Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger has entered the race for governor of California, one wonders a few things:
1. Is he popular because of the roles he has played?
2. Is he popular because of his great political acumen?
3. Is he popular because Gray Davis isn’t?
The relative political success of Fred “Gopher” Grandy and Ben “Cooter” Jones would seem to indicate that voters are able to separate the actor from the role. However, both Grandy and Jones ran for office long after their most famous TV roles had faded from public view and both tapped into the deep roots of their constituencies. Grandy was a moderate Republican from Iowa, which is, if anything, a bastion of moderate Republicanism, and Jones was a populist Democrat from Georgia who lost his seat to none other than Newt Gingrich—following perfectly trends in the South away from populist Democrats toward conservative Republicans.
Schwarzenegger has a movie in the theaters right now and has spent little to no time distinguishing himself from his roles. He has made no specific policy statements, mentioning instead that politicians have “failed” the people and he would make sure he’d work for “the people.” This is political rhetoric so vague that it could have been made by anyone from Joe McCarthy to Joe Stalin, militating against number two above.
Number three doesn’t help much either, given the polls, and is not a positive in favor of The Arnold.
That leaves us with the disconcerting notion that, indeed, Schwarzenegger’s popularity is because of the roles he plays, which are, primarily, evil or at least very, very violent (as one NPR commentator put it “a robot that kills people”). What this means is that, to the people of California, leadership looks like a big guy who is excessively violent. And, so says the proverb, as California goes, so goes the nation.
Yet again, your liberal doom and gloom attitude misses the billions of board-feet of profitable lumber for the forest.
Schwarzenegger’s roles actually represent a sort of moral certitude that’s represented in their extreme decisiveness, an ability to cut (literally) through the middle-minded moral muddle and and provide a strong sense of identity in a crisis moment.
This is precisely what California-
and this country-needs most.So, your sense of moral decisiveness is the Arnold-nator? The Woman-hator? Never mind that his moral decisions onscreen amount to deciding to kill people and that his moral decisions offscreen amount to using womyn as objects—he’s decisive, and that’s all that’s needed?
Schwarzenheimer-fritz is a hegemonic freakshow, a bizarre carictaure/symbolization/realization of hyper-masculinity leaking oppression like a gym-rat leaks flop-sweat. If this is morality, send in the sin!
You know, Gary Coleman is running too, and I saw on Yahoo! News that watermelon-bashing Gallagher is gathering signatures too. The California gubernatorial race is quickly declining into pure high school politics. Arnold is popular because of his roles, no doubt. Gary Coleman is well-known, and Gallagher is, well, Gallagher. What has yet to be determined is whether the people of California will vote for the class clown or the weird, robotic foreign-exchange student.
Also running, according to Steve Lawrence, a writer for the AP: “comedian Donald A. Novello, who created the chain-smoking Father Guido Sarducci character; and Angelyne, a buxom actress and model who has posted billboards with her likeness around Los Angeles for years.” So, Francine, this appears more and more to be a choice of which class clown California wants. The real question is not who will lead California, but which network will intervene and air “Who Wants to Be Governor?” My money’s on Fox. (I’m sure we can pin the recall effort on Fox News somehow too.)
Angelyne in the governor’s mansion would be cathartic in a Freudian kind of way. It’s really about time we stopped trying to worry about chimerical notions of “leadership” anyway and just gawk.
I vote her most gawkworthy.