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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/5/2003 9:06 AM (GMT -6) |   | Mr. Schwarzenegger Gets a Pass
By KATHA POLLITT
Published: October 5, 2003
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California
Schwarzenegger, Arnold
Pollitt, Katha
Women
n Thursday, The Los Angeles Times published a 3,700-word front-page article in which six women accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of humiliating them with crude pawings and taunts. At the last minute, will the Barbarian be turned back at the gates? Don't bet on it.
For the charges to sway the recall at this late date, it will take more than the ad campaign being mounted by women's groups. Politicians and the press would have to treat the story as a major scandal with potentially devastating consequences for California, the nation, morality and Western civilization. One wonders what would happen if even a fraction of the energy expended on Bill Clinton's sex scandals was applied to Mr. Schwarzenegger.
Instead, reaction as been strangely subdued. Thursday night's "Hardball" was typical. Chris Matthews, who chose the curiously sweet, rather affectionate word "fondling" to describe Mr. Schwarzenegger's behavior, seemed mostly interested in getting Senator Dianne Feinstein to compare the actor's grotesqueries to Mr. Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. The senator was so intent on being statesmanlike that she didn't even point out that Ms. Lewinsky — unlike the the women in The Los Angeles Times article — volunteered herself.
At a campaign stop just after the story broke, Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante did point out that touching someone's private parts against his or her will is a crime of misdemeanor sexual battery. Unfortunately, he sounded about as animated as a traffic cop handing out a ticket. Republican women, so appalled by Mr. Clinton's infidelities, have rallied around their man. Even Susan Estrich, the Democratic feminist commentator, says The Los Angeles Times has gone overboard.
It's been that way with Mr. Schwarzenegger and the press from the start. Neanderthal, callous behavior with women? Hey, we were all young once! Boasting of pushing Kristanna Loken's head in a toilet bowl in "Terminator 3?" It was just a joke, man. The stories fail to build, because they're reported in a way that minimizes them. A crowd of bodybuilders piling on a single woman is described as "group sex"; 25-year-old accusations are chewed over while fresh ones are ignored; crudely sexist treatment of women is dismissed as normal for movie stars, and therefore irrelevant to Mr. Schwarzenegger's political career — even though his celebrity is the basis of his political career. Or maybe the story just doesn't get picked up: The Wall Street Journal wonders why no one has made anything of the curious fact that the candidate hired a consultant whose two former wives testified that he beat them.
What's going on here? If Arnold Schwarzenegger were a Democrat, the right-wing news media — the tabloids, the shock jocks, the Bill O'Reillys and the Rush Limbaughs — would have sent him back to Austria long ago. (If he were a woman, needless to say, he could never have gotten into politics in the first place.) But the so-called liberal (actually centrist) news media is either too squeamish to paint Mr. Schwarzenegger's behavior in all its glory or too blasé and faux hip to care.
Why is it so hard for commentators to come right out and say: here is a man who seems to have a long history of contempt for women, who uses his celebrity to get away with sexual humiliation — why does he belong in public life? Would that sound too square, too P.C., too, um, feminist? From the newsstand crammed with leering lad magazines like Maxim to all-male, all-the-time talk radio to the self-congratulatory misogyny of "The Man Show," aggressive male chauvinism is back in style, and Mr. Schwarzenegger is its standard-bearer.
What's next, Howard Stern for mayor of Los Angeles? After Tuesday, that might not sound so funny.
Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/5/2003 6:46 PM (GMT -6) | | IF they are being soft on Arnold I am glad. I find it a non-issue, particularly considering it all happened so long ago. What person was not wild in their younger days.
But I do not know WHERE the Nation is published, but here in California, it certainly isn't true that Arnold is getting this PASS... | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/5/2003 6:51 PM (GMT -6) | | Quite a few of the stories are not from that long-ago...
And they reflect a general willingness to abuse his celebrity at the expense of females...
Besides the dudes pro-choice and pro-gay?????
Take your pick Honor-dude, which is more important social conservativism or economic conservativism?
dlw | | Back to Top | | |
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Paul5388
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 295
| Posted 10/6/2003 1:17 PM (GMT -6) | | DLW,
How about some religious conservativism that would convert into some social/economic/moral conservativism?
When the church has the same divorce rate as the rest of the world, why wouldn't we start with the church? The light is dim and the salt is flat. | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/6/2003 2:09 PM (GMT -6) | | | The governer really has no real social power...at least not in our state... | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/6/2003 4:28 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Paul5388
DLW,
How about some religious conservativism that would convert into some social/economic/moral conservativism?
When the church has the same divorce rate as the rest of the world, why wouldn't we start with the church? The light is dim and the salt is flat.
no compreno...
economic duress does contribute to a higher likelihood of divorce and many economic conservatives pressed for the no-fault divorce laws that made divorce so easy and quite a few of them took advantage of them to in their middle-age divorce their wife and marry a younger sweet thing...
Economic conservatives are often libertarians at heart. If you want to stay Republican, fine. But bear in mind the bigger picture that unless you are willing to think/act strategically, economic conservative libertarians will take even more control over the Republican party...
dlw
dlw | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/7/2003 12:11 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Like anyone's got the time or the patience to research every single candidate's position on every single issue.....
We got lots of time for lots of things, people just are not encouraged about the importance of trying to follow politics better. If we spent a tenth of the time we spend on sports following politics, it would make a difference.
quote:
The bottom line is that no politician is truly trustworthy. Nothing they promise while they run is really guaranteed to happen after they're elected.
The Bottom line is that so long as everyone is cynical and unwilling to spend the time following up on how they conduct themselves, politicians have far less incentive to try to hold to the promises they make. Besides, election promises are usually signals of priorities. There are far too many contingencies associated with the political process for them not to have to compromise in some ways when elected. Of course, conceivably they should be able to also do better than they promised initially.
quote:
I'll stick to the only issue I'm really concerned about - preventing the murder of unborn babies. (Of course, no politician's promises can be trusted in regards to this issue either, so why bother voting at all? I guess I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.)
Well, even there you need to consider whether or not the politician actually has any sway over abortion and how likely they are to use it. I can see a pro-lifer maybe voting for RReagan in 1980, but in 1984 when he had done nothing wrt preventing abortions there was no really good reason to vote for him, that is if they weren't nitwits...
and this doesn't excuse us from reconsidering what political strategy can be used... There also are other issues on which human lifes hang in balance, but we don't need to consider those as well.
 dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/7/2003 8:47 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tigress: I totally understand where you are coming from. It is easy for those who are single to chastise others for no keeping up with the issues (as if that is our WHOLE lives). Try as we may many of us fall behind on such things. Given that we are limited we each do our best...but one can never be totally versed in everything. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/8/2003 5:25 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Tigress
Honorman,
Hey, I'm single too. I just choose to devote my energies to endeavors that are more important to me.
DLW,
As I've said, time and again, I don't believe God expects us to spend a majority of our time on politics. I believe He wants us to spread the Gospel, not change the world through secular means, like politics. Therefore, I'm exempt from your judgement.
Ah, but we play roles in politics willy-nilly, the question is whether we are going to do so well or not. Try hanging out with some non-Christians, you will find that how we conduct ourselfs in politics is in fact a form of collective witness that can either breadk down barriers to sharing about the Gospel or put some up.
Our political leaders, like Pat Robertson and George Bush are all that much of the world sees about "evangelicalism" so we should be willing to give more time to following their politics and holding them accountable for their actions, like Robertson's endorsement of Ahnold...
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/8/2003 5:30 AM (GMT -6) | | | My point was simply that each of us needs to give time priority to what they think is important and though we should each exhort others in what we think is important that doesn't mean it will be important to them. | | Back to Top | | |
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