Sex, Lies, and a Complicit Media (Arnold gets a pass from media)

[kskiska]

Once upon a time, Hollywood was the most influential force in shaping people’s attitudes about hot-button issues. Think Gentleman’s Agreement (religion), The Man With the Golden Arm (drugs), The Defiant Ones (race), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (sex). Politics came a distant second. Now, in the Schwarzenegger candidacy, there’s a confluence of both cultural catalysts. Just one problem: The Running Man and the media are walking away from this historic moment. Whether Schwarzenegger is made to publicly account for his past behavior may turn California’s recall election into a national test that decides once and for all if messy private lives are off-limits as campaign issues.

It’s not shocking that sex would surface in this post-Clinton gubernatorial recall election — especially given the movie star’s penchant for baring his butt and simulating coitus for the camera. After all, we remain fixated on everything in the entertainment industry that’s most sensational or scandalous because it’s the unifying prism through which we view the world, from Britney tongue-kissing Madonna, to Denzel’s and Halle’s Best Actor Oscars, to Robert Downey Jr.’s addiction saga.

But what is surprising right now is the continuing way that the media coverage remains muffled about each new explosive Arnold revelation. Not just the political bomb that he boasted about a gangbang and drug taking in a 1977 Oui magazine interview. It’s also the orgy he described in a 1981 Penthouse interview, the groping and fondling ascribed to him by a 2001 Premiere magazine interview, his Nazi father’s real wartime activities unearthed by the Los Angeles Times last month, the broken campaign promises he made in recent weeks, and then, last weekend’s report of alleged racist statements.

All of this smacks of celebrity worship or semicollusion with Schwarzenegger’s Republican campaign (demonstrating just how monolithic Big Media’s POV really is despite the FCC’s recent claims to the contrary). It’s also a case of squeamishness on the part of men (who don’t see a gangbang as any big deal whereas for women it’s another minefield in the Mars/Venus battle of the sexes). Certainly it’s not stupidity deserving a pass (especially since the same forces snuffing out Arnold’s 25-year-old outrageous past are fanning the flames of Cruz Bustamante’s long-ago collegiate affiliation with MEChA).

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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/42/deadline-finke.php