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Harvey Wasserman

The Gropenator knows government like Rush knows football
October 5, 2003

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an authoritarian serial sex fiend and Rush Limbaugh is a drug-addicted racist, and neither one of them is fit to govern.

And for these two role models of the American right, what goes around, comes around.

For California voters, there should be only one overriding question about someone's candidacy for governor: how would she or he handle the job?

But with Arnold, it's not so simple.

For starters, there's no indication he knows anything about running a government. His one memorable advocacy position has been for the termination of the state's Environmental Protection Agency. He originally said it duplicated the fine job being done by George W. Bush's national EPA. But he's since backed off.

Otherwise, Arnold's sworn his love for de-regulating the industries that fund the Republican party. That brave stance is underscored by his Chief Advisor, Pete Wilson. As governor in 1996, Wilson signed the infamous AB1890 utility deregulation bill that destabilized the state to the tune of $100 billion.

If that was all, Californians might have a straightforward choice on how the state should be governed.

But Arnold is a stalking horse for the national Republican junta. His Team Bush mandate is to further de-stabilize California and grab the voting apparatus, in preparation for the 2004 election, in which the Republicans hope to take final control of the American government. As Jeb Bush delivered Florida in 2000, Arnold's marching orders will be to rig the new voting machines and strip the voter roles of suspected Democrats.

Then there's the apparently endless stream of women groped and otherwise by this macho weight lifter. His party just impeached a president of the United States for lying about consensual sex. What will these same Republicans say about Arnold? Is California ready for endless, excruciating saturation coverage of Arnold's sordid sex life?

Schwarzenegger has attacked a virtual entire army of unconsenting women deeply offended by his behavior. Now that they have found each other, how long before the lawsuits start pouring in? Were they all of legal age? Will there be criminal proceedings?

Arnold has coyly apologized. He also denies having been a fan of Hitler, or that his Nazi upbringing and notorious authoritarianism will affect how he governs. But will the state have a government?

For that, Californians might look to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh's entire career has been built on racism and woman hating, which he coyly denies amidst his loving commentaries lauding the Ku Klux Klan and Republican right.

A wanna-be sports fan, Limbaugh was hired as a football commentator for ESPN, to which he brought a large right-wing audience. But his raps were distinguished only by embarrassing misstatements of fact. And then, inevitably, he polluted the game by claiming the great Philadelphia Eagle quarterback Donovan McNabb was being favored by the media because he is black.

In pure football terms, Limbaugh's comment was beyond stupid. McNabb is a superb ball player, voted consistently to the Pro Bowl by his fellow football players, not the media. A widely loved team leader who can both run and pass, McNabb is a soft-spoken model citizen.

Hey Rush! The NFL is now filled with superb quarterbacks who happen to be black, and who get no special treatment---negative or positive---from the media. To name just a few: Steve McNair, Michael Vick and Kordell Stewart, all of whom can both run and pass. Long long ago a black quarterback threw five touchdowns to beat a white quarterback in the SuperBowl. Was that also media favoritism? Or were you at a Klan clambake?

Limbaugh quit to "spare" his colleagues from further embarrassment. Now he's being investigated for possibly illegal drug purchases. Apparently he's been popping pain killers like weight-lifters do steroids.

Hey Rush! What else you got hidden?

And…hey…Arnold! That Nazi stuff! Those women! What's next? Will you, like Rush, quit early to spare the people of California from endless distraction?

Or will it be All Arnold, All the Time?

HARVEY WASSERMAN is author of HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES and co-author (with Bob Fitrakis) of THE SUPERPOWER OF PEACE v. BUSH ET. AL., soon available from www.freepress.org.

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