Oui Oui, Herr Arnold

The Smoking Gun has re-published a twenty-five year old interview with the man who would be California's governor. My favorite quote, "[H]aving a good time is not nearly so damaging as people think." As to his future acting career: "[T]he one thing that won't work on the screen is my being an ass-kicker." Damn, what was he smoking? The media has emphasized the more salacious elements of the interview -- gang banging a woman with several other body builders before a competition, the "mind-cock" theory of sexual performance, the the drug use, and posing for a gay magazine. He also said that he would have dated a woman who was on the heavy side if she was "a good fuck." These gems are all great reading, and surely there will be more juicy tidbits to come. I take it as a testament to his candor that he would be so forthright about such things in any public forum. One wishes that Arnold would display the same type of candor in his public policy positions.

As I commented to a friend of mine today, I'd much rather have a politician who has lived life, made mistakes, owned up to them, and moved foward than one who claims to have lived the so-called "model life" and is in reality a latter-day Rev. Dimmesdale from Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. It is especially annoying when politicans look for the moral high ground when trucking through a system that is inherently predicated upon the larceny and redistribution of private property.

Two things stood out in Arnold's interview. First, he is a devotee of "conceive, believe, achieve" mantra that is gospel to the Multi-Level Marketing world (or is it The American Dream?). Arnold claims that he "had a vision of wiping everybody off the stage" akin to those who claim to be born-again Christians. Until he won Mr. Olympia, Americans had dominated the competition because it was primarily a question of "mental superiority." Second, he compared the stereotypes against gays with those against bodybuilders -- "People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do about us." Granted, bodybuilders are subject more to casual ribbing than the sort of naked animus against gays that still pervades many elements in our society, including that Roman bastion of morality (one that will eventually fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for its systemic enabling of pedophile employees). But the sentiment still evinces an acceptance that is both healthy and still very much needed.

Hopefully Arnold's vision of inclusiveness -- for all types of minorities -- is based upon the primacy of the individual and not on the demands of special interest groups who foment social balkanization. This state, and this country, should move toward what Pericles once admired about Athenian society: "Each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptional versatility." This begs the question as to whether or not such a thing is possible, as most of our young minds are trapped in intellectually moribund public schools.