LOS ANGELES: Only in California can the ‘Terminator’ fight a ‘Girlie-Man’ over the future political direction of the state while ‘Meathead’ waits in the wings. Celebrity once again is making itself felt in the state where Hollywood is not only a sign implanted on a Los Angeles hillside but the place where Ronald Reagan learned to charm his way through enough chicken dinners and voters’ hearts to run for the presidency.
Longtime liberal actor Warren Beatty is leading the charge against Republican governor and former Terminator action film star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants Californians to curtail union power, state spending and teacher rights in a Nov. 8 special election, a year before he seeks re-election.
Schwarzenegger likes to call his opponents ‘Girlie-men’ and Beatty, once Hollywood’s most famous ‘ladies man’, says he is unafraid of either the nickname or the movie action hero who happily killed an alligator in one scene and declared, “You’re luggage.”
“You can call me a girlie-man or a stooge, or you can say my last picture didn’t make money. That may be true,” Beatty recently told the New York Times.
He adds that his criticisms of Schwarzenegger as a bully using ‘fake issues, fake events and fake crowds’ to stir up right-wing causes were also true.
Beatty, a Democrat, has toyed for years with the idea of entering politics but is famously unable to make up his mind — no one shoots more takes in a movie than director Beatty. As an actor, he once kept on doing the same scene long after the director went home to bed.
But now the 68-year-old star of the 1967 classic Bonnie and Clyde is making speeches denouncing Schwarzenegger’s plans before adoring crowds amid chants of ‘Run, Warren, Run’. He is expected to step up his attack, and this is giving Democrats thoughts that the best way to fight celebrity in the state is with a celebrity.
Beatty, who played a suicidal state senator spouting hip hop in Bulworth, is making Schwarzenegger and fellow Democrat Rob Reiner nervous.
Reiner is a political activist who engineered a statewide $1 billion childhood development programme. But he is best known to voters as a director of hit comedies and as ‘Meathead’ in the popular TV series All in the Family.
He had been seen by many as waiting for the right time to make a run for governor himself. Yet he is no leading man in looks compared to Beatty, a legendary Hollywood lover before getting married 14 years ago to actress Annette Bening.
Some Democrats think Reiner is the better-prepared politician compared to Beatty because he knows how government works, after his experience with the childhood programme.
But others say Beatty is getting valuable exposure campaigning against the special-election proposals. They point out that Reagan won national attention when he campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, attention that allowed him to enter politics.
Schwarzenegger may be ripe for a defeat. After winning election in a state dominated by Democrats, his poll numbers have dropped to record lows this year. He is dogged by protesters at virtually every public appearance, after taking on what he calls special interests such as the nurses union.
Suzanne Finstad, author of the just-published biography Warren Beatty: A Private Man, a detailed and admiring 500-page account of his life and loves, says she would not rule out a Beatty candidacy.
“What he does, he is committed to 1,000 per cent,” Finstad added.—Reuters
