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Saturday, August 30, 2003
The Understated Word 
| | For some great Webio, download (it's a .zip) and listen (in .mp3) to Chris Lydon's compleat collection of interviews (so far). |
Pectoral order
| | The chance that I'd ever vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger, for anything, was zero in the first place, for the simple reason that there would certainly be more qualified candiates running against him. |
| | But what the hell, I've figured: At least he's interesting. Here's a guy who leveraged a freakishly idealized physique into a long and steady career as a celebrity — and it's no mean feat to achieve persistence in a field defined by evanescence. There must be something to the guy — I mean, more than the obvious, which on Arnold is huge. |
| | So it was with a small degree of interest that I read the now-(in)famous August 1977 Oui interview outed by Mickey Kaus. I was struck less by the casual way Arnold talks about drugs, gang bangs and dick size, than by the way he reveals himself as a literally self-made man. What he did with his body was self-obsessed and freakish, but it was also a substantial achievement. Also one from which he moved on. |
| | Arnold and I are the same age; he was born just a few hours after me. We were both turning 30 when he gave that interview. I'd hate to be held to stuff I said way back then, and I don't hold any of what Arnold said in that interview against him now. |
| | What I do hold against him is that he doesn't appear to be saying anything. At the surface, his campaign is platitudinous in the extreme. It's so cosmetic that I look at the guy and start wondering if that's his real hair color (I doubt it) and if he's had "work" (I'll betcha). |
| | But I actually find his "agenda" kind of agreeable, especially as Cruz Bustamante goes around stumping for market-stifling constitutional amendments and gas price regulations. CB lost me right there. |
| | Businesses are leaving the state and taking jobs with them, Arnold says. And it's true. California has become a hostile place to do business. That's why, as Rich Karlgaard points out, businesses are bailing out of here. |
| | Rich likes Arnold because they guy is "exciting" — and that we could use a little excitement — especially after a long series of rather funereal governors. (Davis is just the latest and grayest.) |
| | Arnold talks about "leadership" in his latest TV pitch. (Am I wrong, or is his accent actually worse in that thing? Here are the links: WMP, QT.) Hell, maybe he's got it. Like it or not, we're all kinda programmed to follow the Biggest Guy. It's hard to find a more Alpha male than Arnold. |
| | Yet he talks a nurturant game, too, with all that stuff about "putting children first." |
| | I'm still gonna vote against the recall. But I'm not sure I'll be bothered if The People vote for the guy with the biggest pecs. |
| | I submit that Lakoff's Strict Father and Nurturant Parent worldviews are the foundation upon which a Theory of Everything for American politics can be built. |
Praise Beeb
| | ...the BBC is planning to digitise and offer for download, for free, as much of its back catalogue of programmes that it can legally do, from the earliest radio reels to nature documentaries to educational programmes. Anyone will be allowed to re-use, re-edit and mix this material with their own, provided it's for non-commercial use. |
| | The project is called the BBC Creative Archive. It draws some of its inspiration from Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons project, a US legal project that provides artists with boilerplate contracts that allow their works to be shared more easily on the net, rather than tied up in copyright restrictions that make copying their work illegal. |
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