Last Thursday around noon, I saw a Facebook post from the Chicago comedian Tristan Smith telling everyone to turn on Fox News. This is a weird request for most people, in general, but for Tristan, specifically. However, that was all it took for me to understand what was happening:
Rudy Giuliani was making a fool of himself.
The Trump legal team, of which Giuliani is a part of, was giving a press conference to discuss all of the evidence they had put together to prove, in court, that the 2020 presidential election was tampered with and that the real winner was President Donald Trump. How has the legal team been doing? Well, there’s no nice way to put this… not great. When the cases aren’t being dropped before they even reach a judge, they’ve all been getting laughed out of court. If you’re a MAGA Proud Boy that’s reading this (and I have no idea why that would be the case), you’re gonna have to come to terms real fast with the understanding that unless some really gross shit happens, Joe Biden is your president in January.
That’s still not gonna stop Team Trump from sending out it’s lawyers, and as I gave my son his lunchtime bottle, I flipped over to the Fair & Balanced network to see what they had to say. I missed Giuliani’s first remarks, so I had to sit through the B-team as they worked their tricks. First, Sidney Powell yammered on saying how the voting machines were tampered with and talked a lot about Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela who has been dead for seven years… or has he?!?!? I ask because Powell seemed to suggest that a lot of the ways the Biden campaign was able to steal the election came from communist Venezuelan money, so I think there’s a good chance she thinks that either Chavez is alive or that his ghost is helping the Democrats. Following Powell, Jenna Ellis came to the podium to yell at the media for being corrupt, showing that she never read How To Win Friends & Influence People. Honestly, Ellis seemed less like a lawyer than a person working on their reel to be the new blonde yeller at Fox News (or wherever the QAnon crowd are getting their lies from these days).
But what Powell and Ellis both learned is that when it comes from making an ass of yourself, neither of them can hold a candle to Rudy. R.G. is the O.G. of this Trump team’s craziness, and he was going to show it. Literally. Like, it was running down his head.
I don’t know if it was his hair dye or sideburn coloring or if he was just leaking oil, but Giuliani was so much of a mess, I’m a little disappointed no one in the press core asked him if the wanted a handkerchief. As America’s Mayor flop-sweat and fumbled around, all while wearing a pair of loafers that suggested he may have just come from drinks on a yacht but forgot his dress shoes, I just couldn’t help but think of how we all thought of him not to long ago.
And then I thought about Britney Spears.
To say that Rudy Giuliani has fallen from grace may be one of the biggest understatements of all time.
There was not a person who didn’t love this son of a bitch when he stepped down from being the mayor of New York City in 2001. Everyone on both sides of the aisle commended him on how he handled himself following the attacks on the World Trade Center, and he left office a hero. He was Time magazine’s Person Of The Year. He was knighted by the queen! And this was all a dude who divorced his first wife after finding out they were second cousins!
And then… well, there’s no nice way to put this. Ol’ Rude shit the bed.
A failed presidential campaign in 2008 seemed to be the start of his downfall, as Rudy turned from a guy we all kind of respected and admired to the more angry, craven man we know him as today. But it was a fellow New Yorker who really pushed Rudy towards the rock bottom that he seems to always be spiraling towards but never quite reaching: in 2018, Donald Trump brought Giuliani on to join his legal team, and the results have not been great.
It seems like whenever there is a chance for Giuliani to make things worse, he could. You know that Clash song, “Rudy Can’t Fail”? This one fucking can.
A month into office, Rudy was the first official member of Team Trump to admit that the Donald had paid Stormy Daniels money to not talk about their affair. During the Impeachment trial in the House Of Representatives, Rudy basically said that he was the one who colluded with Ukraine on behalf of the President, and later would come under investigation for having associates who were outright criminals. There was the whole Borat thing and quotes like, “collusion is not a crime” and “truth is not the truth”. Rudy Giuliani seemed to become the Forrest Gump of fuck-ups, always seemingly being in the middle of things he shouldn’t be doing the worst things.
Because President Trump’s ratings never dropped and he seemed bulletproof from everything happening, no one really seemed to care. Uncle Rudy would show up, say horribly incriminating things, and it could always be written off because the dude is fucking crazy. Here’s how insane this dude has become, and I know I pointed this out earlier: LITERALLY NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE THAT SHIT WAS JUST ROLLING DOWN HIS FACE DURING HIS PRESS CONFERENCE. Sure, Twitter dunked on him and a few places carried it as a cautionary aside, but think if this would have happened to someone with any credibility? Could you imagine this happening to Joe Biden and this not being the only thing that Trump and Tucker Carlson and OAN talked about as a month as proof that Biden should not be taken seriously?
Jesus fucking Christ, maybe Rudy can’t fail after all.
There had been no Britney Spears news for a long while. That’s a very good thing for Britney Spears.
The pop star, who made headlines again as she attempted to change the terms of her conservatorship, has just been focusing on herself. If her Instagram is to believed (and why shouldn’t it be?), she is focused on being a good mom to her children and just kind of living life. She seems happy, and that makes me euphoric for her, because there was a long while when our nation was either really worried about her or actively rooting for her to go insane.
To me, there is no sadder moment in pop culture than the weird period between 2005-2010 when paparazzi were at their peak. Honestly, one of the benefits of the smart phone is that it is much harder for people to make a living getting torrid photographs of celebrities and their families. Perhaps no one was a greater victim of that than Britney Spears.
I have no idea what it would be like to be Spears. To be so young and the chief financial earner for your family. To be in a position where no one is telling you that you have limits or boundaries when you so desperately need them. It makes me understand why 2007 happened; that was the year that Spears shaved her head, destroyed a paparazzo’s car, and checked herself into a hospital. The best thing that could have happened to Spears was the forming of the conservatorship, because it was the first time she had a group of people in charge of her money who could tell her, “No.”
This seemed to be the turning point for Britney. She got out of debt, made a couple of really great records, had a fantastic run in Las Vegas. She became pop royalty again, but did it on her terms. I’m not sure if she should be allowed to change the terms of who is managing her money. Apparently, she would no longer like her father to be a managing interest, and there has been a lot of tabloid gossip about ways that Papa Spears is not a good grandfather to Britney’s children. I’m sure things are much more complicated than that.
But I do know that I’m glad Britney got help. Because she seems to be happy now. And she deserves that.
So, what do Rudy Giuliani and Britney Spears have in common? It’s a fair question.
Maybe the Trump era is to Rudy what 2007 was to Britney.
The early part of his career was Britney’s first three albums. The response to September 11th was his “Toxic”; his big chance to break out and become a true star. And now he’s falling hard. The biggest difference is that Britney Spears was able to still make hits during her 2007 breakdown (“Womanizer”, “If You Seek Amy”, etc.) while Rudy’s current stage, the courtroom, only causes him more pain and humiliation. It’s kind of his Ashlee Simpson on Saturday Night Live time, but now we’re just putting too many pop stars into the mix.
Perhaps what Rudy needs is someone to stand up and tell him he has to stop. It won’t be Trump; Trump is clearly the metaphor for the fame and success, especially when you realize that Giuliani allegedly charges the Trump campaign $20,000 PER DAY to be, seemingly, the worst attorney in America. Or maybe Trump is the Kevin Federline to Rudy’s Britney, which would make his late State Of The Union his “Popozao”. I’m not sure who it could be. But someone has to do it.
Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I would like to think that Rudy has one more hit left in him. Once last chance to bring people together and help us move forward as a nation. But he’s gotta get help first.
Hit me, Rudy. One more time.
Fancy Boys Club 