Giuliani Scorches Scribe
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who once said he wanted the city to set a benchmark for civility, called a reporter a "jerk" and an "embarrassment" outside City Hall on Wednesday as a group of English school children looked on.
The mayor had been chatting with the children about the city's tourist attractions, when the reporter, who has a reputation as something of a gadfly, interrupted and asked whether new security measures at City Hall were similar to any the children had seen in London.
"Just don't pay any attention to him," the mayor told the children, who were about 11 years old. "We have embarrassments in America. He's one of them."
As the mayor walked away from the group of 30 children but still well within earshot of them he added, "Jerk." Some of the children seemed confused by the exchange; none of them said anything.
The remark comes days after Giuliani called the heavily armed federal agents who seized 6-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez to reunite him with his father "storm troopers." It also comes in the midst of a U.S. Senate race in which Giuliani's opponent, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, has questioned whether the frequently combative mayor has the proper temperament to serve in the senate.
Last year, the mayor ordered the city's 40,000 police officers to be more polite, and urged New Yorkers to be more civil to each other as well.
But Wednesday, the mayor apparently forgot himself.
The object of his ire, Rafael Martinez Alequin, publishes The Free Press, a sporadically issued tabloid that is highly critical of the Giuliani administration.
Though Alequin attends almost all of the mayor's daily press conferences, Giuliani sometimes refuses to answer his questions and says instead, "Let's have a question from a reporter with a deadline."
Wednesday's incident occurred as Giuliani walked about City Hall plaza on the first day that the city installed airport-style metal detectors there after a federal judge ordered the city to provide greater public access to the area.
After Giuliani walked through the X-ray device as a photo opportunity, he answered a few questions about the need for tight security at the building. The mayor closed off most public access in 1998 after suspects allegedly involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were placed in federal prison in Manhattan to await trial.
Visitors to the plaza are required to pass through the machines if they wish to stroll the bluestone plaza or take up-close pictures of historic City Hall.
Most visitors are still prohibited from City Hall's steps and from the building itself without a permit.