If you read the whole thing there are some clues that possibly reconcile Sleeper’s book and Sleeper’s article.
It looks like Sleeper is a center-left liberal who was critical of the hard-left “root cause” based policies that wrecked NYC back in the Dinkin years. He predicted that Guiliani’s opposition to those policies would win him the mayoral election, which proved true, and then went on to write some positive things about Guiliani in the ensuing years (he had a column in one of the NYC papers at the time). No doubt this royally ticked off the NYC hard lefties who had to sit there and boil because he was correct.
Now Guiliani makes his statements about Obama and all the sudden Sleeper is vulnerable, or at least embarrassed. He has to find a way to distance himself from “his boy” Guiliani. So he writes an article in Salon calling Guiliani a sidewalk lunatic and explains that he knew Guiliani had these tendencies all along.
“SIdewalk Lunatic Power!!!....