Sunday, November 25th, 2007...5:04 pm
Accessing My Inner Geek
Rudy Giuliani used a clever but not entirely accurate line against Fred Thompson, saying that Thompson played the role of Rudy Giuliani on television. This is the third or fourth time I have read about him saying this, and I feel I must use the platform of this blog to counter this Giuliani disinformation campaign.
The role that Fred Thompson plays is the District Attorney for New York County; Rudy Giuliani was the US Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan. Come on Rudy, everyone knows that.
The office of the role that Thompson played is currently, and through the run of the series was, occupied by Robert Morgenthau. Producers and fans of Law and Order will tell you that Adam Schiff, the beloved crotchity DA played by Steven Hill, was modeled on Morgenthau.
In an odd turn, Leslie Crocker Snyder, who like Giuliani’s ex-wife Donna Hannover, has played a judge on the program, ran against Morgenthau in the Democratic primary last year.
Giuliani has appeared on the program playing himself. But, there is also a reference to him in season one. There is a scene where Ben Stone, played by Michael Moriarty, threatens a defendant by saying he was going to call the publicity hungry Manhattan South US Attorney.
3 Comments
November 25th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
[…] Original post by Tedski […]
November 27th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Good post, but it is the Southern District of New York, not Manhattan.
All U.S. attorneys’ titles and federal district courts take state names (except, obviously, the Districts of theh District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).
The Southern District comprises the counties of Bronx, Dutchess, New York (Manhattan), Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Westchester and concurrently with the Eastern District, the waters within the Eastern District (the counties of Kings [Brooklyn]. Queens, Nassau and Suffolk).
November 27th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Morgenthau, incidentally, was the Democratic-Liberal candidate for Governor in 1962, when Nelson Rockefeller coasted to his second term. Time Magazine wrote an article about him and James Donovan, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate against Republican-Liberal Jacob Javits titled “The Curious Candidates.” Donovan spent most of the campaign in Havana on a diplomatic mission for the Kennedy administration (negotiating the release of Bay of Pigs prisoners) and Time said of Morgenthau: ” Every time he smiles it appears that he has fractured his face. ”
Look at that photo again!
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