It is difficult
to shock New Yorkers, yet Rudy Giuliani teetered close to
the line when he sauntered onto a stage while wearing a
platinum-blond wig, a face full of makeup, dainty
white gloves, and a frilly pink gown filled out in all
the right places. His appearance at an annual political
roast was exactly 10 years ago, and at the time, the idea of
the tough-talking mayor in a busty ball gown raised
eyebrows but was mostly accepted as a good joke
adhering to an unwritten rule for the shenanigans that
take place at the roast, known as the Inner Circle dinner.
Shortly after
winning reelection that year, Giuliani took his feminine
side to a national audience. While hosting TV show
Saturday Night Live, he appeared in one skit as a
bosomy, gray-haired Italian grandmother in lipstick and a
flowered housedress, with stockings pulled halfway up
his calves.
Now that Giuliani
is running for the Republican presidential nomination,
experts and political observers are wondering whether those
well-photographed and widely documented performances,
among others, could damage his campaign. Some say
conservatives won't get the joke and will be turned
off by what they see as yet another peek at Giuliani's
exotic, big-city liberal side.
Political
observers say many voters associate a macho demeanor with
Giuliani's post-September 11 image as a strong
national leader in a time of crisis, an image that
could lose its power if dressed in stockings and
dancing the cancan. Yes, there was another year when he wore
fishnets and did high kicks with Radio City Music
Hall's Rockettes.
"People think of
him as a leader and a tough guy, and he has this image
as somebody who tamed the city of New York and made the
trains run on time, and seeing him dressed up like a
girl would run contrary to all of those things," said
political science professor Neal Thigpen of Francis
Marion University in South Carolina.
South Carolina
has one of the nation's earliest presidential primaries
next year, and as the first Southern contest, it could set
the stage for the region.
With conservative
voters largely dominating presidential primaries, some
experts say the footage of Giuliani cavorting about in
women's wear could significantly damage his chances
there and throughout the South. The images are already
showing up on the Internet, including a mock campaign
commercial on the popular video trading site YouTube.
"You get out in
more sophisticated places of the country, where they
know Giuliani and they like him and they know about some of
his antics, [and there] it's not going to be any
surprise, but down here where they've never seen that
kind of thing, it could do him some damage," Thigpen
said.
But others say
the gender-bending gags won't matter. In Nevada, another
state with an early caucus, Republicans would be unfazed by
the image of Giuliani in women's clothing, said Heidi
Smith, chairwoman of the Republican Party in Washoe
County.
Giuliani
impressed Reno citizens in a campaign appearance there last
month that included a trip to Costco during which he mingled
with shoppers, posing for photographs and signing
autographs. "That meant more than seeing him in drag,"
Smith said. "If he wants to wear a dress, who cares?"
Giuliani's first
drag appearance, in 1997, featured a breathy Marilyn
Monroe impression that was followed by various other female
alter egos over the years, including one that shared a
scene with Donald Trump, who groped Giuliani and
buried his head between the mayoral breasts. His other
Inner Circle characters included a 1950s greaser on a
motorcycle, the Lion King, and the beast from
Beauty and the Beast.
His most famous
appearance from 10 years ago is likely to be remembered
this weekend when Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets into costume
to dance and sing for the same charity event, as New
York mayors have done for decades. David Dinkins once
donned full cowboy regalia and entered the ballroom on
a horse; Ed Koch wore a suit of glittering gold; and
Bloomberg has ridden a mule and pretended to smoke pot.
In 1997 the New
York media had fun for a few days with Giuliani's first
cross-dressing experiment. The Village Voice printed a favorable review by
real drag queens, but it didn't appear to hurt him
politically.
A poll shortly
afterward found his approval rating at an all-time high of
67%, and a majority of city voters said they enjoyed the
gag. He won reelection later that year.
Perhaps New
Yorkers, who are Democrats by a margin of 5 to 1,
appreciated one particular line during the 1997 show,
which was a spoof of the musical comedy
Victor/Victoria, in which a woman pretends to
be a man pretending to be a woman.
"I already play a
Republican playing a Democrat playing a Republican,"
Giuliani quipped.
For conservatives
who already are leery of backing Giuliani because of
his support for abortion rights and other positions on
social issues, the feminine clothing may also remind
them of his support of gays while mayor, despite the
fact that the majority of cross-dressers are not gay.
Still, a
poison-pen mailer or e-mail could easily imply a connection,
observers say. "I'm imagining the negative ads they could
use this as sort of an oblique reference to all of
those positions," said Clemson University political
scientist Dave Woodard.
Southern Baptist
Convention official Richard Land said gay issues
represent just one area of the problems religious
conservatives have with Giuliani. "There are so many
deal breakers for Giuliani, it's difficult to know
where to start," he said.
Throughout his
eight years in City Hall, Giuliani supported laws that
protected gays against harassment, marched in gay pride
parades, welcomed the Olympic-style Gay Games to New
York City and, after his second marriage broke up,
lived with two friends who happened to be a gay
couple.
He does not
support same-sex marriage, but he does not see the need to
ban it with a constitutional amendment. And in a 1994 cover
story with The Advocate he condemned Pat Buchanan's
speech at the Republican National Convention two years
earlier, during which the failed presidential
candidate declared a "cultural war" against
homosexuality, radical feminists, abortion rights
supporters, and other "liberals."
The speech,
Giuliani said, "tried to narrow rather than to broaden
the Republican Party. There is no reason why the party
shouldn't appeal to gays and lesbians in the same way
it does to all Americans."
Over the years
Giuliani's relationship with gays has not been exactly
cozy: He was often heckled while marching in the city's
annual gay pride parade.
Asked this month
about his theatrical past, Giuliani told Fox News that
it shows voters another side of him. "I think what they'll
find out about me is I enjoy having fun. I mean, I
really enjoy those Inner Circles. I made them fun, and
I enjoyed them," he said. "And so you're going to get
a couple of things people can interpret different
ways, I guess." (Sara Kugler, AP)
