The City Politic

The Sounds of Silence

I was in Rochester following Mrs. Clinton around on the day Wayne Barrett's story came out in The Village Voice about Giuliani's fund-raising letter decrying her "hostility" to religious tradition. Her aides called a press conference at the hotel that morning. When she appeared, she was clearly quaking with rage. Oh, boy, I thought. Here it finally comes. When she started talking, though, the language was lifeless. No personal testimony about her religious convictions, which are real; nothing that could remotely offend anyone. People who want to support her keep thinking, well, when such-and-such happens, she'll come out of her shell. But then such-and-such happens, and still she's on autopilot.

There's an upside to offending some people, which is that when you actually take a stand and say something that ruffles feathers, other people will feel compelled to rally to your defense. Race, and the mayor's record on it, would seem to offer ample opportunity to do exactly that. One suspects there are many voters who would like to hear Hillary say, with whatever qualifiers she likes, that people have good reason to be angry when an unarmed black man is killed for standing outside his house, and that the mayor has done nothing to show any sympathy for that anger. The chant "Fuck Giuliani," which I heard as I approached the corner of Boynton and Watson Avenues last Wednesday night in the Bronx after the Malcolm Ferguson shooting, may be just rage. But while chanting on a street corner is something powerless people do, turning rage into political action is something leaders are supposed to do. Tragedies can be exploited to good ends, too, even by politicians.

E-mail: tomasky@aol.com