Globe and Mail: "Tribeca is the Rudy Giuliani of Film Festivals"

In the Toronto Globe and Mail today, Simon Houpt articulates something no American columnist would dare. Watching Tribeca Film Festival co-producer Jane Ronsenthal as she "looked mournfully out at the assembled reporters and evoked, for perhaps the thousandth time in her life, those dark days after the twin towers fell," he finally gets fed up and says, "Tribeca is the Rudy Giuliani of film festivals, reflexively and shamelessly trotting out the attacks to bolster its claims of legitimacy." Houpt says he doesn't blame Ronsenthal, as she "is merely embodying a long-standing if rarely acknowledged character trait of the city: self-styled victimhood." We would only remind Houpt that, in the case of 9/11itis, most of our victimizing has actually been vicarious and cynical, performed by Republican outlanders who hate our guts for electoral gain, and our actual, homegrown self-styled victimhood is usually pluckier and funnier than the maudlin ash-stirring Houpt notices. Also, Rosenthal's effusion was probably genuine and brief; if he wants to see real 9/11 kitsch, he should wait until Giuliani runs for governor. Photo via Felber's Frolics.