<font color=brown>I knew Arnold was an Austrian and their conservatives make our radical right look somewhat tame but a Hitler lover???!! Arnold tell us it ain't so! ;~)
Seriously, what do you think these last minute revelations are going to do? It looks like he will still win, don't you think?<font color=black>
ted
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Schwarzenegger Moves Into Damage-Control Mode
Candidate Apologizes for Conduct Toward Women, Disavows Hitler Comment
By ERICA WEINER, AP
LOS ANGELES (Oct. 3) -- Entering his final campaign push on a wave of surging poll numbers, Arnold Schwarzenegger shifted into damage-control mode, apologizing for ''bad behavior'' toward women and saying he couldn't imagine ever telling an interviewer that he admired Adolf Hitler.
Reports that the former bodybuilder had groped women and once said he admired the Nazi leader surfaced Thursday as he set out on a four-day bus tour toward Sacramento. His entourage was met by cheering crowds as he promised to move California forward - but by then, the focus had shifted to his past.
Stories by ABC News and The New York Times said that the actor told an interviewer during the filming of the bodybuilding documentary ''Pumping Iron'' in 1975 that he admired Adolf Hitler's rise to power from humble beginnings.
Schwarzenegger, with wife Maria Shriver at his side, told a late-night news conference Thursday that he didn't recall making the remarks.
''I don't remember any of those comments because I always despise everything that Hitler stood for,'' Schwarzenegger said, calling the Nazi leader a ''disgusting villain.''
Earlier in the day in San Diego, Schwarzenegger addressed allegations in the Los Angeles Times, which reported the claims of six women who accused him of sexually harassing and groping them between 1975 and 2000.
''Yes, it is true that I was on 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,'' he said.
''Those people that I have offended, 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,'' he added.
Asked about the groping allegations, Shriver referred her husband's remarks: ''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 said.
Polls have shown voters ready to oust Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in the Oct. 7 recall election, with Schwarzenegger as the front-runner to replace him.
Davis declined to discuss the issue, saying, ''The voters will determine how significant that story is. I'm confident the voters will decide who is best qualified to lead this state.''
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is running second to Schwarzenegger as a replacement candidate, said the allegations are ''very serious and should be resolved.''
''Women can't be approached like that in the workplace,'' he said.
During a debate later Thursday among Schwarzenegger's three remaining major challengers, state Sen. Tom McClintock 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.
The 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.
Representatives of several women's organizations, including California NOW, planned a press conference outside the first stop on Schwarzenegger's bus tour Friday to call upon the Los Angeles County district attorney's office to launch a criminal investigation into the groping allegations.
Some analysts said the revelations could change voters' minds about Schwarzenegger.
''This is not just philandering or adultery - this is stuff that people get fired for pretty regularly,'' said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at University of California, Berkeley. ''If Arnold is saying he can grope women because people on movie sets play by a different set of rules, I don't know that people will buy that.''
But given the timing and other considerations, Cain said it was unclear whether the controversy would help Davis. ''I have no doubt this will cost Arnold votes among women, but I don't know how men will react,'' Cain said.
ABC and The New York Times obtained copies of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a transcript of the 1975 interview, in which Schwarzenegger allegedly said, ''I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power.''
He also allegedly said he wished he could experience addressing a crowd at a huge political rally.
''The feeling like Kennedy had, you know, to speak to maybe 50,000 people at one time and having them cheer, or like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium,'' he said, according to the transcript. ''And have all those people scream at you and just being in total agreement with whatever you say.''
The author of the book proposal, ''Pumping Iron'' director George Butler, told ABC the quotes needed to be seen in context to be understood. Butler told The New York Times he stood by a recollection of Schwarzenegger playing Nazi marches and mimicking S.S. officers, but said Schwarzenegger was an immature young man involved in the outlandish bodybuilding culture of the 1970s.
A campaign spokesman, Sean Walsh, called the story ''the worst kind of political smear, the worst.''
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.
10-03-03 0534EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
