involves recruiting great faculty and top grad students, he said.
King said he is focused on growing enrollment and degree completion systemwide but that’s not a concern with SBU or Farmingdale State College, which is positioning itself as a tech center offering courses that can lead to jobs in the state’s green economy, cybersecurity and health care, he said. Meanwhile, he said SUNY Old Westbury is priming itself to move forward as it now has a university designation and new leadership in Timothy Sams. There are undergraduate research programs with Northwell Health and Brookhaven National Lab in place at Old Westbury, one of the most diverse schools in the SUNY system. “There can be partnerships with Stony Brook’s medical school and the University of Buffalo’s law school as a way to create a diverse student population in these programs,” King said.
One of SUNY’s biggest challenges, according to King, is right-sizing schools with shrinking enrollments, which includes reducing faculties and retooling course offerings by reimagining some disciplines. His example is SUNY Orange, a two-year community college in upstate Middletown. The botany programs in their biology department were lagging, with few students. Then the school offered a course in “the horticulture of cannabis” which was oversubscribed as New York State is requiring the sale of homegrown weed in its licensed retail stores. “Shall I say it can be a gateway to a career in agriculture,” King said.
— Rita Ciolli rita.ciolli@newsday.com
