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Posted on 10/12/2003 3:24:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
What a world. Voters have elected a serial groper to be governor of California.
And women helped put him there.
According to exit polls, 44 percent of Arnold Schwarzenegger's voters were women.
Whatever were they thinking?
That the devil made him do it? That all men are dogs and can't help themselves?
Or that the women who pointed the finger at Schwarzenegger were lying or acting as pawns of the Democrats?
It wasn't just a few women. It began with two women putting their names out there in public and ended up, in less than a week, with about a dozen charging that, between 1975 and 2000, Schwarzenegger grabbed, groped and humiliated them.
I talked to three of the women last week.
Jan Prinzmetal, a fitness expert, said Schwarzenegger grabbed her under her skirt and shoved his hand inside her pantyhose as she was leaving a gym.
Joy Browne, a psychologist and syndicated radio talk show host, remembered him running his hands along her legs while she conducted an hourlong, live interview with him early in her career. He later tried to lure her to his hotel room, she said.
Colette Brooks, who runs an advertising agency, has never forgotten the moment when, as a young CNN intern, she led Schwarzenegger up a stairwell to a network interview. Going up the steps behind her, he remarked, "Nice a--," and grabbed her backside.
The women all said these incidents happened in the 1980s.
Now it looks as though the women came forward for nothing.
Not even the Los Angeles Times, the supposedly liberal paper that published their allegations, took note in its postelection, get-down-to-business editorial that Schwarzenegger takes office with these clouds still over his head. It was as though the breadth of his victory nullified the claims of his accusers.
"I just wanted voters to know for whom they've voted, but sadly, I don't think they care," Prinzmetal said.
Women, too?
"If he looked like Yasser Arafat, no one would have voted for him," Prinzmetal said.
So what? Schwarzenegger did well among women because he's a hottie?
That's no goofier than seeing him as a miracle man, a radical agent of change in a state desperate for it.
"Many people confuse the power of his celebrity on the big screen . . . with what he could potentially do in real life," Brooks said.
Of course. Whatever he doesn't like in state government, Schwarzenegger will just blow up.
Surely women were as prone as men to believe that those who stepped forward to speak up about Schwarzenegger's conduct were put up to it by the Democrats. Surely that contributed to the vote results last week. But the women I talked to said they came forward on their own, angered by Schwarzenegger's denials.
As the campaign ended, we heard Schwarzenegger compared to the illustrious and sexually industrious Bill Clinton. You know what followed. If Clinton could be forgiven, why not Schwarzenegger?
There was a difference, if not in their conduct than in their choices. Clinton's women wanted him. The women I talked to about Schwarzenegger did not. But that didn't stop him. This was harassment.
This was abuse, and it wasn't just about sex, Browne said: "He was trying to show me who was boss."
I will wonder for a long time why more women didn't believe Schwarzenegger's accusers and side with them. Maybe, when you are desperate for work - and in California, people are desperate for work - you tolerate the boss' bad manners because at least you have a job.
Schwarzenegger is a lucky man. The campaign was short. There was hardly time for the allegations against him to sink in. Women did what women so often do with their men.
They forgave him.
OK conduct if you're a lib, unforgiveable if you have (R) behind your name.
Oh yeah... tell that to Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaderick and the scores of other women that Clinton groped, assaulted, raped and/or murdered.
Paul Jones?
Juanita Broaddick?
Kathline Willey?
It's something we were born to do.
Flat out admission that the only reason for them to come forward was to keep Gray Davis in office! If they had come forward earlier in the campaign, another Republican could have emerged as a viable replacement candidate if Arnold was knocked out of the race from the charges. They didn't want that to happen. They wanted to wait until voters had a choice of either keeping Gray or replacing him with Arnold.
In our society, even with "women's lib", the man is still expected to make the "first move"...
An hour?! And she wants us to believe she didn't like it? Just stood there for an hour? Gimme a break.
Give me Dr. Laura any day.
She's one of the main reasons I cancelled my subscription a decade ago.
mjmelone@sptimes.com
Leni
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