Excerpts from NY Times with connecting text which I provided: "On-Air Mayor Gives New York an Earful ... [actual] ... excerpts from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's weekly radio program, "Live From City Hall," on WABC-AM (770)... July 23, [ in reply to a caller who adores ferrets]: "You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I am being honest with you. This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. I'm sorry, that's my opinion. You should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist with this excessive concern -- how you are devoting your life to weasels. There are people in this city and in this world that need a lot of help. Something has gone wrong with you." [This was followed by a tax cut quote referring to some people as "slobbering" and including his own comment that at his age he can't change, why he wants a stadium in Brooklyn (also with nasty comments such as "Call him and tell him to get his head examined."), a bit on housing the homeless including "There are several subterranean plots that are going on here ... you've got some advocates that don't want to solve the homeless problem. Because now they wouldn't be advocates anymore." (Naw, they'd be successes and isn't that a terrible thing to be?), etc.] [From the related article by Abby Goodnough comes:] "If there's anything callers to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's weekly radio program should know before dialing, it's this: Be careful what you ask. [IN response to a caller upset about the shooting of Diallo:] "Either you don't read the newspapers carefully enough or you're so prejudiced and biased that you block out the truth." [To another caller:] "Isn't there something more important that you want to ask me?" And when David in Oceanside called last month to complain about the ban on pet ferrets, the Mayor of New York City leaned into his microphone and intoned, "There is something deranged about you." A three-minute diatribe against the ferret advocate ensued... "He has made the radio show into an opportunity to give morality lessons and ideological sermonettes," said Mitchell Moss, who directs the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University... [*****] With 75,000 listeners per program, "Live From City Hall" ... can be heard as far away as Albany ... [and] is the city's second-most-popular AM radio show in its time slot, said Phil Boyce, the program director at WABC.[*****] ... ------------- I left in some of the other things (Bill, you may remove if you think appropriate.) to give a feel for this ferret foe and his tone in case that helps others here who are working to try to improve things in NY or to protect other areas which he might harm have a stronger grasp on which possible directions might be most effective. As you can see, rather than admit when he's goofed or been given poor info he tends to become very defensive and to attack over and over, so any references to him working from incomplete data have to take that into account and be cushioned. Sad, and certainly not what I'd want in someone in representing me, but sure seems to be the norm for him so far. Hasn't anyone ever told him that people CAN continue to grow through life IF they choose to do so? Hey, UPSTATE and LONG ISLAND, and TRI-STATE, what is this obviously uninformed (certainly about ferrets and his info there is KNOWN to be so horrid that one has to wonder all the more about other issues), but "not about to change" individual doing to damage your position? If he gets in the Senate what will someone with such nastiness try to do the country? Do you folks realize that he said years ago that he'd love to be president? Funny that he proclaims himself to be supposedly be devoted to his dog but can't understand others' love of another species. Question: is his devotion to the dog false or is he just that narrow-minded and uninformed? Okay, I'm angry with him. He's a very smart individual, but when he gets on one course he puts on blinders and can't see reality because he doesn't LET himself see it. Since it doesn't have to be like this if he could only tackle that tendency and look at facts, even admitting when he goofs if he can progress that far, I get frustrated. It's a waste of a brain and it's self-imposed, plus, it's hurting marvelous companions completely needlessly. [Posted in FML issue 2780]