Your mama needs to reinsert the irony squiggly in your DNA. But congratulations: It's really hard to read that piece and take every single word seriously, but you done it. Another irony-immune blogger. You go dude.

Michael Powell

My “mama” would be thrilled to receive a shout-out from a New York Times reporter. Though, if she were healthy enough, she would assure you her son’s “irony squiggly” is firmly in place. She might even point you to some satire on her son’s site, and say, “See?” She might even explain, “But the thing is, Michael, he labels his satire as such, whereas you’ve written, as you seem to be saying, a highly ironic news article – whatever that is – which is neither labeled “news analysis” nor “op-ed” nor, for that matter, “satire.” My mama, again, if she were well enough, would probably think you’ve missed the point of my critique, or, instead, knowing exactly what was I getting at, that it struck a nerve, causing you to react defensively rather than to thoughtfully consider constructive criticism in a professional manner.

Ad hominen? A curious complaint given the shots you dished up. Buuuuuut lemme be very clear. As a native New Yorker, I'm fine with ad hominens all around. I was just cruising the web, saw your original blog, smiled and wrote a quick comment.

It's intriguing to read the interpretations--and yes, to my mind, misinterpretations--of my piece. I dig blogs, even when the bloggers are so ferociously caught up in their moment/politics/sense of righteousness that they miss the forest for the trees.

That said, I also freely/ fully/forever acknowledge that I've often had occasion to think: "Y'know, in retrospect I'd have worded something differently etc ... "
So, that throat clearing aside ... the NYT (as it true of most of the big papers) takes a layered cake approach to political coverage. For every major candidate we will do some investigative work, some bio/thematic, and some life on the trail pieces.

I will do work that falls into all three categories over the next few months. I covered this guy many moons ago, when I was city hall bureau chief for a different paper. And I wrote a much longer piece on him for the Washington Post back in, oh, 1999 or so. My coverage gave the man his due but was hardly adoring. Don't trust me, find the pieces on the web. Anyway, before launching into some longer pieces on Giuliani, I wanted to reacquaint myself with his campaign style.
What I found was a famously tempermental pol who was, so far with considerable success, keeping his bubbling id under wraps. As I would maintain is very clear from the lede, I am most certainly not suggesting that Rudy's snarl has been surgically removed, but merely put under wraps.

I know many people--not least a number of my fellow New Yorkers--who find this hard to believe. They tend to dismiss Giuliani because they remember the roiling roaring mayor and cannot imagine that a man such as this could become president.
They're wrong, to my mind. To the extent that he keeps this aspect of his nature under wraps, and showcases the rather more impressive side of his talents as a candidate, he becomes quite formidable. Speaking of formidable, his ego also is of copious size, as was clear -- again, I thought -- from the conclusion of the piece.
There are many people who read this piece and, to my mind, got precisely the bemused tone rather clearly. (We run pieces every day that adopt all sorts of tones, from deadly serious to ironic to light-hearted). There are also apparently a number of no doubt very smart (and lemme posit that I very much accept that your irony squiggly is in place)people who didn't read it that way. I would argue that this is, in part, because people see "Giuliani" and want to read an evisceration, or a deep dive into his views on torture, on civil liberties.

I understand that.

But there is a continium of coverage. The point here was to note this is a formidable pol and--based on his history as a candidate in 1993--don't count on him imploding.

Judge us over the course of the next eight months, and I feel very confident that you'll see a collection of pieces that add up to a complex whole.

Anyway, I've gone on too long. But I figure there is underneath the mutual ad hominens a more serious discussion waiting to happen ...

Best,

Michael

The dyspeptic, “not afraid to suggest his opponents have really deep-seated psychological problems” Republican mayor of fact and legend has taken a holiday. What’s left on the presidential campaign trail is a commanding daddy of a candidate, a disciplined fellow who talks about terrorism and fiscal order and about terrorism some more

[...]

If Hillary Rodham Clinton is the nurturer warrior and Barack Obama the college idealist and John McCain the tough but irreverent flyboy, then Mr. Giuliani is the father, the talk-tough-on-terror, I’m-comfortable-wielding-authority guy.

[...]

In dress, he plays to type. Other candidates go open-necked or pull flannel shirts out of the closet for New Hampshire.

Not the former mayor. He dresses in the one-size-too-large suits he has favored since his days as a federal prosecutor, with the top shirt button fastened and tie knotted tight. It is difficult to imagine anyone asking him a “really dopey” (two favorite Giuliani words now in abeyance) question about his favored style in underwear, as someone once did of Bill Clinton.

[...]

Mr. Giuliani laughs, he gestures expansively, he even pokes fun at his tendency to wax a wee bit authoritarian. (He suggests a touch of the cane was necessary to impose discipline on that liberal asylum known as New York.)

MATTHEWS: ... This Post story was huge down here today. It‘s at the top of the fold, like that Pat Healey piece was in the “New York Times” a few months back. Newspaper editors of major papers are deciding to put the Clinton story at the top of the paper. What is this about?

[...]

MATTHEWS: But is it a major front page news story at the top of the fold because of the politics involved or because it is a good gushy story?

Rudy Giuliani, usually no day at the beach, is smiling his way through the summer, grinning even when people ask him the worst possible questions on 9/11.