NEWS: New Schwarzenegger allegation
Candidate refutes quotes about Hitler shortly after apologizing to women
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Oct. 3 — Hours after saying he had “behaved badly” towards some women in the past, California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger faced a new allegation: that he once said he admired Adolf Hitler “for what he did.” The actor denied ever embracing the Nazi dictator, and the man making the allegations did later raise the possibility that Schwarzenegger was misquoted.
GEORGE BUTLER, a film producer who documented Schwarzenegger’s body building career in the 1975 movie “Pumping Iron,” shopped a book proposal on the Republican’s life six years ago, parts of which were reported in the media overnight.
In the proposal, Butler said that in conversations left out of the movie, Schwarzenegger named Hitler as one of his heroes.
“It depends for what,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said when asked who he admired, according to the proposal. “I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.”
But early Friday, Butler had contacted The New York Times, which ran a story about the book proposal, saying he had found another transcript of the interview, with different wording.
That one has Schwarzenegger saying: “I admire him (Hitler) for being such a good public speaker and for his way of getting to the people and so on. But I didn’t admire him for what he did with it. It’s very hard to say who I admire, who are my heroes.”
Butler said his transcribers had had difficulty rendering Schwarzenegger’s remarks because of his accent and said the only way to resolve the discrepancy was to listen to the tapes, which are in Schwarzenegger’s possession.
OTHER NAZI ALLEGATIONS
The Times also quoted Butler as saying he saw Schwarzenegger play Nazi marching songs on his record player and even click his heels and pretend to be an S.S. officer.
Butler said he had considered Schwarzenegger in the 1970s to be a “flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler.”
Thursday night, Schwarzenegger, with wife Maria Shriver at his side, responded to the allegations by saying that “I despise everything the Nazis or Hitler stood for.”
Asked if it was possible if he had ever said these things, he said, “I can’t imagine because from the time I was a kid on, I always disliked everything that his regime stood for. I think Hitler was a disgusting villain.”
Schwarzenegger grew up in Austria where his father was a member of the Nazi Party. He has faced charges of Nazi sympathizing before, but has worked hard to refute them and has donated to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization.
Butler told the Times he stood by a recollection of Schwarzenegger playing Nazi marches and mimicking S.S. officers, but said Schwarzenegger was an immature young man during the bodybuilding culture of the 1970s.
‘TRASH POLITICS’
Less than a day earlier, Schwarzenegger was confronted with allegations from six women that he groped them on movie sets and in other settings over the last three decades, the last alleged incident in 2000.
Speaking Thursday night with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Schwarzenegger derided the timing of the new allegations. “I don’t pay much attention or point the finger. People know this is trash politics. They know that I will bring change.... This is what scares those guys,” he said referring to his Democratic challengers. “I will be able to represent the people for a change.”
Schwarzenegger first responded to the sexual harassment allegations Thursday morning, as he spoke to supporters in San Diego before starting a bus tour ahead of Tuesday’s election to recall Gov. Gray Davis.
“A lot of the stuff in the story is not true,” he said, referring to a Los Angeles Times story on the allegations. “But I have to say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
He did not acknowledge sexual harassment, instead saying that “yes, I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was in rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I offended people.”
“Those people that I have offended,” he added. “I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because that’s not what I’m trying to do.”
Schwarzenegger added that from this point on he will prove he is a “champion for women.”
Shriver, his wife, later responded to a reporter’s question about the groping allegations by stating that “As I say to my children it always takes great courage to stand before anybody and apologize and I think that’s what Arnold did today.”
(Shriver is on leave of absence from NBC’s “Dateline” program. MSNBC is an NBC-Microsoft joint venture.)
The Los Angeles Times said none of the actor’s political opponents put reporters in touch with the women and that none had come forward on their own. None have brought legal action against Schwarzenegger, the newspaper said.
GOP, DEMOCRATIC REACTION
During a debate later Thursday among Schwarzenegger’s three remaining major challengers, state Sen. Tom McClintock, a Republican, said he was skeptical of what he called a “last-minute character assassination.”
But after the debate, he said Schwarzenegger should drop out if the allegations were proven true.
Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat and Holocaust survivor, was ready to believe that the comments about Hitler were true, calling them “utterly contemptable” and demanding that Schwarzenegger withdraw.
And Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democratic candidate in the recall, issued a statement following the sexual harassment allegations.
“These actions are more than just offensive,” he said. “The California Penal Code says: ‘Any person who touches an intimate part of another person against the will of the person touched … is guilty of misdemeanor sexual battery.’”
A women’s rights group called for Los Angeles authorities to investigate Schwarzenegger’s behavior. “If the investigation reveals that other women have been battered more recently —within the statute of limitations — then the D.A. must consider bringing criminal charges,” said Marjorie Sims, executive director of the California Women’s Law Center.
A spokesman for Davis said the governor’s campaign was not involved in publicizing any of the accusations.
Schwarzenegger’s alleged past indiscretions have been an issue in the campaign since he announced his bid for governor. Much of the controversy has surrounded a 1977 interview in Oui magazine in which Schwarzenegger talked about engaging in group sex. The actor has said he didn’t remember it. |
