Terminating Arnold: A Cat’s Eye View of California Politics

[IndianaGreen]

Terminating Arnold: A Cat’s Eye View of California Politics

By Karin S. Coddon

I channel my cats. I really do. I know what they’re thinking and I simply translate these impressions into humanese. My three-year-old tabby, Atticus Bach, likes to watch television with me, suffers through my morbid CNN addiction, and forms his own opinions. Does he get his cues from me? Well, maybe. When Bush appears on screen, he “exclaims,” “That’s a chimpanzee!” Cheney? “That’s Satan!” I praise and reward him. As a former college professor, I know that the notion of left-wing indoctrination is a myth, despite what right-wing handwringers would have us believe. Hence I regard Atticus Bach as quite astute in his own right. Karl Rove is “Rumpelstiltskin,” Condi, the “Wicked Witch,” and Tom DeLay, “Porky Pig.” Good kitty! Smart kitty.

And then there’s Schwarzenegger.

I was so disheartened that this serial sexual batterer, this creatine-addled cretin, was elected governor of my home state that power failed my high fantasy – I mean, Atticus Bach’s – and I dubbed him simply, “Excrement.” It’s a rather too sophisticated epithet for the cat, so he calls him “Poo.” All “public scatology” (to use Bush’s inexplicable phrase in his correspondence with Harriet Miers) aside, I remain baffled by blue-state California’s initial embrace of Schwarzenegger, even now, when his approval ratings are even lower than those of the chimp-in-chief. What were my fellow Californians thinking? As a feminist and a pessimist, I suppose I am not surprised that the Los Angeles Times’ revelations of repeated sexual harassment and aggression did not strike the electorate at large as sufficiently damning. Boys will be boys, and ours is an era of retro “desperate housewives” where working women pine to be stay-at-home moms and abortion is a non-option for even reluctant mothers; where human Barbie dolls named Jessica and Paris and Britney move gazillions of tabloids; where bachelors and bachelorettes giddily vie for the holy grail of marriage on network TV. What’s a little sexual harassment or unwanted groping among friends? I was far more alarmed when such an august leftist as Tom Hayden suggested in The Nation that Schwarzenegger’s election had progressive potential given his Kennedy ties and supposed social liberalism.

“That’s Poo!” Atticus Bach opines, and I echo, “No shit.” Despite the hilarious if underreported pre-election gaffe of declaring that “gay marriage should be between a man and a woman,” Schwarzenegger represented himself as willing to let the political culture decide that particular issue. Some progressive friends of mine actually believed him. Similarly, his Kennedy ties convinced some on the left that he would be kind to the environment. And, of course, he was pro-choice, wasn’t he?

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/2478/1/140/

[AX10]

1. This is disturbing:

"Boys will be boys, and ours is an era of retro “desperate housewives” where working women pine to be stay-at-home moms and abortion is a non-option for even reluctant mothers; where human Barbie dolls named Jessica and Paris and Britney move gazillions of tabloids; where bachelors and bachelorettes giddily vie for the holy grail of marriage on network TV. What’s a little sexual harassment or unwanted groping among friends? I was far more alarmed when such an august leftist as Tom Hayden suggested in The Nation that Schwarzenegger’s election had progressive potential given his Kennedy ties and supposed social liberalism."

Here's How I See It:

1) "Boys Will Be Boys" = Boy Scouts will be bigots/1950's mentality of the world
2) "Desperate Housewives" = Degenerate HouseHo's
3) "Barbie Dolls named Jessica and Paris and Britney" = Useless Parasites on the Free World