Kicking Sand into the Race

[kskiska]

Seems no Hollywood lefties want to get into the act

In a Pumped Life, Can Arnold Bench-Press a Governorship?

(snip)

A paparazzi picture of Schwarzenegger on vacation earlier this year, which first appeared in the New York Post, showed him to be very much the former bodybuilder. The torso spread -- known to any man over age 35 -- had caught up to him. His pecs had become boobs. Now it can also be told that he has, for all appearances, chest hair.

California always hates this part of this story -- the aging part, the mortality -- and aides to Schwarzenegger had already explained away the aberration in the candidate's physique on that particular beachy day. (He was on vacation. He'd been promoting "T3," which presumably involved the usual phalanx of hotel cheese plates. He'd been away from the gym.)

(snip)

Most conversations drifted helplessly toward the recall, aghast at all the weeks of bully-speak. (Even Arianna Huffington has said she is coming at this "like a bully pulpit," as something that must be seized, grabbed, pushed for.) Marge Tabankin, a political guru and director of the Streisand Foundation, marveled that "every reporter in the world" had called her on Thursday, trying to see if any of Hollywood's celebrated lefties would get active in the recall. (Streisand hasn't weighed in yet, Tabankin said, but she'll likely speak out against the recall.) "You cannot underestimate ," Tabankin said. "He's very, very smart. I think everybody is just waiting for people to start asking the really serious questions about him." She thinks there's not much to be gained from a celebrity coming out against Schwarzenegger, who, in the end, is a fellow celebrity. Even if California is the most populous state, this is all still a local matter. If the Democratic Party gets behind one candidate, solidifies, (pumps up, perhaps?) then, sure, maybe.

Robert Scheer, the liberal columnist, stood up to say a few kind words about AlterNet (which employs his son, Christopher, as managing editor). Drifting into harangues against his many attackers in that strange new blogosphere of instant sucker punches, he sounded sad. He sounded a little like the guy on the beach who hasn't yet met the Charles Atlas within. "We don't have sharp elbows like the right wing does," he told the crowd. "These people are killers."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36477-2003Aug8.html