Harassed by
Schwarzenegger for sex?
by Jackson Thoreau
Arnold Schwarzenegger, family man who remains loyal to his four kids and Kennedy-clan wife.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican hypocrite and woman chaser who gives
Bob Packwood
and Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and JFK a run for their money.
I choose the latter depiction. Or perhaps one in the middle, but closer to the latter description.
It’s not just the stories of an alleged Schwarzenegger extramarital affair
published by the New York Post,
National Enquirer and other media that appeared to have caused him to drop
out of the 2002 California governor’s race.
It’s also an anecdote I was recently told by a source. A woman - a family
member of this source - worked behind
the scenes on a weekend shoot in one of Schwarzenegger’s movie’s years
ago. He harassed this woman for two days
about having sex with him in his movie trailer, my source says.
She tried to politely say no, but Schwarzenegger kept persisting, insisting
she come to his trailer during a break.
The woman tried to joke it off, saying at one point, "But Arnold, what
about Maria?" He laughed and said,
"My driver is very discreet."
At the same time, Schwarzenegger also made inappropriate comments to the
younger wardrobe girl,
commenting about her behind when she bent over to pick up something, my
source says.
After the first woman had not completed the trailer rendezvous by the end
of the weekend, Schwarzenegger
drove by her in his car. With his bodyguards around him, Robot Man shouted
her name and yelled,
"I can’t believe you pussied out on me!"
So why should I believe this source? For one thing, my source was told
the story years ago, so it has nothing
to do with Schwarzenegger’s sudden candidacy for governor. For another,
this is not the only such story floating
around out there about Robot Man [another story concerns a carrot and a
woman from Brazil]. And finally,
"pussied out?" Doesn’t that just sound like something the man who made
"pump up" a catch phrase would say?
I’m not going to reveal my source or name names. The woman involved doesn’t
deserve to be harassed over this.
I really don’t think keeping her name out of it makes the story less believable.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Right, Kenneth Starr?
And what goes ‘round comes ‘round. Right, Packwood, Gingrich, Henry Hyde,
Bob Barr, Joe Scarborough,
Name Your Favorite Republican Hypocritical Marital Cheater?
So why should I care if the Republican candidate for governor of California
is a hypocritical adulterer?
Isn’t that only the business of Schwarzenegger and Maria and God, as we
Clinton defenders said during the
Monica days? Man, how I long for those good ol’ days, when most of us had
good-paying jobs and 401Ks
that rose in value and no fear of a nuclear war and our most pressing problem,
according to much of our media,
was whether Clinton lied about getting a blow job.
If Schwarzenegger wasn’t hypocritically campaigning as a good family man,
taking Maria and the kids with him
on campaign stops, I might give him a break. If he was running for mayor
of Brentwood, not the most populous
U.S. state with the most electoral votes in the life-and-death 2004 presidential
race in which we HAVE to kick
Bush out of the White House, I might cut him some slack.
If we knew something about what Schwarzenegger might do as California governor,
I might back off.
If Schwarzenegger would – or could – tell us his vision for the state or
speak about exactly how he will
solve California’s earthquake-sized budget woes, I might stop writing right
here.
If Bush racketeer Rove hadn’t cynically and secretly engineered this recall
after their guy, Richard Riordan,
lost in 2002, I might keep my nose in Texas. You really think arch-conservative
Rep. Darrell Issa wanted to
drop out of this race after spending $2 million of his own bucks to get
the damn recall election?
You really think Riordan just decided on his own not to run, especially
after Schwarzenegger burned him by giving
him indications he might not run and lied about how they both supposedly
worked together to maintain suspense?
You really think people like former Gov. Pete Wilson just happen to become
this political neophyte’s campaign co-chairman?
For more on this White House link to the recall campaign and Schwarzenegger’s
entry, Click
Here and Click
Here.
Read the article on recall proponents and representatives of potential
Republican candidates meeting at the Los Angeles
office of Gerry Parsky, Bush’s top California adviser, to discuss the effort
[Associated Press, July 30, 2003]. Read about
Bush’s endorsement of Schwarzenegger [San Jose Mercury News, August
8, 2003] and Laura Bush’s press secretary,
Noelia Rodriguez, helping Riordan assemble a possible campaign team [Los
Angeles Times, July 31, 2003].
Bush and Rove are lying again when they say they have nothing to do with
the California recall. Just like they are lying
about having no involvement with the plan to redistrict Congress in Texas
to gain more Republican seats there – Rove has
even met with Republicans in Texas about it - after they were heavily involved
in the Colorado Republican redistricting
power grab earlier this year. I don’t believe one damn thing a Bush administration
official says. They just care about
increasing their own partisan political power and couldn’t care less about
most Americans, except when they want
their votes. But these power grabs can backfire – New Mexico Democrats
are among those discussing redistricting
power plays of their own.
Add to all that how many in the mainstream media are already comparing
Schwarzenegger to that other Hollywood
actor who became California governor and a nightmare of a president, and
we have to stop this guy - now.
Back in the 1960s, if some media types had slammed Reagan with all those
stories of extramarital affairs that were
swirling around then, perhaps we would not have come so close to nuclear
Armageddon in the 1980s. Perhaps we
would still have federal grants helping to pay for middle-class students’
college costs. Perhaps we wouldn’t be paying
for a bloated military that plays policeman all over the world and wouldn’t
have such an astronomically high federal debt.
Perhaps we wouldn’t have as many as 71 million Americans without health
insurance [talk about a crisis – what are the
so-called "compassionate conservatives" doing about that besides taking
more bribes from big insurance companies and
healthcare lobbyists?]. Perhaps we wouldn’t have to suffer through an airport
named after Reagan and idiotic talk about
putting his mug on Mount Rushmore.
But most reporters steered clear of politicians’ private affairs back then.
They also cared more about what average
Americans really thought. Still, I wish some reporters would have
risked their public personas and jobs and exposed
the affairs of Reagan back then. I would have – had I been older than grade-school
age.
Even after what Republicans did to Clinton in these tell-all days, many
people – even Democrats whose party is on thin ice
these days – have advised me to lay off the reporting on Republicans’ sex
lives. As if reporting on those affairs and abortions
and other hypocritical acts somehow debase me. Perhaps in a way, they do,
but I don’t give a damn. If my mud-slinging helps
some Republicans fall on their swords, people can call me whatever
the hell they want. Unlike many conservatives, I can
take the hits as much as I dish them out.
I’m merely the messenger, pointing out how hypocritical those Republicans
and the mainstream media were to continually
publicize Clinton’s affairs and Condit’s affairs while downplaying or ignoring
Hyde’s and Scarborough’s. In this sex-crazed
environment, I’m trying to provide some balance, something few are doing
on this issue. I’m trying to show that Republicans
have extramarital affairs about as often as Democrats.
You think that’s obvious? Think again. Why do so many people and comedians
like Jay Leno still joke about Clinton’s affairs?
Why don’t they still tell jokes about the affairs of the former Republican
Senator Packwood, who had at least 29 women
– mostly Senate and campaign employees - accuse him of sexual harassment
and in some cases assault? Packwood makes
Clinton look like a marital saint, yet Leno and others still act like Clinton
is the only politician out there who has ever chased
a woman who was not his wife.
Why don’t they target Gingrich and Hyde and Bush and Reagan and, yes, Schwarzenegger?
Because thanks to the
conservatively-owned mainstream media, most people instantly equate Democrats
with affairs more than Republicans.
And when they get in the voting booth, that image affects Democrats negatively.
As much as many Democrats want this
issue to just go away, it’s not going to until they start fighting fire
with fire.
Hey, you ask, can’t we just hit Schwarzenegger with the issue-driven story
that he voted for a 1994 ballot measure to
deny social services to illegal immigrants? Voters approved the GOP-backed
Proposition 187, but some wiser judges
rightly ruled the callous measure unconstitutional.
Surely Schwarzenegger will lose votes among Hispanics if that continues
to receive wide publicity. And it can’t help
that Pete Wilson, the architect of Proposition 187, leads Schwarzenegger’s
campaign.
You and I might care, but the average voter who mostly gets news from the
boob tube and reads newspapers for the
sports or TV guide does not. Republican leaders like Rove understand this
– that’s why he pushed so hard to get a
popular actor on his side. I’m not sure Democratic leaders understand this,
or else they would have recruited someone
like Martin Sheen, who plays a much more believable president on The West
Wing than Bush does, to run against
Schwarzenegger.
So I have to slam Schwarzenegger with all I have, including the alleged
affairs, the reports of sexual propositions,
the "pussied out" comments. Put a story on TV that Schwarzenegger is facing
many questions of extramarital affairs,
and that could have some impact on what swing voters do.
This is that important.
***
Jackson Thoreau is an American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get
Over It:
Restoring a Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic
book can be
downloaded on his Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html.