Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Ich Bin Kein Berliner



Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke today and the Republican party listened. He told a beautiful tale of fortitude, courage and success, and the Republican party listened. He told about his dreadful roots in the third-world socialist (?) country called Austria, and his desperate struggles to somehow save up enough for the steerage to America, and how he was finally successful as the Governator of California. The Republican party listened.

They don't actually share Arnold's values at all. He's their frontman, brought in to lure the undecided voters into the Republican camp, not realizing that they will vote for The Handmaid's Tale when they think they are choosing a funny accent and a lot of muscles.

But politics is really not a serious concern in the minds of most Americans. It's not like you need a brain or some training to be a politician, after all, so why not choose Arnold and all that he stands for?

And what does he stand for? Well, he stands for the Republican party, of course. He tells us how to decide if you could be a Republican, too:

If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world, then you are a Republican! And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican!
There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!"


So Arnold also believes that calling people 'girlie men' is a Republican thing to do. As I have said before, this is supposedly intended to be a slur against homosexuals, but it is also an insult against women. (Never mind the actual history of the term; the average viewer does not know this history.) In Arnold's world a man who acts in any way like a woman might is despicable.

That's a good thing to know.