Personal Life/Political Life: Should the Twain Ever Meet?

It is astounding that these revelations can be called anything other than political and I'm a liberal who would never consider voting for Arnold.

The character police will have their way but to me, these choice complaints and allegations made years after the fact are just plain gross, whether they are against a Republican or a Dem.

The California Recall Election was always stupid and has only gotten more so in these last days of desperate politicizing.

Yeah.

Piffka, it looks like most if not all of the allegations were made at the time they occurred, separately, and then after that nothing really happened. They're on record and everything though. I don't think it is so much that the allegations sprung from nowhere, as that they had a catalyst and then were re-told, all at once. (I have some quotes on the other thread, like from a March 2001 Premiere article.)

But yeah, definitely borne of desperate politicizing nonetheless.

I dunno. I am very against character-based politics in general. I think what's most important is that the politician do the job, and that there are indeed lots of unsavory aspects of doing the job well. I hate the idea that lots of talented people with skeletons in their closet -- marijuana use, drunk driving convictions, shoplifting, orgies, whatever -- can't enter politics because they are aware of the muckraking that is sure to ensue.

In an ideal world, I probably would prefer that a) politicians be given more privacy, and b) that they not use their personal lives to make themselves more electable. Dlowan asked about whether our clients or customers have the right to know about the skeletons in our closets, but I also don't tend to make a point of telling my clients and customers what church I go to, how many years I've been married, how faithful I've been, what my military service was, how much money I give to charity, and the many many other personal details that politicians regularly drop into their speeches. I think it's sort of live by the sword and die by the sword.

And while this is my ideal, it's not reality, and I don't know what it will take to make it reality. So once we are back in the reality of the sword, I don't think it makes sense to ignore the bad personal stuff when the good personal stuff is busily being played up and used to the candidates advantage. And Arnold is SO running on his personality and his image as a movie star.



(The Onion.)

I agree with you.......to a point. I have no problem with a politician who has smoked some pot, had a few too many sex partners or even committed a petty crime in his/her youth. It is true that the media has elevated the most innocuous of scandals to a high art form, and that, to me is reprehensible.

I don't think that anything that someone did years ago ought to even be considered when evaluating a candidate. After all, even serious crimes have statutes of limitations!

My interest is how has the candidate behaved in the recent past? Has he mended his ways, had an epiphany, become a better person?

I am not concerned that, for instance, Arnold groped women during his bodybuilding days. He was a macho kid, in a macho environment. What concerns me, is that he apparently has not matured since that time.

Hmmm - an epiphany is maybe a bit much to expect!

It is interesting to hear you folk talk - pollies over here - except the odd one from the far right - don't tend to chunter on about their churches, charities and all that - I mean, there are the sickening photos of families and such, sometimes - but lots of ours are divorced, or reasonably openly gay, or pretty er...active... and what have you - none of the women seem to get cute photies wiv the 'usband and kids, I note! My closest friend is a Minister in our government (er - that is Cabinet Minister - not church one!) and she says - in the unlikely event that she is asked about drug use, she will say she never EXhaled!!! Heehee. I can see ours might go the way of the USA - there is sometimes talk of family values and so on - but I wonder if some of the reason they don't get "done" so much on "morality" issues is because they tend not to go on about that - as well as being because of differences in our cultures? Hmmmmmm....

Dlowan
Dlowan, I knew there was a good reason that I like Aussies, at least most of them, especially the A2Kers.

BumbleBeeBoogie

Yeah, that's what I tend to think. I don't know the history of it... perhaps Setanta or someone can fill in the blanks... but I think there is this whole "Fine, Upstanding Citizen and Pillar of the Community" thing in American politics that begs to be undermined. I'm not sure of the chicken and the egg of it... whether the muckraking came first, and people started saying how wonderful they were pre-emptively, or if there was some big fat target of a Scolding Righteous Upstanding Citizen who also had a secret child out of wedlock, and, well...

Of course, the actual evolution of it was almost definitely gradual, nothing that can be traced back to a single incident, Mrs. O'Leary's cow. But if I were to guess I'd say it would be American Puritanism + Watergate. I think before Watergate, the media knew things that they felt it was unseemly for the public to be appraised of, so they kept quiet out of a certain honor code. (Kennedy's philandering, FDR's legs, etc.) After Watergate, journalists both wanted to be Bernstein and Woodward, stars, part of the story, and were suspicious of who and what they were protecting. Then it gradually became more and more about the scoop... guess what WE found out about HIM! Read all about it in the ________.

And of course there is a public appetite for it. If people didn't buy the papers with the dirt, they wouldn't publish.

I don't know how to get out of the cycle, though, really. Do people ignore it? (I'll note again that on the Arnold thread I did not say he should lose the chance at office because of this, and that my preference was that all of this be dealt with, in the courts, before it became a political issue.) Do newspapers refuse to print it? Can you imagine the flap, now, if it came to light that the editor of the L.A. Times knew about the allegations but refused to print them?

In the case of Arnold S. if a little groping and sitting a girl on his lap is the best the the media people can come up with then it is nice to know that cause if they can dig up something more sinister they will do so. To an analytical mind this a good statring point of analysis. This is one of his negative side, let us look at all the negative and all the positive and make the correct judgment. Can you do that without being informed?

I think this is another one of the very important dangers threatening our constitution and Bill of Rights. How free of a press do we want?

This on top of the controversey surrounding reporter's releasing names of informants will be a rough test of that freedom. I hope our country survives it.

LA Times

Excerpts:

L.A. Times Faces Anger for Schwarzenegger Coverage
Sun Oct 5, 1:02 PM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters Industry to My Yahoo!



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times has had about 1,000 readers cancel subscriptions and been "flooded" with angry letters, calls and e-mail protesting its coverage of Arnold Schwarzenegger (news)'s alleged sexual harassment of women, it reported on Sunday.

The newspaper has detailed allegations by a total of 15 women in three front-page stories since Thursday against Schwarzenegger, touching off a controversy that has consumed the final days of Tuesday's recall election in which the actor and former Mr. Universe remains the front-runner.

The newspaper has had about 1,000 readers cancel subscriptions and received some 400 phone calls critical of its coverage, "many angry, some profane," as of Saturday, it reported in a story carried inside Sunday's newspaper.


Readers have complained the newspaper singled out Schwarzenegger for critical coverage because of a liberal bias or ran its stories too close to Tuesday's vote, it said.


Before a Schwarzenegger rally in Modesto, California on Saturday, one speaker, Rob Johnson (news), a radio host, urged the crowd to make the media feel welcome.


"Except for the guy. ... Who's the guy with the L.A. Times? Find him and beat him up would you?" Johnson said jokingly, according to the newspaper.

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