So, the Bag was still a cartoon when Schwarzenegger ran for Governor in a special election back in '03. Still, I think we got it about right spelling out the issues that got swept under the campaign rug.
Especially, there was that March 2001 Premiere Magazine article that circulated before the election elaborating Arnold's blatant and unselfconscious urges and his unbound sexual harassment of women. Anyone who accepted the veracity of that article would have no qualms calling Arnold a pig -- a circumstance, the write-up points out, which wasn't lost on Maria Shriver, either. And then, there was the story the LA Times broke in the closing days of the quickie-election citing 16 women, 11 identified, who accused the he-man of physical humiliation. As things played out, Schwarzenegger's PR team attacked the Times scoring sympathy points before locking down the Governorship.
Why anybody, especially the media, would even bat an eye over yesterday's disclosure of Schwarzenegger's love child and at least a ten year infidelity occurring right under the nose of his wife and his family is ludicrous. As the well known still from Pumping Iron establishes, the man's core identity was defined by the illicit.
Another Bag post taking aim at Schwarzenegger was this one in June of '04, marking the release and immediate nose dive of the remake of Around the World in Eighty Days. My take was that Arnold and Team Arnold must have felt relieved when the film, shot before his election, crashed and burned. But then, just as the media and the electorate chose to buy into Schwarzenegger's daytime role as Governor of California, I imagine the response would have been similiar if Eighty Days had been a smash hit, Arnold not having to study at all for the role of the philandering prince.
For the latest in visual politics, visit BagNewsNotes (and follow us on Twitter).
Follow Michael Shaw on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bagnewsnotes
ProPublica: When Powerful Men Cross Lines: Schwarzenegger and DSK
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Schwarzenegger Is Just the Latest in GOP Sexual Hypocrisy
Danny Groner: What Do Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn Have in Common?
And right here in California, while the story of Arnold's infidelity is breaking and as radioactive fallout from 5,000 miles away contaminates our water, our food and our air, 2 aging nuclear power plants, both situated on the coast, both on major fault lines, both with no emergency planning in place for anything like what happened at Fukushima, are currently up for renewal for their operating licenses.
gov data on fallout in Ca and elsehwere;
(please note that the strident effort by the government to equate eating radioactive isotopes with getting a suntan or flying in an airplane have been proven to be patently false and misleading.)
http://www.epa.gov/narel/radnet/pdf/How_to_Access_RadNet_Data.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/
plutonium in US report extract from RADNET monitoring newtwork;
http://lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/epa-radnet-reports-show-plutonium-us-march-18th
plutonium being detected worldwide at levels higher than in the last 20yrs;
http://onihutari.blog60.fc2.com/blog-entry-44.html
pdf extracted from info on US Gov radnet monitoring network;
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AifmjEDwh_fedDc4ZzVGUXY5ZFNjTFR4RDhrZWFfYUE&hl=en#gid=0