I find it interesting that the recent (and still very unresolved) case of a police shooting in New York has caused a mini-barrage of editorials against, well, Mayor Giuliani.

Here's El Diario:

...[O]ur city is scarred by the legacy of a former mayor, now running for president. In a series of ugly police incidents that resulted in the abuse or deaths of young African-American, Latino and Asian men, the rash statements of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani needlessly added insult to injury.

Normally, I wouldn't devote a blog post to editorializing by New York leftists, but it's not limited to local papers. This morning I was greeted by an attack on Giuliani by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Claude Lewis:

Many say the Bloomberg/Kelly administration is a dramatic improvement over the Rudy Giuliani days, when the former mayor often seemed to defend police shootings reflexively and waged a personal vendetta against crime in New York. Crime did decrease under Giuliani, but at the cost of some lives and liberty, as citizens complained of less freedom.

Who are the "many" who are said to complain about this vindictive man with a personal vendetta? I don't know, but according to the New York Post's Bob McManus, they include the "high decibel" activists Giuliani once dismissed:

While the [Amadou Diallo] shooting clearly had struck a chord in New York City, the fact is that the most vocal of the critics were demagogues whose high-decibel demands had once shaped city policy - but whom Giuliani had dismissed out of hand when he took office.

They never forgave him for that, Sharpton and Barron and the rest, nor will they ever. So just imagine their joy Monday when Bloomberg invited them back into the public dialogue.

In an editorial about "lessons learned," the Christian Science Monitor throws in references to Giuliani's marital difficulties -- and his "meltdown":

Most political analysts are applauding the city's response so far, but some say it's unfair to compare the way Mr. Giuliani and Bloomberg handled the two shootings. Giuliani, who defeated the city's first African-American mayor, had strained relations with the minority community from the start. In reforming the city's finances, he also took on its various interest groups, including those in the black community, according to political analyst Fred Siegel, author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life." Finally, the Diallo incident occurred at a time when the mayor's personal and marital problems had become regular public fodder.

"The Diallo affair comes at the beginning of Giuliani's personal meltdown," says Mr. Siegel. "This isn't a criticism of Bloomberg. I just don't think it's a fair comparison."

Ah, but might the jury have been motivated by a "personal vendetta" against crime?

One of the reasons I find this all so fascinating, is that the last couple of times I wrote about Giuliani, he was under attack from the right.

Oh the irony!