Schwartzenegger Pulls a Dubya...er, a Clinton, too?
Stars pressure women for sex?

by Jackson Thoreau, 8-11-03 All of Jackson Thoreau's Columns

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Woman says she was harassed by family man Schwarzenegger for two days to come to his trailer to have sex with him

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, see http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/06/MN114924.DTL and http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/08/08_recall.html. 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. If you don't have the stomach for such mud-slinging, fine. A few years ago, I might have stayed in my ivory tower myself, believing in some political la-la land where being right - or left - on important issues really wins out.

But not these days. Not after the Starr Report, the $100 million in public funds to investigate Clinton's private life that Republicans spent, the hijacking of the White House in 2000, and all the damn dirty deals since. Now, I'm fighting the Republi-Thugs by giving them a dose of their own medicine. Now, I'm not pulling my punches.

And hell yes, it feels good. When I read all those emails from hypocritical conservatives who idiotically call me a Communist and worse [one of my favorites was the Bush-supporter who said he had a "special oven" for me and my "Commie butt-buddies" - I love it when Republicans claim not to be fascists, then use Nazi imagery] for simply turning the tables on them, it just makes my day. Hell yes, it feels real good that I can get their goats.

I might not play the political game this way for the rest of my life. But right now, we are in a crisis. We are in a war against the Republi-Thug terrorists, not just the Al-Qaeda ones who we once trained and financed. And we HAVE to win, by most any means necessary - I'll not resort to physical violence.

That's why I started a petition to "totally recall" Schwarzenegger just in case he wins. If that disaster occurs, I will forward the petition to the California State Democratic Party and hopefully someone there will have the gumption to turn the tables on Bush and Rove and Robot Man.

To sign the petition, go to http://www.petitiononline.com/schwarze/petition.html. More than 500 people already have signed it in the first few days.

Finally, to those who chided me for mentioning Schwarzenegger's Nazi father and Austrian background, check this article on his ties to Nazi Kurt Waldheim: http://www.msnbc.com/news/949666.asp?0cv=CB20.

I could have been harder on Schwarzenegger. I will have to work on that….