Kinsley: Zeitgeist Surfing (Arnold)

[kskiska]

By Michael Kinsley

(snip)

True, you can't nail Arnold on hypocrisy. He told this story on himself 26 years ago and hasn't troubled to deny it since it re-emerged. In fact, if there is any dishonesty here, it may be in the anecdote itself. Did this parody of a testosterone fantasy really happen? (Kaus quotes Mr. Gold himself saying that Gold's gym had no women members back then.) But if it did happen, exactly as Arnold described it in 1977, it's pretty disgusting. It's disgusting even if it was consensual all around. It's disgusting even though Arnold wasn't married at the time. It's disgusting even if this amounts to applying the standards of the 21st century to events of the mid-1970s. Schwarzenegger isn't running for governor of California in 1975.

In terms of his fitness for elected office, the fact that Schwarzenegger bragged about this episode in a published interview makes the question of whether it really happened almost irrelevant. In 1977, at least, he wished to have people believe that he shared and was proud of an attitude toward women that is not acceptable in a politician. And in 2003, all he has said is that he doesn't remember the interview. He hasn't said whether he remembers the episode itself—or, if he doesn't, whether that is because it never happened or because it happened too often to keep track. More important, he hasn't said what he thinks about it all from the perspective of 2003.

Arnold may be just surfing the zeitgeist: a swinger in the swinging '70s (Were they swinging? Hard to recall …), a governor in the sober 2000s. Like similar statements from George W. Bush about his drinking and Dan Quayle about evading the draft, Schwarzenegger has said he didn't know back then that he'd be running for governor today. Which works fine as an explanation, but fails miserably as exoneration.

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http://slate.msn.com/id/2087922/