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FTR #429 Triumph of the Shill

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Intro­duc­tion: High­light­ing the cyn­i­cism of Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger’s “pop­ulist” image, this pro­gram sets forth the inter­ests behind the man and the pow­ers whose bid­ding he will do. Begin­ning with Schwarzeneg­ger’s asso­ci­a­tion with direc­tors of a Las Vegas gam­ing com­pa­ny, the pro­gram notes that his cam­paign tar­get­ing of Indi­an gam­bling casi­nos smacks of con­flict of interest—he is fronting for com­pet­ing orga­ni­za­tions. A cen­tral ele­ment of dis­cus­sion is Schwarzeneg­ger’s “con­sen­su­al inter­course” with Enron, one of the Texas-based ener­gy com­pa­nies that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the gigan­tic rip-off of Cal­i­for­nia elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers. That rip-off—engineered by polit­i­cal allies of George W. Bush and enabled by the elec­tric­i­ty dereg­u­la­tion passed by Schwarzeneg­ger’s cam­paign man­ag­er Pete Wilson—is the focal point of a law­suit by Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cruz Bus­ta­mante. In addi­tion to the fact that the “elec­tric­i­ty cri­sis” desta­bi­lized Cal­i­for­nia, the pro­gram sets forth Der Ter­mi­na­tor’s 2001 delib­er­a­tions with Enron (and Bush ally) Ken Lay on the sub­ject of side­track­ing the law­suit. No soon­er did Schwarzeneg­ger get elect­ed, than he pro­posed dereg­u­lat­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s elec­tric­i­ty mar­ket once the “cur­rent” long-term con­tracts expire—an appar­ent pay-off to his con­trollers. Doc­u­ment­ing exten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion between Schwarzeneg­ger and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the broad­cast under­scores the piv­otal role of W’s allies in the Schwarzeneg­ger cam­paign and tran­si­tion team. Among the mem­bers of that tran­si­tion team is one Viet Dinh, who authored the Patri­ot Act for Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft. Telling­ly, Schwarzeneg­ger brought in Flori­da Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush’s bud­get super­vi­sor to audit Cal­i­for­ni­a’s budget—a prob­a­ble har­bin­ger of impend­ing fis­cal sleight-of-hand. Flesh­ing out Schwarzeneg­ger’s role as a shill, the broad­cast points out that the peo­ple han­dling his cam­paign are ex-aides to for­mer Gov­er­nor Pete Wil­son, who were instru­men­tal in pack­ag­ing for­mer Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin. Far from being the “everyman“elevated to Olympian heights by his Niet­zschi­an will to pow­er, Schwarzeng­ger is a front man for the very spe­cial inter­ests he alleged­ly oppos­es.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The busi­ness rela­tion­ship between the tabloid news­pa­pers and Schwarzeneg­ger’s busi­ness part­ner Joe Wei­der; Schwarzeneg­ger’s idol­iza­tion of Adolph Hitler; Der Ter­mi­na­tor’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in US English—an orga­ni­za­tion linked to White Suprema­cist ele­ments; the author­i­tar­i­an, Machi­avel­lian con­trol Schwarzeneg­ger exerts over pub­lic­i­ty about him; Schwarzeneg­ger’s heavy hand­ed (and at times ille­gal) maneu­ver­ing to quash the Wendy Leigh unau­tho­rized biog­ra­phy “Arnold”; a com­par­i­son between pop­u­lar Ger­man per­cep­tions of Hitler and the media pre­sen­ta­tion of Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger.

1. Although he pro­fess­es to be pop­ulist, Schwarzeneg­ger is, in real­i­ty, a shill for pow­er­ful and cyn­i­cal inter­ests. The pro­gram begins by high­light­ing his cam­paign’s con­nec­tions to Las Vegas-based gam­bling inter­ests that com­pete with the Native Amer­i­can gam­bling casi­nos Schwarzeneg­ger tar­get­ed dur­ing his cam­paign. “A top polit­i­cal advis­er to Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger serves on the board of direc­tors of a com­pa­ny that owns two Las Vegas casi­nos and has inter­ests in two South­ern Cal­i­for­nia card clubs that com­pete with casi­nos run by Cal­i­for­nia Indi­an tribes. Schwarzeneg­ger has made attack­ing tribes and their polit­i­cal influ­ence a major tenet of his cam­paign, prompt­ing the actor’s top Repub­li­can oppo­nent in the recall elec­tion and a trib­al gam­ing group to raise con­flict-of-inter­est ques­tions about Schwarzeneg­ger Fri­day. At issue is Bon­nie Reiss, a long­time Schwarzeneg­ger ally who has tak­en an increas­ing­ly pub­lic role in his bid to be gov­er­nor. Reiss earns $30,000.00 a year as a direc­tor of Pin­na­cle Enter­tain­ment. The com­pa­ny owns casi­nos in Reno and Ver­di, Nev., and earns mon­ey from leas­es on two Cal­i­for­nia card clubs, includ­ing the Hol­ly­wood Park casi­no, locat­ed in Ingle­wood (Los Ange­les Coun­ty) and one of the largest card clubs in Cal­i­for­nia.” (“Schwarzeneg­ger Advis­er Linked to Card Clubs, Las Vegas Casi­nos” by Mark Mar­tin; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 9/27/2003; p. A19.)

2. As set forth in FTR#422, Schwarzeneg­ger met with Enron CEO Ken Lay in May 2001 (at the height of the state’s “ener­gy cri­sis”) to dis­cuss run­ning for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia. (For more about the “Cal­i­for­nia ener­gy cri­sis” and the desta­bi­liza­tion of Gray Davis, see FTRs 280, 420.) This pro­gram presents insight into the nature of the discussion—Schwarzenegger’s brain­storm­ing with Lay about how to derail a law­suit filed by Cal­i­for­nia Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cruz Bus­ta­mante. That law­suit tar­get­ed the Texas-based ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions (and Bush allies) that were the vehi­cles of elec­tric­i­ty rip-off that cost the state 9 bil­lion dol­lars.) ” . . . The wannabe gov­er­nor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Penin­su­la Hotel in Los Ange­les, he had con­sen­su­al polit­i­cal inter­course with Enron chief­tain Ken­neth Lay. Also frol­ick­ing with Arnold and Ken was con­vict­ed stock swindler Mike Milken. Now, thir­ty-four pages of inter­nal Enron mem­o­ran­da have just come through this reporter’s fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Mari­a’s hus­band and the cor­po­rate con men. It turns out that Schwarzeneg­ger know­ing­ly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a cam­paign to sab­o­tage a Davis-Bus­ta­mente plan to make Enron and oth­er pow­er pirates then rav­aging Cal­i­for­nia pay back the $9 bil­lion in illic­it prof­its they car­ried off.” (“Arnold Unplugged—It’s Has­ta La Vista to $9 Bil­lion if the Gov­er­na­tor is Select­ed” by Greg Palast; 10/3/2003; p. 1;.)

3. “Here’s the sto­ry Arnold does­n’t want you to hear. The biggest sin­gle threat to Ken lay and the elec­tric­i­ty lords is a pri­vate law­suit filed last year under Cal­i­for­ni­a’s unique Civ­il Code pro­vi­sion 17200, the ‘Unfair Busi­ness Prac­tices Act.’ This lit­i­ga­tion, head­ing to tri­al now in Los Ange­les, would make the pow­er com­pa­nies return the $9 bil­lion they filched from Cal­i­for­nia elec­tric­i­ty and gas cus­tomers. It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who’s the plain­tiff tak­ing on the bad guys? Cruz Bus­ta­mante, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor and reluc­tant lead­ing can­di­date against Schwarzeneg­ger.” (Idem.)

4. ” . . . One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron’s Lay calls an emer­gency secret meet­ing in L.A. of his polit­i­cal buck-bud­dies, includ­ing Arnold. Their plan, to under­cut Davis (accord­ing to Enron mem­os) and ‘solve’ the ener­gy crisis—that is, make the Bus­ta­mante legal threat go away . . .” (Idem.)

5. ” . . . While Bus­ta­man­te’s kick­ing Enron butt in court, the Davis Admin­is­tra­tion is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly demand­ing that George Bush’s ener­gy reg­u­la­tors order the $9 bil­lion refund. Don’t hold your breath: Bush’s fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion is head­ed by a guy pro­posed by . . . Ken Lay. But Bush’s boys on the com­mis­sion have a prob­lem. The evi­dence against the elec­tric­i­ty barons is rock sol­id: fraud­u­lent report­ing of sales trans­ac­tions, megawatt ‘laun­der­ing,’ fake pow­er deliv­ery sched­ul­ing and straight out con­spir­a­cy (includ­ing meet­ings in hotel rooms). So the Bush com­mis­sion­ers cook up a ter­rif­ic scheme: charge the com­pa­nies with con­spir­a­cy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dol­lar they filched.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

6. “Prob­lem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won’t sail if the gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia won’t play along. Solu­tion: Re-call the Gov­er­nor. New Prob­lem: the guy most like­ly to replace Davis is not Mr. Mus­cle­head, but Cruz Bus­ta­mante, even a big­ger threat to the pow­er com­pa­nies than Davis. Solu­tion: smear Cruz because—heaven forbid!—he took dona­tions from Injuns (instead of Ken Lay). The pay-off? Once Arnold is Gov­er­nor, he bless­es the sweet­heart set­tle­ments with the pow­er com­pa­nies. When that hap­pens, Bus­ta­man­te’s court cas­es are prob­a­bly lost. There aren’t many judges who will let a case go to tri­al to pro­tect a state if that state’s gov­er­nor has already allowed the mat­ter to be ‘set­tled’ by a reg­u­la­to­ry agency.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

7. As soon as Schwarzeneg­ger sealed his elec­toral bid, he float­ed a pro­pos­al to dereg­u­late the state’s elec­tric­i­ty market—a move strong­ly sug­ges­tive of a pay­off to the ener­gy com­pa­nies for which he shills. (His cam­paign manager—former gov­er­nor Pete Wilson—presided over the dereg­u­la­to­ry poli­cies that under­mined Gray Davis.) “Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger is prepar­ing a push to dereg­u­late the state’s elec­tric­i­ty markets—a move embraced by busi­ness lead­ers and some ener­gy ana­lysts but crit­i­cized by many Democ­rats and con­sumer advo­cates as a return to the failed poli­cies that sparked Cal­i­for­ni­a’s ener­gy cri­sis. . . .The actor-turned-politi­cian made lit­tle men­tion of his plan to reduce state reg­u­la­tion of ener­gy mar­kets dur­ing the recall race, devot­ing his time instead to bash­ing Gov. Gray Davis for sad­dling the state with expen­sive long-term con­tracts for pow­er. . . . Schwarzeneg­ger’s ener­gy strat­e­gy is being dri­ven by some of the same mem­bers of for­mer Gov. Pete Wilson’s team who led the push for ener­gy dereg­u­la­tion in the mid-1990’s. The gov­er­nor-elect, for exam­ple, picked for his tran­si­tion team Jessie Knight, a for­mer Wil­son appointee to the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion­er and a lead­ing pro­po­nent of dereg­u­la­tion.” (“New Push to Dereg­u­late Ener­gy” by Zachary Coile; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/11/2003; pp. A1-A13.)

8. “ ‘Dereg­u­la­tion has already cost the state $50 bil­lion, give or take,’ said Mike Flo­rio, senior attor­ney for The Util­i­ty Reform Net­work. ‘Why on earth any­one would want to do that again is mys­ti­fy­ing to us. Flo­rio also said he was sus­pi­cious of Schwareneg­ger’s idea because for­mer Enron Corp. chair­man and CEO Ken Lay met with the actor and oth­ers in the spring of 2001, when Lay was push­ing dereg­u­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia. Schwarzeneg­ger has said he does­n’t remem­ber details of the meet­ing.” (Ibid.; p. A13.)

9. Anoth­er sus­pi­cious move by Der Ter­mi­na­tor was his selec­tion of the Flori­da State Bud­get direc­tor to con­duct a review of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s budget—a mat­ter of pub­lic record over­seen by a staff of 200. Flori­da, of course, is the state gov­erned by Jeb Bush and the site of the sub­ver­sion of the 2000 Flori­da elec­tion. “Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger announced Thurs­day that a fis­cal advis­er to Flori­da Gov. Jeb Bush would over­see the audit of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s spend­ing that the new­ly elect­ed gov­er­nor says is need­ed before he lays out his plan to fix state finances. The task will fall to Don­na Arduin, who will take tem­po­rary leave as Flori­da’s state bud­get direc­tor, to con­duct the review. . . .” (“Audit Falls to Flori­da’s Bud­get Chief” by Chris­t­ian Berthelsen, Lyn­da Gled­hill and John Wil­der­muth; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/10/2003; p. A17.)

10. ” . . . But Schwarzeneg­ger’s insis­tence on an ‘out­side’ audit is caus­ing many in the Capi­tol to scratch their heads. Cal­i­for­nia has a high­ly pub­lic bud­get­ing process each year, and the state’s spend­ing plan is avail­able to any­one who wants to see it. The state also has both a state audi­tor who con­ducts a review of state spend­ing every year and a non­par­ti­san ana­lyst who exam­ines the gov­er­nor’s annu­al bud­get. Anoth­er statewide offi­cer, the state con­troller, employs 200 audi­tors that reg­u­lar­ly con­duct spend­ing inquiries . . . .” (Idem.)

11. Schwarzeneg­ger’s expla­na­tion was as unsat­is­fac­to­ry as it was inar­tic­u­late. “Asked what he thought an audit would reveal that could not be found in read­i­ly avail­able state doc­u­ments, Schwarzeneg­ger said: ‘Well, we don’t know. . . . We will know very soon of what is in there that we don’t know. As you know that every day there are new sur­pris­es that we find. And so we want to real­ly open up the books and not have any sur­pris­es, because the only way that you can make good deci­sions is if you have all the infor­ma­tion avail­able.’ ” (Idem.)

12. Fur­ther cement­ing the recall elec­tion as a Bush/Republican coup d’e­tat against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tion of Gray Davis, the broad­cast doc­u­ments the piv­otal role of Bush Repub­li­cans in Schwarzeneg­ger’s “tran­si­tion team.” ” . . . Schwarzeneg­ger assert­ed Thurs­day there was ‘no White House con­nec­tion’ in his tran­si­tion team, and Bush had insist­ed through­out the recall cam­paign that he was only a spec­ta­tor watch­ing a ‘fas­ci­nat­ing polit­i­cal dra­ma.’ Nev­er­the­less, the tran­si­tion team announced Thurs­day con­tains many of Bush’s clos­est Cal­i­for­nia con­tacts, includ­ing four of the sev­en lead­ers of Bush’s 2000 Cal­i­for­nia cam­paign: Ger­ald Parsky, the chair­man, Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas (Los Ange­les Coun­ty) and state Sen. Jim Brulte of Ran­cho Cuca­mon­ga (San Bernardi­no Coun­ty), who co-chaired the cam­paign, and Eloise Ander­son, who served on the Bush 2000 Cal­i­for­nia com­mit­tee.” (“Ties to Bush Clear in Tran­si­tion Team” by Zachary Coile and Marc San­dalow; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/10/2003; p. A18.)

13. “The tran­si­tion team also includes Bush con­fi­dante George Shultz, Matt Fong, the for­mer state trea­sur­er who raised in excess of $100,000 for Bush’s 2000 cam­paign, and Viet Dinh, a for­mer assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al in Bush’s Jus­tice Depart­ment. John Cogan, a Hoover Insti­tu­tion fel­low instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing Schwarzeneg­ger’s eco­nom­ic plan, was among Bush’s top eco­nom­ic advis­ers dur­ing the cam­paign and the ear­ly days of his admin­is­tra­tion.” (Idem.)

14. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of Viet Dinh on Der Ter­mi­na­tor’s team. Dinh was the pri­ma­ry author of the Patri­ot Act. ” . . . Mar­garet Warn­er: Now for a clos­er look at the man at the helm of the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the act that has stirred such con­tro­ver­sy, we’re joined by Viet Dinh, the for­mer assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al for the Office of Legal Pol­i­cy at the jus­tice Depart­ment. He helped draft the Patri­ot Act; and he now teach­es at the George­town Uni­ver­si­ty Law Cen­ter.” (“Con­sid­er­ing the Patri­ot Act”—discussion with for­mer Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al Viet Dinh and Lau­ra Mur­phy of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, mod­er­at­ed by Lau­ra Warn­er; Online New­shour; from ; 8/19/2003; p. 2.)

15. Per­haps the most strik­ing aspect of this coup d’e­tat against Cal­i­for­nia con­cerned the extra­or­di­nary pack­ag­ing of Schwarzeneg­ger by what the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk calls “the opin­ion-form­ing media.” Rig­or­ous­ly pack­aged by those media inter­ests, the “action-hero” was crafti­ly guid­ed by for­mer aides to his cam­paign man­ag­er, for­mer Gov­er­nor Pete Wil­son. These same aides had sculpt­ed the media image of for­mer Russ­ian pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin in 1996. ” . . . That spring [1996], three for­mer staffers for then-Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Pete Wil­son slipped into a hotel room near the Krem­lin and got to work teach­ing Russia—a nation with an 800-year his­to­ry of coups, poi­son­ings-dis­guised as heart attacks and exile to Siberia, but almost no expe­ri­ence in free elections—how to run a mod­ern cam­paign. Enter George Gor­ton, Joe Shu­mate and Dick Dres­ner. You may have heard of them, not because they helped keep Yeltsin in office and pre­serve democ­ra­cy in Rus­sia, which they quite pos­si­bly did, but because in recent months all three have been work­ing over­time to put Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger in the Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor’s office.” (“Rus­sians Won­der Who’s Spin­ning Whom in Film” by Kim Mur­phy; Los Ange­les Times; 10/4/2003; p. A3.)

16. Pri­or to the elec­tion, observers spec­u­lat­ed about what the tabloids would have to say about Schwarzeneg­ger’s numer­ous sex­u­al pec­ca­dil­loes. The busi­ness con­nec­tions between Schwarzeneg­ger’s patron Joe Wei­der and Amer­i­can Media—the lead­ing tabloid conglomerate—apparently led to a delib­er­ate deci­sion to “lay off” Schwarzeneg­ger. ” . . . Last week, the San Jose Mer­cury News turned over a few pieces of the puz­zle when it report­ed that, in Jan­u­ary, Schwarzeneg­ger’s men­tor and ear­ly busi­ness part­ner, Joe Wei­der, had sold his pub­lish­ing empire—including Mus­cle and Fit­ness, Shape, and Men’s Fit­ness magazines—for $350 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Media, the tabloid con­glom­er­ate that owns The Enquir­er, The Star, The Globe and The News of the World. . . .”

17. ” . . . On anoth­er front, the New York Dai­ly News report­ed that Amer­i­can Media own­er and CEO David Peck­er had assured Wei­der that the tabloids were going to ‘lay off’ Schwrzeneg­ger. ‘We’re not going to pull up any dirt on him,’ Wei­der said Peck­er told him. (Amer­i­can Media spokesman Richard Val­vo calls the con­ver­sa­tion ‘unfound­ed rumor’; Wei­der recon­firmed it Wednes­day.” (Idem.)

18. In FTR#‘s 421, 422, we exam­ined mate­r­i­al from Wendy Leigh’s biog­ra­phy of Schwarzeneg­ger. Aware of her inves­ti­ga­tion, Schwarzeneg­ger pre­cip­i­tat­ed a heavy-hand­ed cam­paign to squelch the biog­ra­phy. Note that Schwarzeneg­ger’s alleged attempts at get­ting an asso­ciate to secret­ly tape record Wendy Leigh would be ille­gal under the laws of many states. “Tak­ing [body builder Rick Wayne’s] expe­ri­ence into account, as well as the remarks of jour­nal­ist Joan Goodman—who in Play­boy char­ac­ter­ized Arnold as ‘one of the more fine­ly tuned con­trol freaks I have met in a career of celebri­ty journalism’—I decid­ed not to con­tact Arnold until my research for the book was well under way.” (Arnold: The Unau­tho­rized Biog­ra­phy; by Wendy Leigh; Copy­right 1990 by Wendy Leigh; Con­g­don & Weed [HC]; ISBN 0–86553-216–8; p. 270.)

19. “I made no secret of the project, how­ev­er, con­tact­ing Arnold’s friends and fam­i­ly at an ear­ly stage. When any of them asked me if Arnold had autho­rized the book, I told them he had not and that I had­n’t yet con­tact­ed him but planned to when I was ready. As a result, Arnold was aware of the book from the start. His close asso­ciates Art Zeller, Frank Zane, and Joe Wei­der con­fid­ed to me dur­ing taped inter­views that they had asked Arnold’s per­mis­sion to talk to me and that he had agreed to let them. Wei­der, how­ev­er, had a court reporter present dur­ing our inter­view, and before­hand he insist­ed that I see him alone (with­out Steve [Leigh’s hus­band], who was with me) and went on to inter­ro­gate me about what I intend­ed to write in my book. I explained that the con­tent of my book depend­ed on the out­come of my research. Wei­der left me with the dis­tinct impres­sion that his ques­tions had been dic­tat­ed by Arnold. After allow­ing Steve back into the room, he then pro­ceed­ed to give me a half-hour inter­view dur­ing which he was polite but did­n’t go into great detail. A few days after­ward, I inter­viewed a lead­ing body­builder who con­fid­ed to me that Arnold had asked him to ‘get her over to your house and tape-record her with­out her know­ing it.’ ” (Idem.)

20. “Con­fi­dent that I was armed with enough facts to inter­view him in depth, I wrote to Arnold in the sum­mer of 1989 to request an inter­view. His sec­re­tary, Lynn Marks, wrote back with a request for more details about my project. This response was couched in terms designed to give the impres­sion that Arnold knew noth­ing about the book. Judg­ing from what the peo­ple I inter­viewed had said, how­ev­er, that was not true. I replied to the let­ter, giv­ing the request­ed details. How­ev­er, Arnold would grant me an inter­view only under cir­cum­stances that would give him con­trol of the book and that no respon­si­ble jour­nal­ist would do.” (Ibid.; pp. 270–271.)

21. “After that, the next Arnold inti­mate whom I con­tact­ed and who asked Arnold’s per­mis­sion to talk to me, Charles Gaines, told me that Arnold’s sec­re­tary had told him that Arnold ‘very strong­ly dis­cour­aged him’ from speak­ing to me. I also wrote to Maria Shriv­er request­ing an inter­view, received a request for more details from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of hers, and then respond­ed with the rel­e­vant details, but I nev­er received a reply to my sec­ond let­ter.” (Ibid.; p. 271.)

22. Accord­ing to Leigh, the attempts at squelch­ing the biog­ra­phy went fur­ther than that. She began receiv­ing threat­en­ing late-night phone calls. After dis­cussing attempts at inter­dict­ing reporters’ ques­tions at the 1990 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the broad­cast high­lights these accounts. ” . . . But accord­ing to Leigh, the intim­i­da­tion went fur­ther than Cannes. Book pro­mo­tion and appear­ances were mys­te­ri­ous­ly can­celed, callers made late-night threats, and her pub­lish­ers received an offer that Schwarzeneg­ger would sell them a book if they did­n’t pub­lish Leigh’s biog­ra­phy, she said. ‘This is a man who has total con­tempt for the pub­lic and the truth, and does his best to sup­press pub­lic­i­ty’, said Leigh.” (“Tak­ing Charge” by don Nis­senbaum and Eric Nalder; San Jose Mer­cury News; 10/5/2003; p. 18A.)

23. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed at length in FTR#421, the broad­cast sets forth addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing Schwarzeneg­ger’s expres­sions of admi­ra­tion for Hitler. “A film pro­duc­er who chron­i­cled Arnold Shwarzeneg­ger’s rise to fame as a cham­pi­on body­builder in the 1970’s cir­cu­lat­ed a book pro­pos­al six years ago that quot­ed the young Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger express­ing admi­ra­tion for Adolph Hitler. The book pro­pos­al by the pro­duc­er, George But­ler, includ­ed what were pre­sent­ed as ver­ba­tim excerpts from inter­views con­duct­ed with Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger in the film­ing of the doc­u­men­tary ‘Pump­ing Iron.’ In a part of the inter­view not used in the film, Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger was asked to name his heroes—‘who do you admire most.’ ” (“Schwarzeneg­ger Admired Hitler, Book Pro­pos­al Says” by Adam Nagour­ney and David D. Kirk­patrick; The New York Times; 10/3/2003; p. A19.)

24. ” ‘It depends for what,’ Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger said, accord­ing to the tran­script con­tained in the book pro­pos­al. ‘I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a lit­tle man with almost no for­mal edu­ca­tion up to pow­er. And I admire him for being such a good pub­lic speak­er and for what he did with it.’ In addi­tion to the tran­script, Mr. But­ler wrote in his book pro­pos­al that in the 1970’s, he con­sid­ered Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger a ‘fla­grant, out­spo­ken admir­er of Hitler.’ In the pro­pos­al, Mr. But­ler also said he had wit­nessed Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger play­ing ‘Nazi march­ing songs from long-play­ing records in his col­lec­tion at home’ and said that the actor ‘fre­quent­ly clicked his heels and pre­tend­ed to be an S.S. offi­cer. . . .” (Idem.)

25. ” . . . A copy of the pro­pos­al for the book, which would have been enti­tled ‘The Mas­ter Plan,’ was pro­vid­ed to the New York Times on Tues­day by some­one who has no obvi­ous affil­i­a­tion with any of the Cal­i­for­nia cam­paigns. The per­son pro­vid­ed the copy on the con­di­tion that his iden­ti­ty be kept secret and would not explain the moti­va­tion for releas­ing it. But the per­son was aware that the dis­clo­sure, com­ing with­in days of the Cal­i­for­nia recall elec­tion, could dam­age Mr. Schwarzeneg­ger’s cam­paign.” (Idem.)

26. Among the less-appe­tiz­ing of Schwarzeneg­ger’s asso­ci­a­tions is his mem­ber­ship on the board of US Eng­lish, an orga­ni­za­tion that appears to have meta­mor­phosed from a lit­er­a­cy-pro­mo­tion con­sor­tium into a xeno­pho­bic group, fre­quent­ed by fel­low trav­el­ers of the White Suprema­cist move­ment. “Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger is com­ing under grow­ing crit­i­cism from civ­il rights groups and immi­grants’ advo­cates for his 16-year mem­ber­ship on the advi­so­ry board of U.S. Eng­lish, a Wash­ing­ton-based orga­ni­za­tion that bills itself as the nation’s largest group ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing Eng­lish as Amer­i­ca’s offi­cial lan­guage. . . .The orga­ni­za­tion’s chair­man, a Chilean-born archi­tect named Mau­ro Muji­ca, said the orga­ni­za­tion’s inter­nal pol­i­tics have noth­ing to do with Schwarzeneg­ger or Cal­i­for­ni­a’s recall elec­tion . . . Ear­li­er this month, Muji­ca accept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of his com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor, James Lubin­skas, after the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter linked Lubin­skas with white extrem­ists. Mark Potok, edi­tor of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter’s quar­ter­ly Intel­li­gence Report, said Lubin­skas shared the podi­um at Wash­ing­ton con­fer­ences in 1999 and 2000 with for­mer Ku Klux Klan mem­bers David Duke and Don Black. In addi­tion, Potok said, Lubin­skas wrote as recent­ly as this spring for a jour­nal run by white suprema­cist Jared Tay­lor. . . .” (“Schwarzeneg­ger Crit­i­cized for U.S. Eng­lish Con­nec­tion” by Greg Kriko­ri­an and Joe Math­ews; Los Ange­les Times; 8/30/2003; p. A16.)

27. As dis­cussed in FTR#421, Schwarzeneg­ger appears to be eye­ing the pres­i­den­cy. One of the pro­mot­ers of the bill that would enable Schwarzeneg­ger (a nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zen) to run for the pres­i­den­cy is Orrin Hatch, the chair­man of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Schwarzeneg­ger might become Pres­i­dent is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed. “On Octo­ber 8, 1993—a day short of exact­ly ten years before the orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled date of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s recall election—one of Sylvester Stal­lone’s bet­ter movies opened wide at area the­atres. In ‘Demo­li­tion man,’ Stal­lone played a Los Ange­les cop, cryo­geni­cal­ly frozen around the turn of the cen­tu­ry as pun­ish­ment for a bum rap, who is thawed out in the year 2032 to give chase to his sim­i­lar­ly thawed-out crim­i­nal neme­sis. . . . As she [San­dra Bul­lock] is show­ing him around the L.A. of the future—where every­thing is tidy, cor­po­rate, and bland—he does a dou­ble take when she men­tions the ‘Schwarzeneg­ger Pres­i­den­tial Library.’ Decades before, Bul­lock explains perk­i­ly, Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger became so pop­u­lar that the Amer­i­can peo­ple waived the tech­ni­cal­i­ties and made him their max­i­mum leader. . . .” (“Strong­man” by Hen­drik Hertzberg; The New York­er; 9/29/2003; p. 43.)

28. ” . . . On July 10th, Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch, Repub­li­can of Utah, qui­et­ly intro­duced what he hopes will become the twen­ty-eighth amend­ment. . . .As it hap­pens Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger (who, accord­ing to the Deseret News, Hatch­’s home-town paper, is both a ‘pal’ and a ‘fund-rais­ing helper’ of the Sen­a­tor’s) became a cit­i­zen of the Unit­ed States pre­cise­ly 20 years ago. Hatch is the chair­man of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, where con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments orig­i­nate. His amend­ment stands a good chance of going to the states, thir­ty-eight of which would be need­ed for rat­i­fi­ca­tion. It would cer­tain­ly pass in the states where Lati­no and oth­er for­eign-born cit­i­zens, now twelve mil­lion strong, are con­cen­trat­ed, and leg­is­la­tors else­where might sup­port it as a ges­ture toward the ‘nation of immi­grants’ cat­e­chism of Amer­i­ca’s reli­gion.” (Idem.)

29. The pro­gram con­cludes with a pas­sage excerpt­ed in FTR#268. A Ger­man uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor’s obser­va­tion on the appeal of Hitler to the aver­age Ger­man should be instruc­tive. It was appar­ent­ly the media-dri­ven image of Schwarzeneg­ger-the-action-hero that gen­er­at­ed the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the aver­age vot­er with Der Ter­mi­na­tor. “What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. And their sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hitler, their trust in him may have inci­den­tal­ly have reas­sured those who would oth­er­wise have wor­ried about it. Their trust in him made it eas­i­er to reas­sure oth­ers who might have wor­ried about it.” (They Thought they Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945; by Mil­ton May­er; copy­right 1955 [SC]; Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press; ISBN 0–226-51190–1; pp. 166–167.)

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