RUDY'S "MOMMY"

You know what really leaps out at me in this New York magazine profile of Rudy Giuliani's wife? The part about food:

A former associate of Giuliani's from the days when he was a mob-busting federal prosecutor says, "... He absolutely adores her. He doesn't need the expensive Brioni suits she has him wear, or the fancy food she has him eat. He was a cheeseburger-and-martini guy. But Rudy defers to her."

...Before they were married, he indulged her desire to dine regularly at Le Cirque even though the heavy cuisine tended to make him queasy. "It was almost required daily, going to Le Cirque for dinner, and Rudy used to throw up afterward, because the food was so rich," says a witness. "But she wanted to go, because it was the place to be seen, and the treatment by Sirio [Maccioni, the owner] was incredible."

Wait a minute. This is the guy who's going to take terrorism and personally kick its ass -- but he can't tell his own bride-to-be that the food at her favorite restaurant is making him physically ill?

And she's a nurse, right? A steady diet of food that sickened him didn't strike her as a bad idea? Especially if (as I suspect) this was when he was undergoing treatment for cancer?

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Well, we'll see what the reaction to Judi G. is in the months to come, particularly on the right. But I wonder what right-wingers' reaction would be to a Democratic candidate who was in a marriage like this:

[A] friend added, "I think Rudy’s the one that's sabotaging her. He's out of control. There's too much hand-holding and kissing on the lips, behaving like a couple of 18-year-olds in their first love affair...."

... Today, she doesn't like to leave his side, her arm possessively around his waist at social gatherings such as a buffet dinner last July at Ronald Perelman's East Hampton estate, where I saw the two of them navigating the A-list crowd joined at the hip. Manhattan hostesses have long known that if they invite the Giulianis to dinner, they must be prepared to breach protocol by seating them not only at the same table but next to each other, and Rudy's standard lecture contract explicitly requires that his wife be placed beside him in case his appearance involves sitting through a meal.

A Democratic man in a marriage like this would probably be described as (I'll use the semi-polite form) "whipped" -- but maybe it's perfectly OK if you're in the GOP. Republicans worship Ronald Reagan, and don't care that he deferred to the astrologer consulted by his wife and called that wife "Mommy."