catapult magazine

so arnold schwarzeneggar was just elected governor of california despite having been accused of inappropriate conduct with many women over many years. the other day, i heard someone commenting that “the liberal media” was behind all of these allegations, which essentially allowed them to dismiss such allegations entirely.

contrast that with the insanity surrounding the clinton/lewinski scandal. remember that? republicans led the charge to spend $50 million on an independent counsel to discover whether clinton had sex, lied about sex or was anywhere near anyone ever having sex.

so was that the liberal media, too?

i know i’m generalizing all over the place here, but why does it seem like conservatives can always cast blame on a liberal media when scandal enters their camp? it doesn’t seem to add up. for example, if al gore had been president for the last three years and had done everything exactly as bush has, i have a feeling he would have been burned at the stake by now.

what’s up with that? what accounts for this strange trend?

tribalism

please elaborate . . .

Unfortunately, living in CA forces me to reckon with this crap a bit. Apparently, whilst some of the allegations are true (by Arnies admittance) it has become painfully clear that much of the allegations were “created” and then tossed to the LA Times who ran with the story instead of investigating it first. It is a tactic in politics to throw a bone to the press on the Thursday before an election so the opponent has very little time to respond and/or debunk the allegations before the election. It is devised to decrease momentum of the opponent and displace voter confidence.

The interesting thing is that Californians didn’t entirely bite. Davis is well known for his smear campaigns and negative ads. People were waiting for something to errupt just as it did. On top of that, Arnold did something no one expected…he basically came out and admitted that he may have done some of what he was accused of (although he doesn’t remember doing those thing specifically) because it was within the scope of his character during those earlier years. The later accusations he has completely denied ever happened. And to top that off, he publically apologized and asked forgiveness for his bad judgement in the past as well his offending those he didn’t know were being offended. He didn’t run away from it as was expected.

It should also be thrown into the ring that the LA Times sat on a story about Davis’s office antics for several weeks. Charges made by female workers in his office of his verbal and physical abuse (he grabbed and shook one of his advisors…no slapping or hitting…) have been well documented, yet the LA Times never ran any story on that.

Subsequently the LA Times has lost some 1300 subscribers (to date) ranging from Democrats to Republicans. People are tired of the puppet show.

From further north up the left coast:

The S.F. Chronicle had been trying as hard (with fewer resources) as the Times to brush things Davis’ way.

As a conservative, I am very troubled by Arnold’s history of stupid frat boy moves. In my mind he is not qualified for leadership because of it. But here in the city, where 80 percent voted against the recall, no one took those dumb moves that seriously. They disliked him before he opened his mouth.

In comparison with Clinton, even the worst accusation (aside from the cartoon of Arnold actually groping Hitler) that I heard against Arnold was less serious than physical marital infidelity and rape and in a completely different atmosphere (not the oval office or a governor’s hotel room).

While I think McClintock had stronger ideas, a better long term plan, and much more integrity, it seems Arnold is perfect for California – pretty much middle of the road. He may call himself a Republican, but he had half the flipping Kennedy family on the platform with him at his victory speech. If he stays true to his word not to sink into the corruption of special interests, that alone will be a big step toward balancing the budget.

I said tribalism earlier because these debates seem to have less to do with policy or ideology than about ‘our side’ and ‘their side.’ If the leader of my tribe groped (I love that word) someone I don’t want that to become a big deal, but if the leader of the other tribe gropes a bit there’ll be hell to pay. Both sides do that. It’s party politics. Schadenfreude at its worst.

I tend to agree with the radio guy Adam Felber that more than anything, the thing that bothers me is how intelligence has come to be equated with elitism. Since when did we stop requiring intelligence of our leaders? Why do we keep electing average guys? Bottom line is that Arnold has no business in politics. He hasn’t proven that he’s smart (rather the opposite) enough to run a state. (Today I think he said that the budget crisis in California was worse than he thought)

And whether the scandals are true or not, there is enough other evidence out there to convince me that he’s a sexist pig, not just someone who made a mistake. But again, that is not the primary reason that I’m upset that he won— it’s because it bothers me that the American public seems to be so willing to trust its government to certain people just as long as they portray themselves “likeable”, or “just like you and me”. It doesn’t seem to matter if they are grossly unqualified.

Some said the same thing of Ronald Reagan.

I don’t think that Arnold is the most “qualified” for the job…McClintock is definitely the most qualified. The reason I think Arnold is appealing is because he is NOT a politician. He is a successful business man who has nothing really to gain in this…in the end. He can’t be President. He perhaps could pursue some UN position in the distant future if he is successful as governor…but why? He has all the money he will ever need. He doesn’t need the headache for sure. It just seems that Arnold actually cares. Qualified…no. Politically ambitious…perhaps. Concerned for California’s future…it definitely appears so.

Somewhat related: One of my classmates gave a presentation this evening in which she presented a linguistic analysis of the coverage of the election. She analyzed articles from the SF Chronicle covering the recall.

One of the interesting parts of her analysis was a frequency count of words used in the articles. She used a computer technique called concordancing to count the frequency of various words and terms. Of course, words like “the” and other articles or determiners come up quite frequently.

The interesting thing to me was that some of the highest frequency content words were “Schwarzenegger,” “tribal,” “gaming,” and “indian.”

It confirmed what I saw during the coverage of the recall—Arnold only really had one issue, at least that he talked about publicy—indian gaming. At one point I believe he even said that the Indians were not taking enough responsibility for taking care of CA.

Another interesting thing about this election is that there are still thousands of ballots uncounted, including absentees and other special ballots. I don’t know much about the recall process, or reporting, but could it still be possible that the outcome could change?

Not to feed too much into the “media conspiracy” idea, but I find JabirdV’s post interesting. I was listening to NPR and they substantiated the rumors about Arnold’s past against some people’s suspicions. Apparently, some people wondered if the females making accusations were just trying to get media attention. NPR told listeners that the girls making the accusations had not come to the media (in other words, they weren’t just trying to get attention), but that the media went to them. This was meant to substantiate rumors, but it now appears that they unknowingly exposed part of the fabrication of the smear campaign. Someone was searching for dirty details of Arnold’s past to circulate in the media.

Then I was listening to NPR the night of the campain, and reports came through that 45% of female voters voted for Arnold.

Is it really bad journalism if a journalist heard rumours about Arnold’s sexual misconduct and finds the victims so he can tell their story? Seems to me that it was a good story, and there was obviously truth to the allegations. Why would a woman want to make something like this up? It’s kind of embarrassing for her too, I would think. Or is it a mark of honour to have been groped by Arnold before he became a family man?