Enquiring Minds Want to Know About Arnold

From salon.com's The Fix:

Baby got "I'll be back": The ties between bodybuilder/actor/governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer and Star magazine, grow ever curiouser. Just last month, it came to light that Pecker paid a woman who reportedly had a long-term affair with Schwarzenegger $20,000 to keep quiet -- even paying the woman's friend an additional $1,000 to not talk to the media. The publisher's motivation was said to be various business deals he'd made with the Governator, valued at over $8 million. Now the Los Angeles Times is also reporting that Pecker forked over $2,000 to try to cover up a 1983 Playboy video called "Carnival in Rio," featuring your host, Schwarzenegger, dancing with bikini-clad ladies. "At one point, he grabs a dancer's buttocks; she immediately clasps his wrists and pushes his hands away," the Times reports. "You know something," Schwarzenegger turns to the camera at one point and says, "after watching the [dancers] shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part -- the ass." Pecker apparently didn't know the video was already widely available on the Web.

How did this thing become governor of California, again? Oh, that's right -- his Republican owners bought and paid for a recall of a governor who wasn't popular and wasn't doing a great job (hey, just like Arnold!) and who had the additional misfortune of being in charge when Ken Lay and Enron raped and pillaged our state; the same Ken Lay and Enron who used to be bestest friends with the Republican party. And Republican owned-and-operated paper-trail-free voting machines probably didn't hurt. Anybody see a pattern?

And now he's ignoring the will of the people -- while claiming to be following the will of the people, of course -- and refusing to allow the democratic process to work by vetoing marriage equality. Imagine that -- a Republican pawn who's not fond of democracy! Who would have thought it?

And can we all just openly acknowledge that he's one of the all-time worst Hollywood slimeballs? Bad enough that, from the day he first set foot in America, he's owed his career(s) to the -- I'm sure -- totally selfless support of select rich gay American men (a demographic who to this day are notoriously philanthropic in their sponsoring of huge slabs of Eastern European beefcake) and now he's targeting queers, can we talk about his life as a serial sexual assaulter? Has any woman been safe from him? I went to undergrad with a gorgeous blonde who also happened to be more than a little sheltered, devoutly religious, 19 years old and a virgin. She worked VIP hospitality in a hotel and was assigned the very-married Arnold. All she ever would admit he did was aggressively proposition her, but she couldn't even say that without crying, and that is certainly bad enough.

Can we begin the recall process now, please? Is it not bad enough he's throwing away millions of our dollars on a special election nobody wants that's designed purely to make him more of a dictator? Can you imagine what he'll do once he's unfettered? And don't think this special election won't give him everything he wants, because the Republicans don't take chances. That's part of why they don't believe in just having regular elections like everybody else, in case there's still anybody out there who hasn't caught on.

I admit it: I miss democracy. I miss living in a less-evil world. I miss having at least the chance of good things happening and I miss peace and prosperity and I miss hope.

I don't know much about the way the world works, but I know this: it won't change until we refuse to play along anymore. So Arnold's handlers have told him to ignore the will of the people and veto marriage equality? Big surprise. If we can't stop him, then after the fact we can at least help him to regret he ever wanted to be anything more than a fading, pathetic Hollywood has-been.

Please Help Us Defeat the Terminator

Below is the e-mail I've sent out to family and friends -- hey, I had to do something:

Last week the California legislature became the first in the United States to vote for marriage equality by passing the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act. Immediately, Gov. Schwarzenegger (oh, how humiliating just to type that title before that name) announced he would veto the legislation based on "the will of the people" -- the same people who expressed their will by electing the representatives who passed the marriage equality legislation! This legislation is so mainstream, even our Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante supports it.

What Arnold is hiding behind is the five year-old Prop 22, which, to this state's shame, "only" prohibits California from recognizing marriages it doesn't like from other states. It has no applicability to marriage equality in California and the California Supreme Court recently ruled it unconstitutional, anyway (imagine -- as if all Americans are supposed to be equal!). So whose will is this that Arnold claims to be following?

The lack of marriage equality denies over 1,000 rights to committed same-sex couples and most adversely affects children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled. Marriage inequality is cruelty at its worst. It keeps people from their spouse's deathbed, it robs them of their children, and it withholds from them money and services which their taxes have paid for. It denies American citizens aid and comfort at the worst times of their lives -- aid and comfort non-same-sex couples and their children take for granted and would never consider living without.

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED NOW. If you or the LGBT people who are your friends and family are to have a hope of ever attaining full citizenship in this country, you MUST contact the governor's office NOW.

1) Go to: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/ Be sure to click the button for "supporting" and select the tab for "Same Gender Marriage" before writing your comments.

2) Write the governor directly at: governor@governor.ca.gov

3) Phone him at: 916-445-2841

4) Fax him at: 916-445-4633

Even one e-mail or phone call could make the difference. Show Arnold that family values apply to ALL families and help us turn back this veto while there's still time. Thank you!

There's No Such Thing as Gay or Same-Sex Marriage

As if anyone needed another reason to love the great state of California, yesterday we became the first state in the Union to legislate marriage equality.

The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act simply makes sense. It's simply American. It's simply the right thing. There are no valid arguments against it -- simply none -- only hate and ignorance and fear. Equality is the prime American value, marriage protects children and the elderly and all other members of a family, and religious freedom, as well as freedom from religion, are principles on which this country was founded. Marking some citizens as less equal than others is evil. This is not an opinion, this is a fact with which no sane person can disagree.

However, amidst the jubilation, I have one plea, and it's one I make everywhere I possibly can: please stop calling it gay or same-sex marriage. There is nothing in AB 849 that creates a new system of marriage, separate from heterosexual marriage. There is nothing in the marriage laws of Massachusetts, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands or Spain which provides for a separate system of marriage for non-heterosexual partners. Gay or same-sex marriage simply does not exist. It's not separate, it's equal. Call it what it is: marriage equality.

Besides being accurate, it takes the power back from the enemies of equality who want to use scary buzzwords to distort the truth. They want people to think of two men or two women getting married as something strange or alien or wrong. Two men or two women getting married are none of those things. What they are is equal. Marriage equality is what we're celebrating, universal marriage equality is what we're working towards, and marriage equality is what our Legislature has passed in California. And it's about damn time.

EQUALITY CALIFORNIA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 6, 2005

Contact: Eddie Gutiérrez, Director of Communications
Phone: (323) 217-8875 Email: eddie@eqca.org

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE MAKES HISTORY AND BECOMES FIRST IN NATION TO PASS MARRIAGE EQUALITY LEGISLATION

Governor Schwarzenegger Faces Decision That Will Likely Become Key Part of His Legacy

Sacramento, CA -- In a tremendous turn of events, the California Legislature made history today by becoming the first state legislature in the nation to pass equal marriage rights legislation for same-sex couples. Needing 41 votes to pass the Assembly after last week's historic 21-15 vote in the Senate, the final roll call was 41-35 in favor of Equality California-sponsored Assembly Bill (AB) 849, The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, authored by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-Francisco), Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez (D-Los Angeles), and 30 co-authors including the LGBT Legislative Caucus. Governor Schwarzenegger now has until October 6, 2005, to sign or veto the bill or he can let it go into effect without his signature.

"Today in California, love conquered fear, principle conquered politics and equality conquered injustice," said Geoffrey Kors, Executive Director of Equality California. "For the first time in our nation's history, the people's elected representatives have taken a stand to protect all families and ensure equality for all. We are counting on Governor Schwarzenegger to lift the burden of discrimination from hundreds of thousands of California families by becoming the first governor in the nation to sign legislation ending discrimination against same-sex couples obtaining a civil marriage license. His legacy will in large part be based on whether he signs or vetoes this historic civil rights legislation."

This vote comes on the heels of a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California that shows likely California voters are equally split, 46% to 46% on the issue of civil marriage for same-sex couples. This represents a shift in voter attitudes towards support for marriage equality. In comparison, polling showed that 70% of the public opposed overturning prohibitions on interracial marriage in 1967 when the United Supreme Court ruled such prohibitions to be unconstitutional.

California is now the first and only state in the nation where the legislature has voted to end marriage discrimination. Presently, Massachusetts is the only state to grant civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This was the result of a decision by the state's highest court. Vermont and Connecticut provide civil unions for same-sex couples, and California and New Jersey presently offer domestic partnerships. This victory in California, the state with the largest numbers of same-sex couples in the country, is anticipated to have an incredibly positive influence on the future of marriage equality nationwide.

"At last, righteous voices have found courageous votes," said Brian Bennett, member of the state Republican Central Committee and the EQCA Board. "Our Legislature didn't wait to be ordered to do the right thing, it just did it. And now the public is beginning to understand that this is about having the necessary protections and responsibilities needed to love, strengthen, and provide for our families. California is leading our nation, God-willing, into a new era where the true measure of dignity, equality, and compassion are voluntarily given."

Proposition 22, which said that California would not be required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, is not impacted by this legislation. Further, the California Superior Court Judge Kramer deemed Proposition 22 unconstitutional earlier this year.

For local and regional spokespeople, please contact Eddie Gutiérrez, EQCA's Director of Communications, at 323-217-8875 or eddie@eqca.org. EQCA has offices in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles and chapter leaders throughout the state. We are also available for Spanish-language interviews.

Founded in 1998, Equality California is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots-based, statewide advocacy organization whose mission is to ensure the dignity, safety, equality and civil rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Californians. Equality California is one of the largest and fastest growing statewide LGBT organizations in the country. We can be contacted through our website at www.eqca.org (http://www.eqca.org/).

The City of New Orleans

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Halfway home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me; I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Arlo Guthrie's version of Steve Goodman's song, The City of New Orleans, has been a favorite song of mine since childhood. Perhaps not surprisingly, the actual city itself has been a favorite city of mine since childhood, too. I've had the pleasure of visiting New Orleans a number of times, but not a great enough number. It's a city built on style, hospitality, music, food, history and cultural diversity -- what's not to love? If it weren't for the humidity, I would probaby have lived there. As it is, my visits have to be restricted to sometime between October and March in order to avoid being totally physically miserable.

That fact alone is enough to make me feel sorry for the victims of the levee breaches which followed the passing of Hurricane Katrina. I know what it's like to be there in that crushingly brutal late summer Gulf humidity. I can only imagine, however, what it's like to be suffering through that and to be trapped in the hellhole that is now the Superdome or to be stranded on your attic or rooftop with no food, water or power, as corpses float by.

Not all the citizens of New Orleans are reacting well to this catastrophe. Who can blame them? A heartbreakingly beautiful city, far too many of its citizens are heartbreakingly impoverished. Far too many of the poor are black. And, no matter how much I love the Crescent City, to be poor and black in New Orleans is a terrible thing. The racial disparity in New Orleans is overt, if not outright anachronistic. The economic disparity is no better. The poor in New Orleans and other Gulf cities live in places and ways most Americans can't even begin to concieve.

So, of course there's looting. Of course there are guns. Of course these people, who have indeed been abandoned, recognize that they've been abandoned again and they're angry over losing what little they had and they fear that the worst is yet to come. If you were them, wouldn't you?

The worst horror of all is that this could possibly have been prevented. Among the remaining horrors is that the occupying forces in the White House couldn't be bothered to care once it happened. Another is that the National Guard and their equipment, the very personnel and equipment we have in place to protect our country, to search for and rescue our citizens, just aren't there. They were sent to fight an illegal, immoral and unethical invasion of a country which was no threat to us, but one which was poised to be a threat to Saudi Arabian oil profits. The occupation of Iraq is costing us six billion dollars a month. Imagine how fortified and prepared for natural disaster New Orleans could have been with six billion dollars -- only one month's budget for a war built on lies.

The United States of America has now had two of its cities devastated in the 21st Century, and its only 2005. How many cities were devastated under other, legally-elected administrations? I remember this country getting through the '90s without a single devastated American city. Remember when the government actually worked to prevent devastation to American cities, like when the terrorists who were going to bomb LAX and Seattle's Space Needle for New Year's 2000 were caught? And remember how they didn't bomb LAX or the Space Needle? Or how necessary measures to protect our cities from natural disasters were once routinely funded? Weren't those good times?

Salon.com is one of the few media outlets which are doing an excellent job reporting on the truth about the New Orleans disaster. Here are some links (you can read the articles by choosing the free site pass which involves sitting through a short commercial):

"No one can say they didn't see it coming" by Sidney Blumenthal

Anatomy of an unnatural disaster by Michael Scherer

Left out in the cold by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Bush fought funding in Energy Bill for Gulf Coast protection by Michael Scherer

We must do what we can right now to help the victims of the flooding in New Orleans, but the greatest tribute we can pay to them and those who died due to indifference is to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.