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Newsday February 20, 2002 LAST WEDNESDAY, as protocol dictates, "bowing from the head, not the waist" to Queen Elizabeth, "Sir" Rudy Giuliani joined Billy Graham, Steven Spielberg, IBM's Lou Gerstner, Ronald Reagan, Norman Schwarzkopf and other knightly relics of the British attempt to persuade Washington that the "special" relationship between the two countries means something more than Tony Blair's doing what he's told - sometimes even before he's asked. However, as "Sir" Rudy received his gong (medal) from the British queen, he had more relevant role models as an "honorary" Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. For example, one other previous honorary knight was Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, who was honored for buying British even as he drove his people to poverty and desperation. Ceaucescu didn't like term limits either, and he also tried to hang on to office, until the crowds in Bucharest eliminated him. The Queen has also knighted President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and British newspapers pointed out that even if he thus became an ersatz aristocrat, his primary avocation was as a kleptocrat who had become one of the richest people in the world by selling off his country's oilfields and pocketing the proceeds. But since British companies were among those who wanted to buy them, her majesty overlooked this peccadillo. "Sir" Nursultan could provide a few other pointers for Sir Rudy, following the latter's attempts to extend his term by hook or by crook last November. The Kazakh parliament passed a law granting the "First President" total immunity from prosecution and subpoenas if he were ever to break the dictatorial mold and retire. Something similar may be useful if ever there is any fallout from the last minute stadium deals or the lifting of all the mayor's records in the last days of Giuliani's term. British Airways, which has just announced 5,800 firings, flew Sir Rudy to meet the oceanliner QE2 on the snobby but noisy Concorde. Sir Rudy reciprocated by going to a banquet arranged by Sir Richard Branson, proprietor of bitter rival Virgin Atlantic. He also did the Churchillian tour, visiting the British leader's wartime bunker, and relishing the somewhat forced comparisons between himself - for so bravely facing the world's TV cameras - and the prime minister who had faced the Nazi bombers. His hosts chivalrously forbore to point out that Sir Winston had had the good sense to put his bunker underground rather than on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center. The new knight's love affair with things British must also have been a surprise to the Brooklyn Museum, whose funding he threatened because they mounted an exhibition of British artists whose work he did not like: He claimed it was anti-Catholic. Perhaps someone should have told him as he was bowing his head to Queen Elizabeth that she and her offspring have by law been banned from being Catholics or marrying one. In olden times, knights were supposed to be chivalrous: they were chaste, humble and protected the weak. You could be forgiven if you don't think central casting would have sent Giuliani around to audition for the part. After all, neither canon lawn or the medieval ideal of knighthood included separating from your wife at a news conference without telling her, did it? On the other hand, Henry VIII, the founder of the modern British monarchy, wasn't one for listening to the pope either. He divorced and beheaded his way through six wives. And as for defending the weak: Did Sir Rudy ever ride to the rescue for any victim of NYPD brutality? For instance, Patrick Dorismond, whose juvenile records the white knight and mayor unsealed so that he could somehow justify summary execution on the street? Knighthood is not enough for Sir Rudy. Anyone who follows British politics can see that a control freak so prissily opinionated, so much a manipulator of information, has a natural calling as a new Labor peer in the soon to be reformed House of Lords. If the Queen and the government like him so much, he'd be sure to get a British passport quickly. All hail Lord Rudy of Flatbush! And it may divert his nakedly palpable presidential ambitions and save the United States and the world from his meanspirited and unchivalrous politics as well. Then perhaps we could banish his baneful influence from New York totally, except perhaps to allow him to record one of those inanely annoying messages from minor celebs (another Giuliani legacy) that make it impossible to tell a yellow cab driver your destination. As he tells us to buckle up, we can tell him to belt up - with feeling. Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc. "If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."
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