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2003-10-05 09:48:36 UTC
"We are, in fact, inviting a seething and pro-corporate cadre of
inbred GOP Arnie advisers not seen since, well, since the
Rove/Cheney/Rummy team of war-happy corporate whoreslugs. "
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 3, 2003
©2003 SF Gate
URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/
And you thought the Jesse Ventura bobblehead was bad.
All right, so a couple "major" polls show the famous thick-necked slab
of Austrian meat wielding a dangerous Conan-like lead over quivering
not-as-bad-as-you-think Gray Davis.
And Schwarzenegger's bouncing around like a Hummer on meth, inflicting
that weird maniacal grin and massive blocklike head all over the
unsuspecting media, as pretty much the entire population of even
slightly aware and intelligent people in California and in fact all
over the nation go, oh holy Christ, please dear God no.
This is what's about to happen. We are on the verge of electing a new
governor of the largest and most powerful state in the nation, the one
with the fifth largest economy in the world and the most frighteningly
intricate political infrastructure and infinitely complex and delicate
network of water/energy/environment/immigrant/agriculture issues in
existence, just one year after electing the last one.
And we are, apparently, if the polls are correct -- and you should
right this minute pray they're not -- about to hand the reins of this
massive state over to a wildly mediocre semiarticulate muscle-bound
power-hungry famously sexist actor with zero political experience and
zero real-world awareness and zero communication of anything
resembling detailed public policy, except for what much-loathed former
guv Pete Wilson and his caveful of leering Bushites is feeding him.
Oh, what an absurd and dangerous hell we have wrought.
Of course the BushCo-ravaged economy's in shambles, the worst deficit
in history and warmongering like a social disease and every state in
the Union scraping for moneys just to keep basic services up and
running, while still forking over their tithing fees for Dick Cheney's
defibrillator batteries and Donny Rumsfeld's war-machine tune-ups and
BushCo's tax cuts for Halliburton executives.
And California is no exception, suffering right along with the rest,
CA's economic woes merely a subset of the country's -- though it must
be noted that our state's job losses are actually less than the
national average, and Davis is hardly solely to blame for the state's
long-standing fiscal woes, and even Californians lose track of just
which major debilitating decades-old issue is most important at any
given moment.
It must be noted that the state's bitter GOP senators are at least as
much (if not more) to blame as Davis for the sorry state of the state,
for blocking any and all attempts to increase taxes on the super
wealthy, for blocking all Demo budget initiatives and for deflecting
the staggering deficit burden to future generations and for being just
totally pissy and resentful that they lost the last state election by
such a huge and painful margin.
And should we mention how we pretty much screwed ourselves with Prop.
13 back in '78, the infamous and mixed-blessing property-tax rollback
that hamstrung the economy and signaled the long, slow death of
California's schools and services? No?
And while Gray Davis is certainly no political prize, during his short
tenure he's actually passed a relatively large amount of
ground-breaking and first-in-the-nation legislation, including
landmark laws protecting abortion rights, stem-cell research, air
quality and immigrant rights.
But then our power gets shut off for a few days and tech jobs vanish
and we have to pay more to register our cars and we get all panicky
and furious and look for the scapegoat, and of course it's gotta be
the guv.
And so some puling millionaire politico twit (hi, Mr. Issa!) picks up
on the negative vibe and exploits CA's ridiculously easy recall laws
and boom, suddenly we're all piss and vinegar and "Kick the bum out!"
But now. We are in deep trouble. We are in far worse danger than we
imagine. We are so asking for it. And we are so about to screw
ourselves silly. Again.
If Arnie does indeed win, we are inviting not only international
ridicule and endless jokes about Terminators and inflated biceps and
"Pumping Iron" and flagrant misogyny and "I'll be back." Would that it
were so harmless and silly.
We are, in fact, inviting a seething and pro-corporate cadre of inbred
GOP Arnie advisers not seen since, well, since the Rove/Cheney/Rummy
team of war-happy corporate whoreslugs.
We are inviting political and fiscal chaos, the state's infrastructure
already teetering and fragile, and Arnie's "team" would simply shove
out hundreds of recently appointed department heads and replace them
with more conservative GOP dittoheads -- all told, a sudden and
massive influx of mediocrity and conservativism and pointless
celebritydom into the state that needs it the very least.
But don't we all just love the idea of bringing in someone who's "not
a politician"? Someone who's not part of the "corrupt" system and who
can therefore promise a whole different set of values and really shake
things up? Ooh, he's a big, famous actor! Ooh, he's not a part of the
normal Washington scum pond! He's merely a part of the normal
Hollywood scum pond! That's much better!
Besides, I've seen him blow up thousands of people and mangle city
buses using only his thighs and kill icky scary alien creatures with
his bare hands. I bet he can make a difference! Screw those crooked
politicians! Arnie'll show 'em! Right.
Oh how we have become deluded and sad. Oh how we are apparently duped
beyond our own comprehension. Is this really what we want?
Look. Let us be blatantly clear. The very last thing a massive and
resource-rich state with a budget bigger than that of most European
countries needs is a ego-thick GOP cyborg with no political experience
who gets his policy ideology from a sulky former governor and
Republican shark, and who owns a fleet of Hummers and hasn't bought
his own shoes in 20 years and whose glutes are far, far larger than
his brain.
What we actually need is someone deeply versed in California politics,
in coalition building, in immigration and the environment and water
rights and abortion rights and energy and the insane and absurd
intricacies of the gorgeous mess that is California.
We need an expert politician. A pro. Even a bland one, even Gray
Davis. As appealing as it might be to "shake up" the status quo and
hop on the Arnie novelty train, the basic rules still apply: You don't
hire a sorority girl to run an international drug cartel, you don't
hire a bass player to negotiate U.N. peace accords and, most of all,
you don't hire a power-hungry egomaniacal actor whose monosyllabic
ultraviolent movies have dumbed down the nation for the past two
decades to run the most powerful state in the Union. Simple, really.
Look. Jesse Ventura was a nice novelty, the nation's most recent celeb
governor and political footnote: can't screw the country up too badly
and even if he tries Minnesota's not really one of the big powerhouse
states, so let's all just watch as he launches yet another
embarrassing sound bite and pisses off the establishment and drives
his state's economy into a brick wall. Whee.
But this is much, much different. Arnie is to be the boorish Hollywood
fake-grin governor, full of photo ops and Oprah appearances and big
thick handshakes that mean nothing, of groped women and big corporate
sponsorship and a quietly cheering squad of BushCo strategists behind
the scenes, as the state gets quietly sucker punched.
Keep the bums in place. They're the best we've got. Because otherwise,
we are facing something perhaps Mary Carey, the porn-star candidate,
knows best of all: If Arnie gets in, we are about to get thoroughly,
royally screwed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
mailto:***@sfgate.com
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and
Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which
it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed
thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at
sfgate.com/newsletters.
©2003 SF Gate
inbred GOP Arnie advisers not seen since, well, since the
Rove/Cheney/Rummy team of war-happy corporate whoreslugs. "
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 3, 2003
©2003 SF Gate
URL: http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/
And you thought the Jesse Ventura bobblehead was bad.
All right, so a couple "major" polls show the famous thick-necked slab
of Austrian meat wielding a dangerous Conan-like lead over quivering
not-as-bad-as-you-think Gray Davis.
And Schwarzenegger's bouncing around like a Hummer on meth, inflicting
that weird maniacal grin and massive blocklike head all over the
unsuspecting media, as pretty much the entire population of even
slightly aware and intelligent people in California and in fact all
over the nation go, oh holy Christ, please dear God no.
This is what's about to happen. We are on the verge of electing a new
governor of the largest and most powerful state in the nation, the one
with the fifth largest economy in the world and the most frighteningly
intricate political infrastructure and infinitely complex and delicate
network of water/energy/environment/immigrant/agriculture issues in
existence, just one year after electing the last one.
And we are, apparently, if the polls are correct -- and you should
right this minute pray they're not -- about to hand the reins of this
massive state over to a wildly mediocre semiarticulate muscle-bound
power-hungry famously sexist actor with zero political experience and
zero real-world awareness and zero communication of anything
resembling detailed public policy, except for what much-loathed former
guv Pete Wilson and his caveful of leering Bushites is feeding him.
Oh, what an absurd and dangerous hell we have wrought.
Of course the BushCo-ravaged economy's in shambles, the worst deficit
in history and warmongering like a social disease and every state in
the Union scraping for moneys just to keep basic services up and
running, while still forking over their tithing fees for Dick Cheney's
defibrillator batteries and Donny Rumsfeld's war-machine tune-ups and
BushCo's tax cuts for Halliburton executives.
And California is no exception, suffering right along with the rest,
CA's economic woes merely a subset of the country's -- though it must
be noted that our state's job losses are actually less than the
national average, and Davis is hardly solely to blame for the state's
long-standing fiscal woes, and even Californians lose track of just
which major debilitating decades-old issue is most important at any
given moment.
It must be noted that the state's bitter GOP senators are at least as
much (if not more) to blame as Davis for the sorry state of the state,
for blocking any and all attempts to increase taxes on the super
wealthy, for blocking all Demo budget initiatives and for deflecting
the staggering deficit burden to future generations and for being just
totally pissy and resentful that they lost the last state election by
such a huge and painful margin.
And should we mention how we pretty much screwed ourselves with Prop.
13 back in '78, the infamous and mixed-blessing property-tax rollback
that hamstrung the economy and signaled the long, slow death of
California's schools and services? No?
And while Gray Davis is certainly no political prize, during his short
tenure he's actually passed a relatively large amount of
ground-breaking and first-in-the-nation legislation, including
landmark laws protecting abortion rights, stem-cell research, air
quality and immigrant rights.
But then our power gets shut off for a few days and tech jobs vanish
and we have to pay more to register our cars and we get all panicky
and furious and look for the scapegoat, and of course it's gotta be
the guv.
And so some puling millionaire politico twit (hi, Mr. Issa!) picks up
on the negative vibe and exploits CA's ridiculously easy recall laws
and boom, suddenly we're all piss and vinegar and "Kick the bum out!"
But now. We are in deep trouble. We are in far worse danger than we
imagine. We are so asking for it. And we are so about to screw
ourselves silly. Again.
If Arnie does indeed win, we are inviting not only international
ridicule and endless jokes about Terminators and inflated biceps and
"Pumping Iron" and flagrant misogyny and "I'll be back." Would that it
were so harmless and silly.
We are, in fact, inviting a seething and pro-corporate cadre of inbred
GOP Arnie advisers not seen since, well, since the Rove/Cheney/Rummy
team of war-happy corporate whoreslugs.
We are inviting political and fiscal chaos, the state's infrastructure
already teetering and fragile, and Arnie's "team" would simply shove
out hundreds of recently appointed department heads and replace them
with more conservative GOP dittoheads -- all told, a sudden and
massive influx of mediocrity and conservativism and pointless
celebritydom into the state that needs it the very least.
But don't we all just love the idea of bringing in someone who's "not
a politician"? Someone who's not part of the "corrupt" system and who
can therefore promise a whole different set of values and really shake
things up? Ooh, he's a big, famous actor! Ooh, he's not a part of the
normal Washington scum pond! He's merely a part of the normal
Hollywood scum pond! That's much better!
Besides, I've seen him blow up thousands of people and mangle city
buses using only his thighs and kill icky scary alien creatures with
his bare hands. I bet he can make a difference! Screw those crooked
politicians! Arnie'll show 'em! Right.
Oh how we have become deluded and sad. Oh how we are apparently duped
beyond our own comprehension. Is this really what we want?
Look. Let us be blatantly clear. The very last thing a massive and
resource-rich state with a budget bigger than that of most European
countries needs is a ego-thick GOP cyborg with no political experience
who gets his policy ideology from a sulky former governor and
Republican shark, and who owns a fleet of Hummers and hasn't bought
his own shoes in 20 years and whose glutes are far, far larger than
his brain.
What we actually need is someone deeply versed in California politics,
in coalition building, in immigration and the environment and water
rights and abortion rights and energy and the insane and absurd
intricacies of the gorgeous mess that is California.
We need an expert politician. A pro. Even a bland one, even Gray
Davis. As appealing as it might be to "shake up" the status quo and
hop on the Arnie novelty train, the basic rules still apply: You don't
hire a sorority girl to run an international drug cartel, you don't
hire a bass player to negotiate U.N. peace accords and, most of all,
you don't hire a power-hungry egomaniacal actor whose monosyllabic
ultraviolent movies have dumbed down the nation for the past two
decades to run the most powerful state in the Union. Simple, really.
Look. Jesse Ventura was a nice novelty, the nation's most recent celeb
governor and political footnote: can't screw the country up too badly
and even if he tries Minnesota's not really one of the big powerhouse
states, so let's all just watch as he launches yet another
embarrassing sound bite and pisses off the establishment and drives
his state's economy into a brick wall. Whee.
But this is much, much different. Arnie is to be the boorish Hollywood
fake-grin governor, full of photo ops and Oprah appearances and big
thick handshakes that mean nothing, of groped women and big corporate
sponsorship and a quietly cheering squad of BushCo strategists behind
the scenes, as the state gets quietly sucker punched.
Keep the bums in place. They're the best we've got. Because otherwise,
we are facing something perhaps Mary Carey, the porn-star candidate,
knows best of all: If Arnie gets in, we are about to get thoroughly,
royally screwed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
mailto:***@sfgate.com
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and
Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which
it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed
thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at
sfgate.com/newsletters.
©2003 SF Gate