August 30, 2003 7:47 AM

Repeat after me: GET OVER YOURSELF!

Arnold’s Sexual Recall: Time for the Terminator to step forward and answer detailed questions about his past conduct

My point is he hasn’t retracted the statements or apologized for the statements. So you have to assume this is where he stands today. The fact that people grow or their attitudes change is not really relevant. This is what he said and he appears to stand behind it.... Who a person is, their character, their history, their treatment of women, matters because, although a person can change, we have a right to know what their behavior has been in the past. Arnold has not given any indication that he thinks there’s anything wrong with what he did. And if he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with this, he thinks it would be acceptable to repeat this behavior.

- Gloria Allred

I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California. Obviously, I’ve made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that’s the way I always was. I was always that way, because otherwise I wouldn’t have done the things that I did in my career, including the bodybuilding and the show business and all those things.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Let me start by saying that I support the ideals of feminism. Equality is a GOOD thing; the trolls who advocate it generally are anything but- like Gloria Allred, f'rinstance. Now, I'm sure that her heart is in the right place, but I think that Allred's shrill, attack-dog persona does her cause more harm than good. And then there are the times when it just sounds like self-aggrandizement.

Gloria Allred, California’s most high-profile defender of women’s rights, is demanding that Arnold Schwarzenegger answer the “very serious questions” raised by his lurid 1977 boasting that he participated in a gang bang at Gold’s Gym in Venice. In an interview with the L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles lawyer and feminist who is founder and president of the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund added her outrage to what inexplicably has yet to become a real controversy over the candidate’s sexual history and attitudes.

“I am disgusted, appalled, revolted, sickened, disturbed and troubled,” Allred said of Schwarzenegger’s description of one incident in particular: when, with a startling specificity of language, the Pumping Iron star told the magazine, “Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold’s — the gym in Venice, California, where all the top guys train — there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.”....

Allred said, “There are a number of unanswered questions here that are very serious questions and shouldn’t be brushed off” by Schwarzenegger or the media. “It sounds as though it was a sexual assault or rape because he says everyone jumped on the woman involved and took her upstairs. It doesn’t sound consensual, though I don’t know for a certainty it wasn’t.

“I would call on Arnold to fully explain the details of what occurred,” Allred said, “including who else was involved, to fully take responsibility for his conduct and his words, to explain whether or not he has engaged in [similar activities with] other women and if so how many. I would also like to know what happened to these women, if there were more than one, because I am concerned about their well-being.”

Not that Schwarzenegger's actions were the kind of thing you'd expect from a role model, but can we lose the self-righteous indignation here, Ms. Allred? What is the point of asking for a blow-by-blow (no pun intended) accounting of someone's actions from 26 years ago? Yes, Schwarzenegger may have been an over-stimulated horndog in 1977, but how is that germane to the issues that face California today? Or are you simply jealous that Schwarzenegger apparently had WAY more fun than you did then?

Keep in mind, Ms. Allred, that at no point after this story came out, did Schwarzenegger endorse this sort of behavior or state that it is OK to emulate it. Let's also remember that 1977 was a much different world, when pre-AIDS recreational sex carried little if any stigma.

Fortunately for Schwarzenegger, he has yet to become the political lightning rod that Bill Clinton became as President. Even so, I fail to see what someone's 26-year-old sexual history has to do with whether or not a person is qualified to be Governor of California today. How many of us are the same people we were in 1977?

As for Gloria Allred, my guess is that since Gray Davis cannot attack Schwarzenegger on this issue, Allred is doing so as his surrogate. It's little more than political opportunism. If you cannot attack a candidate on the issues, then you find whatever ammunition you can use to tear that candidate down. It's shameful and wasteful, but it sure is entertaining, no?

In closing, Ms. Allred, let me just pass along some sage advice from another former Governor, Jesse Ventura:

People need to understand that you’re not the same person at age 19 that you are, in my case, at 51. It shouldn’t count. We learn. We grow. We mature. You cannot judge people by what you did 20 or 30 years ago.

That why it's called experience, Ms. Allred. You make your mistakes, you (hopefully) learn, and you move on and try to do things better. Of course, in your world, no one can ever be forgiven for the sins of their past, can they? Could YOU stand up to that sort of examination?? Get over yourself....

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 30, 2003 7:47 AM.

Just when you'd thought humanity couldn't manifest a greater depth of stupidity.... was the previous entry in this blog.

This is the f*****g moron who messed up my computer?? is the next entry in this blog.

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