He's a Cheat and a Louse, But…
Boy, was Schwarzenegger aces on climate change!
Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone rues a lost opportunity:
Until the story about his out-of-wedlock child broke yesterday, Schwarzenegger seemed preparing himself for a new, high-profile role in the energy and climate fight, perhaps as the head of a think tank or advocacy group. Now, who knows? The script now requires an suitable interval for penance. It pisses me off that Schwarzengger’s personal life is getting in the way of his larger, and far more important, public mission. But that’s the way things go in America. It’s so much easier to gossip about Arnold’s sins than face our own ““ like the fact that we are cooking the planet with fossil fuels.
Arnold admits to a deception of stunning proportion and Goodell is pissed that people are clucking over that instead of lashing themselves for their fossil fuel dependent lives.
Seriously.
A climate change hook the the Schwarzenneger love child story. Who’d a thunk?!
The Goodell’s reaction is odd on so many levels. For one thing: I don’t see why Schwarzenneger can’t begin working a climate change think tank immediately. For another, I don’t see why people can’t either chuckle, be outraged or just gawk at the Schwarzenneger love child story while working toward climate change.
I’m mostly amazed that he could keep this a secret for so long. But maybe that would be facilitated by the fact that the cost of supporting the kid was probably modest relative to Arnold’s wealth and the likelihood that both Arnold and Maria use accountants to track details of expenditures.
I do feel sorry for everyone involved in the Schwarzenneger love child story. This is a tough time for them.
“I’m mostly amazed that he could keep this a secret for so long.”
Me too! It’s one of the first things that crossed my mind when the news broke. Andrew Sullivan is wondering the same thing.
Mitterand, Chirac, Giscard D’Estaing… Now those guys know how to manage their mistresses. Schwarzenegger’s more like Dominique Strauss Kahn–no impulse control, damn the consequences.
A member of the Kennedy clan (by marriage, but still…) has to explain how he was able to keep philandering a secret?
I thought the consensus science was that rising CO2 concentrations would lead to an acidification of water, which could produce a marginal increase in THC content of certain west coast plant matter, leading to a 1.3% to 72% increase in celebrity sexual escapades- according to the W2 of the AR4 which was sourced to a WWF “Act Now” pamphlet.
The French socialists are convinced of the theory, anyway.
Mr. Sullivan is close to the answer in his piece about DSK
“Even now, one wants to believe he didn’t really understand what he was doing. But friendship – and an elite’s sense of its own decency – distorts the judgment.”
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/05/with-moral-certainty.html
The first link in the post is to an interview with Jon Huntsman. Why?
Goodell’s reaction isn’t ‘odd’. He recognizes that AGW really is a serious threat*; he considered the ex-Governator to be a potentially high-profile crusader against it (one far more palatable to the now almost reflexively anti-science GOP voters, than Al Gore); he recognizes that now, after the sex scandal, all Arnold can be is a joke, for the near term. He isn’t saying, btw, that the public’s lack of proportionate outrage on this is *odd* — just lamentable.
It’s no different, really, than the lamentation over lost opportunities after Bill Clinton crippled his second term over a blowjob.
*and maybe this is the reason why you and Lucia are finding Goodell’s paragraph so ‘odd’.
Steven,
Funny you mention this, because I tried to write the same thing in a comment over at the Rolling Stone site, but I didn’t feel like registering.
Anyway, I agree that this is the precise sentiment many had with Clinton. This is the part of the post I found odd, given that the story is only a day old:
But that’s the way things go in America. It’s so much easier to gossip about Arnold’s sins than face our own ““ like the fact that we are cooking the planet with fossil fuels.
Steven Sullivan
after the sex scandal, all Arnold can be is a joke, for the near term.
I give the story two months max.