Tim Blair

POLLITT'S POSITIONS

Katha Pollitt believes Arnold Schwarzenegger mistreated women. Her response is clear and direct:

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?

Katha Pollitt believes Bill Clinton raped a woman. Her response is ... well, what can anyone do about it, you know? Nothing much, I guess. It’s a real pity. Just too bad:

I think Juanita Broaddrick told her story in a very persuasive way. She has people who say she told them about the rape at the time ... In my heart I believe her, yes. But what do you do with this information? One of the things that's so frustrating about this is: It's out there, people think about it, but there isn't anything you can do with it. It's not an allegation that anyone can use legally; it's only an allegation that people can try to use politically.

UPDATE. Patricia Foulkrod helpfully points out the difference between Ah-nold and Clin-ton:

"The difference is that Clinton was so brilliant," she said.

"If Arnold was a brilliant pol and had this thing about inappropriate behavior, we'd figure a way of getting around it. I think it's to our detriment to go on too much about the groping. But it's our way in. This is really about the GOP trying to take California in 2004 and our trying to stop it."

You don't say.

UPDATE II. AP is reporting that an Arnie-don’t-like-Nazis story emerged after he was accused of being a Nazi-lovin’ freak:

After getting a bruising from media in his adopted country, Arnold Schwarzenegger received a boost from the press of his native Austria, where reports said he helped break up a neo-Nazi rally.

The Austrian newsmagazine NU reported on Friday that Schwarzenegger and some companions disrupted a gathering of neo-Nazis in the city of Graz when he was 17.

The report comes after ABC News and The New York Times carried statements attributed to the action star in 1975, during the filming of the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron.

This is important, because if the anti-Nazi story followed the earlier pro-Nazi pieces, it looks like damage control -- and may be discounted because of that. But other accounts have the anti-Nazi story being published before Schwarzenegger was accused of Nazi fondness:

The interview was conducted in August and published in September but the anecdotes recalled by Gerstl, 80, a former leading conservative politician, reflect on questions being raised about Schwarzenegger as he runs for governor in the US state of California.

The BBC supports this version of events:

In a boost for Mr Schwarzenegger, a report in an Austrian Jewish magazine said that, as a young bodybuilder, he had helped break up a neo-Nazi demonstration in the Austrian city of Graz.

"There was a clash and Arnold along with some bodybuilders chased the Nazis down Herrengasse Street," Alfred Gerstl, the father of one of Mr Schwarzenegger's friends, recalled in the interview published last month.

Someone’s wrong.

Posted by Tim Blair at October 5, 2003 06:02 PM