“A Message to You Rudy”

From Shakespearean tragedy to a British prime minister to the most secure presidential election in U.S. history.

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani.

Rudy.

What a slimy, repulsive, piece of crap of a human being.

The former mayor of New York City and U.S. Department of Justice attorney, and current attorney for the crookedest president in the history of the United States of America, spends his days trying to overrule the will of the majority of U.S. voters. This, despite the straightforward statement from the U.S. Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees on Nov. 12, 2020:

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

Since then, wild scenes have unfolded around Rudy and his suspiciously loud cohorts as they continuously spew conspiracy theories in desperate attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. They seem set on making themselves look like absolute buffoons rather than a crack legal team for a president* of the United States. So far they’re doing a rather bang-up job of it. 

Rudy is making an absurd spectacle of the presidency, the Grand Old Party, the legal profession and himself, all without breaking a sweat. Instead, he appears to be melting, literally, on national television. 

OK, fine. He did sweat, and it drew out the crap that was running down his face. Reportedly it was hair dye, but the truth is no-one but Rudy can really say for certain what it was. And maybe he can’t, either.

For now, we’ll just call it “Essence of Rudy.” 

Ewwwwww….

Regardless, all of this brings to mind a song that was written and recorded by Jamaican composer and musician Dandy Livingstone in 1967, then covered by the English 2-Tone band, The Specials, in 1981.

Click here or on the image below to see/hear The Specials perform “A Message To You Rudy.”

A message to you, Rudy
A message to you
Stop your fooling around
Time you straighten right out
Better think of your future
Else you’ll wind up in jail

Fits the Rudester to a “T” if you ask me.

According to SongFacts.com: “(Livingstone’s) original recording was a portrait of social unrest amongst the youth in Kingston, Jamaica. ‘Rudy’ (or Rudi, Rude boy) is a Jamaican term for criminal juveniles…

“The Specials update was a comment on British disaffection in the late 1970s that led to the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent when a succession of strikes seriously disrupted everyday life.”

During the Winter of Discontent, “…workers throughout Britain went on strike. Poignant images of picketing gravediggers and heaping piles of garbage in the press contributed to an atmosphere of fiscal and political crisis. (Margaret) Thatcher and the Conservative Party made use of the strikes during their campaign,” which propelled The Iron Lady into #10 Downing Street in ’79.

Which makes sense, since “winter of our discontent,” as a line in a William Shakespeare play, is a purely British phrase. It’s the first line in “Richard III”: “Now is the winter of our discontent,” which King Richard says to express his feelings about living “…in the world that hates him.”

(Sounds like another person who was in power, someone served by Rudolph William Louis Giuliani. But I digress…)

Since then, authors, playwrights, musicians and smarty-pantses around the world have co-opted “winter of our discontent” to describe dark, harsh, loathsome time periods.

If The Bard were writing a history play about this period it, too, would be a tragedy, but one with a more positive outcome for the people of the United States, who continue to live through a winter of discontent that no Jamaican, Brit or bloke of any other nationality would ever want to experience.

Meanwhile, Rudy clearly is not a Jamaican juvenile – the hair dye’s a dead giveaway – but we’ll have to wait and see on the criminality part. He’s no Thatcher, either. Rudy as the “Iron Gentleman”? Ahhh… No. Certainly not as long as he insists on holding pressers in front of landscaping companies adjacent to naughty-thoughts-n-deeds shops. 

The writing’s on the porn store wall, as they like to say. (Many, many very smart people are saying it. Excellent people. The best people anyone’s ever seen.)

It’s time Rudy called it a day, lived to fight another day, rode off into the sunset… choose your cliché. As for his cohorts, they “…doth protest too much, methinks.”

Bye-bye, Rudy. Time for you to bail. “Else,” as the song says, “you’ll wind up in jail.”

Note: Dec. 9, 2020 – The day after this post was published, news media reported Giuliani had been infected with coronavirus. As of this writing, Rudy is calling radio talk shows from his hospital bed to continue spouting off anti-science malarkey about the virus and Covid-19. We wouldn’t wish death on anyone, so we’ll just say this – IV Words wishes wellness for Rudy Giuliani, but we still wish he would shut the fuck up and go away.

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Featured image by Mandel Ngan via Getty Images and Buzzfeed.

“A Message to You Rudy”
by Dandy Livingstone

Stop your messing around (ah-ah-ah)
Better think of your future (ah-ah-ah)
Time you straighten right out (ah-ah-ah)
Creating problems in town (ah-ah-ah)
Rudy

A message to you, Rudy
A message to you
Stop your fooling around (ah-ah-ah)
Time you straighten right out (ah-ah-ah)
Better think of your future (ah-ah-ah)
Else you’ll wind up in jail (ah-ah-ah)
Rudy

A message to you, Rudy
A message to you
Stop your messing around (ah-ah-ah)
Better think of your future (ah-ah-ah)
Time you straighten right out (ah-ah-ah)
Creating problems in town (ah-ah-ah)
Rudy

A message to you, Rudy
A message to you, Rudy
Oh, it’s a message to you, Rudy
Yeah, it’s a message to you, Rudy