Charles Petzold

About 7 or 8 years ago, I was having dinner with a couple friends in EJ’s Luncheonette, a glorified diner on 73^rd Street and 3^rd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

In walks Mayor Rudy Giuliani with his daughter (maybe about 9 or 10 years old) and they sit down in a booth for dinner just like regular people.

Maybe in some smaller cities it’s common to be eating at the same restaurant as the Mayor, but it had never happened to me. The closest I ever came was attending some of the same tennis matches as David Dinkins.

Nobody except the waiter approached Giuliani’s table. But everyone I told the story to later indicated that they would have taken the unique opportunity to confront the man with some pointed opinions and character assessments. (At that time, Giuliani had not yet gained his superpowers by inhaling 9/11 dust, and he was often referred to with a compound epithet common for law enforcement personnel who do not have a positive influence on race relations.)

I now realize that the girl I saw was Giuliani’s daughter, Caroline, Harvard ‘11, who now apparently prefers to use the last name of her mother, Donna Hanover, the second of the former Mayor’s many wives.

Caroline made the news recently when it was revealed that her Facebook page had a link to Barack Obama’s campaign site. (As if that means anything.)