r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/timothymr 12h ago

There's a funny line in "Oh Hello! On Broadway" where they mention Rudy Giuliani.

"He truly was the hero of 9/11 because no one else was Mayor that day!"

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u/Channel250 12h ago

That was such a good show they put on.

How old are you?

14

14!? Did you get any of this!?

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u/timothymr 11h ago

I had no idea about Oh Hello before I watched it, I only knew I liked John Mulaney's stand up and so went in blind. Such a weird show but so so funny.

"Would you go to every pizza place in New York and bring me the most sun-faded head shot of Danny Aiello?"

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u/Channel250 7h ago

"For all our friends in the corner who can't see the prop, you're really missing out. Bet you won't be so cheap next time motherfuckers!"

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u/needmoredoggos 6h ago

I also went in blind to Oh Hello, knowing nothing other than my friend liked it. About 20 minutes in I thought to myself “did I accidentally get too high, because wtf is happening.” I hadn’t laughed that hard in ages!

My husband and I quote it almost daily.

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u/scientist_tz 5h ago

We were familiar with the characters but didn't really know how it was going to translate into an entire show on stage.

At the beginning of the show (Chicago, Atheneum theater, near where Mulaney grew up) they were yelling at the audience "You bought these tickets having no fucking idea what it was going to be, didn't you?"

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u/PeaceSoft 5h ago

lmao i'll always remember "The Best of Screaming About Israel"

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u/LolforInitiative 2h ago

Ohhhhh hellooo, that’s who you are!

My partner and I love Oh Hello so much, we watch it annually lol

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u/CaptainAwesome06 9h ago

I always felt this about Rudy and GWB after 9/11, You had to have been a complete moron to botch a post-9/11 feel-good 'Murrican rally. GWB surely botched it by invading Iraq. Rudy did, as well, but it took him a little longer.

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u/ukezi 6h ago

Depends. The hawks apparently had a plan, inside a few years they wanted to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran in that order. They used 9/11 to justify it.

They did the first two and then figured out that holding those places is a lot harder then just killing the current government. And now see where we are.

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u/CaptainAwesome06 6h ago

Pretty dumb plan when one of the places you planned on keeping is famously nicknamed The Graveyard of Empires.

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u/ukezi 5h ago

I think they didn't really want to keep it, just use it as a staging ground to take Iran.

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u/CaptainAwesome06 5h ago

I didn't mean to imply they meant to keep it permanently. The GOP wouldn't want that many more brown people as part of the US.

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u/ukezi 4h ago

There are still the unincorporated territories, the people of American Samoa aren't even citizen.

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u/CaptainAwesome06 4h ago

I didn't mention citizenship.

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u/unassumingdink 7h ago

It was so creepy and scary how people who hated Bush and Rudy suddenly liked them overnight because they read off a couple of speeches during a difficult time. I had always known it was easy to manipulate a lot of people, I just didn't realize it was fucking 90% of people.

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u/SparkyMuffin 6h ago

Didn't help that being against them in the wake of 9/11 meant you were a "terrorist sympathizer"

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u/M_H_M_F 9h ago

"Giulani, Giulani, Giulani, Fuck you"

Agnostic Front 1999

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u/Linenoise77 8h ago

As a NYer on the ground that day, let me put it in perspective.

That day was a lot of people running around not knowing what to do, who was in charge, what was going on, etc. Guliani put a face on it as a New Yorker was in control and calling the shots, and if you are a New Yorker, that is a comforting thing. For all of our arrogance, we know how to get shit done when it needs to be. Also if you were around for the 80s ad early 90s of NYC, the transformation under Guliani (we can debate how much was due specifically to him, what policies of his were wrong, both morally and long term, etc) but the fact remains, this was the guy in "in charge" of NYC during that transformation, so even if you didn't like him or his methods, it was hard to look at him as someone who couldn't get shit done.

And NYC as liberal and progressive as it likes to be, also has a breaking point, where the city will collectively turn its head and go, "Well, what are you going to do, FAFO" while some heads get busted or what have you to get shit back on the tracks.

Had Guliani just done the speaking circuit, maybe popped up on tv shows from time to time, etc, he would likely still be thought of as one of NYC's great mayors, probably have a bridge or major building named after him by now, a statue or two, etc. It doesn't mean the city wouldn't still question a lot of what he did, and that he wouldn't have detractors, but NYC loves nothing more than putting itself up on a pedestal as getting shit done, and Giuliani would have served as the embodiment of that.

When he ran for president in 2008, he was actually pretty progressive in some of his positions, and there was concern that his stances on abortion, gay rights, and gun control wouldn't go over well in flyover, so he did very limiting campaigning in the early flyover states, and banked his campaign on the coastal states and super tuesday. Except that he had some baggage with the Iraq war, people started pointing out uncomfortable issues with policing tactics during his terms (that everyone was aware of, some personal stuff, etc, but turned their head, because, you know, its NYC, we look the other way as a matter of fact, to a point, and then FAFO), and got his clock cleaned in the election as a result.

And then i think he just snapped. He had tarnished his reputation at that point, at least in what people would say in polite company, and he then decided to attach himself to whatever would give him some semblance of power and relevancy. Some of it may have been to cover his own ass, for sure.

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u/soul_separately_recs 6h ago

I would think you could scale up and apply this to the POTUS. It’s hard to imagine Gore doing anything drastically different than W. at the time. It’s just that W. was the POTUS and the rest was…

To be clear, I am only referring to Sept 11. Not the 12th, 13th and the following weeks & months

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u/Sly_Wood 9h ago

I read he had a hand in communications where his decisions effectively hurt recovery efforts and people died as a result.

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u/ManyAreMyNames 5h ago

"He truly was the hero of 9/11 because no one else was Mayor that day!"

That's not quite it, I don't think. He was the hero of 9/11 because he stood in loco parentis for George W. Bush, who was completely useless.

People wanted someone to look like they were managing the store, and that was Rudy, because W was hiding in bunker somewhere waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

But then Rudy attached himself to Trump, and ended up like everyone who thinks associating with Trump might benefit them: a reviled laughingstock.

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 1h ago

That's true. All he had to do was show up, walk around, and hug a few people. Did he really do anything beyond that you could say made a distinct contribution to the events following?