Arnold Gets a Pass

This is a good article from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/opinion/05POLL.html?th

By KATHA POLLITT
Published: October 5, 2003


snip...
What's going on here? If Arnold Schwarzenegger were a Democrat, the right-wing news media — the tabloids, the shock jocks, the Bill O'Reillys and the Rush Limbaughs — would have sent him back to Austria long ago. (If he were a woman, needless to say, he could never have gotten into politics in the first place.) But the so-called liberal (actually centrist) news media is either too squeamish to paint Mr. Schwarzenegger's behavior in all its glory or too blasé and faux hip to care.

Why is it so hard for commentators to come right out and say: here is a man who seems to have a long history of contempt for women, who uses his celebrity to get away with sexual humiliation — why does he belong in public life? Would that sound too square, too P.C., too, um, feminist? From the newsstand crammed with leering lad magazines like Maxim to all-male, all-the-time talk radio to the self-congratulatory misogyny of "The Man Show," aggressive male chauvinism is back in style, and Mr. Schwarzenegger is its standard-bearer.

What's next, Howard Stern for mayor of Los Angeles? After Tuesday, that might not sound so funny.