MAUREEN DOWD, NY TIMES - Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, "Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one." Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator.
It was no surprise on Friday that Mr. S was backing off his promise to release those "Springtime for Hitler" outtakes from George Butler's 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron." No dummy, he knew years ago his "Nazi stuff" could be trouble. He bought up the incriminating evidence, 100 hours of histrionic interviews, for a mil, and worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, giving it a mil in guilt gilt.
I asked my friend Leon Wieseltier, who knows a lot about Judaism and politics and women, about Arnold. "Schwarzenegger is obviously not anti-Semitic or an admirer of genocide," he said. "Hitler does not appear to have been his moral ideal, but his business model. His old fondness for the Führer is just another expression of the animating principle of his life and movies: the worship and steady acquisition of power. Sacramento is simply the biggest Hummer he can buy."
RECOVERED HISTORY SCHWARZENEGGER AND THE HOLLYWOOD PRESS
NEAL KOCH, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW - When it comes to strong-arming the Hollywood press, some of the biggest muscle belongs to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hasn't hesitated to use it, says author Wendy Leigh. And few journalists have been willing to cry foul. Leigh claims that Schwarzenegger - rumored to harbor national political ambitions - has waged a heavy-handed campaign first to suppress her book, Arnold, An Unauthorized Biography, and then to sabotage its promotion.
Some journalists have found her reporting worthy of attention. Time made it part of a profile of Schwarzenegger that ran in the magazine's May 28 international edition. And accounts of the contretemps surrounding the alleged attempts to interfere with the book appeared in New York magazine and the Chicago Tribune last May and in Newsday last July.
. . . James Willwerth, a Time correspondent for twenty-three years and the author of Time's profile of Schwarzenegger, says he's not a fan of Leigh's gossipy type of journalism. But, he adds, after checking out her research, using her thirty-four pages of source notes on the back of the book as a guide, he came away with a respect for her thoroughness. "It was very well reported", Willwerth said, "My nose told me that the book was on target." In Arnold, Leigh persuasively portrays Schwarzenegger as a crude womanizer - perhaps a misogynist - of limited morals who has been given to expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and admiration for Hitler's ability to lead.
. . . Leigh says that when she hit the promotional circuit, television show bookings and filmed appearances were mysteriously canceled at the last minute - in one case, even as TV promos ran - as were planned newspaper features for which she had already been interviewed. In at least one case Schwarzenegger himself turned up on the show soon after. Bruce Lynn, Leigh's former personal publicist, says that he believes that Charlotte Parker threatened producers of TV shows that they wouldn't get Schwarzenegger again if they put Leigh on the air. "People told me that," says Lynn. Lynn adds that a booker for one national program - which he declines to name, he says, because he still does business there - told him, "No way. We're doing Arnold for the movie [Total Recall], and we don't want to upset him."
. . . Time's Willwerth says the he wasn't threatened, but did receive "urgent, demanding pleas" from Parker to avoid mentioning the book. But he says that while she called it unfair, she never claimed it was inaccurate. Parker categorically denies any efforts by Schwarzenegger or any of his associates to inhibit either the book's publication or promotional efforts on its behalf.
ORIN HATCH BOOSTING SCHWARZENEGGER FOR PRESIDENT
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE - Sen. Orrin Hatch says Arnold Schwarzenegger should not be judged on past improper advances towards women but as the devoted husband he is today, adding that the foreign-born GOP candidate for California governor also should have the opportunity to run for president under a constitutional amendment Hatch is pushing.
. . . Hatch has introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution's ban on non-American-born presidents by allowing people who have been U.S. citizens for at least 20 years to be elected to the White House. While the measure was not introduced with Schwarzenegger in mind, Hatch said the Austrian-born superstar would be a perfect example of why the constitutional amendment is needed. "If Arnold Schwarzenegger turns out to be the greatest governor of California, which I hope he will, if he turns out to be a tremendous leader and he proves to everybody in this country that he's totally dedicated to this country as an American . . . we would be wrong not to give him that opportunity," said Hatch.
SCHWARZENEGGER ADMIRED HITLER
ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, NY TIMES - A film producer who chronicled Arnold Schwarzenegger's rise to fame as a champion bodybuilder in the 1970's circulated a book proposal six years ago that quoted the young Mr. Schwarzenegger expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler. The book proposal by the producer, George Butler, included what were presented as verbatim excerpts from interviews with Mr. Schwarzenegger in the filming of the documentary "Pumping Iron." In a part of the interview not used in the film, Mr. Schwarzenegger was asked to name his heroes - "who do you admire most."
"It depends for what," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to the transcript in the book proposal. "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker."
In addition to the transcript, Mr. Butler wrote in his book proposal that in the 1970's, he considered Mr. Schwarzenegger a "flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler." In the proposal, Mr. Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing "Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home" and said that the actor "frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer."
SCHWARZENEGGER'S KRISPY KREME KOVERAGE
NIKKI FINKE, LA WEEKLY - "He's never going to run. Some of us have skeletons in their closet. He has monsters in his closet." So said John Connolly, the freelance journalist who wrote that now infamous Premiere profile about Schwarzenegger alleging moral turpitude and sexual harassment, before Arnold announced his candidacy. Since then, the 55-year-old New Yorker has spent all the weeks of this recall campaign looking even deeper into the background of the actor whose next role is disturbingly likely to be governor. Where the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, ABC, CBS, NBC, and those other supposed bastions of superior reporting (why bother to even mention Fox?) claim to have found next to nothing, Connolly tells L.A. Weekly he has found a lot. . .
"I think I have very explosive information," Connolly alleges. He wouldn't give us details - he's saving them for his book. But the point is there seems to be information on Arnold out there for any enterprising reporter to find. "In sex, in business, in his personal life, how he's dealt with people over the years, it's extraordinary," Connolly says. "This couldn't have happened in any place other than in Hollywood.". . .
Hollywood circled the wagons and protected its own. Throughout the campaign, Schwarzenegger's treatment of women on and off the set has been an issue. Still industry eyewitnesses are afraid to come forward for fear of being blacklisted. . .
Increasingly, it's harder and harder to get any publication to print the truth about Hollywood, and not just because Big Media keep getting Bigger. Graydon Carter looks increasingly foolish sucking up to his buddies Barry and Brian, while Vanity Fair's Hollywood coverage just sucks, period. David Granger at Esquire hasn't even tried to blow the lid off this town. And David Remnick at The New Yorker weighs in only once a year with at best lightweight product.
There's something terribly wrong when the Los Angeles Times recently spread wider and dug deeper into Bob Hope's past on the occasion of his death than the paper has done into Schwarzenegger's after he announced his recall candidacy.
>From: frank scott <frank at marin.cc.ca.us>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: sex fiend nazi
>Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:55:41 -0700
>
>"The guy's a sexist authoritarian pig. Why do
>you want to deny that?"
>
>no denial here that he may be a pig, but in the age of clinton, how far
>can such charges travel? as evidenced by his female vote...
>
>as to the nazi stuff re hitler, bulletin: this putz has been to the
>wailing wall and sent large checks to israeli-jewish organizations, was
>supported by types from the lobby, and even by what was called the
>"jewish community' of austria in a s/f/ chron item that claimed he gave
>money to build a temple or some such...
>
>only the knee jerkers and listen-quick brigades could find anything
>there...he is a typical political beast who happens to have some star
>personality, as opposed to the typical beast he replaced, who has
>none...
>
>again, in the age of "feminists" defending a president who gets blow
>jobs in the white house, calling witnesses for a groper case - if it
>ever happens - will get no response except from the brigades...and if
>the shmuck were ever found guilty, his rich wife would run for senator,
>and probably win...
>
>fs
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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