Schwarzenegger, Kerry, Berger, and the Wussification of America
Written by John Armor
Friday, July 23, 2004
Remember Adlai Stevenson, III, and his failed run for Governor of Illinois in 1982? Of course you don’t; nobody does. But here’s the relevant story from that.
A fair number of people, including the Republican who eventually won, questioned whether Adlai was ''a wimp.'' So he called a press conference to deny that he was a wimp. Helloooo. If you have to call a press conference to deny that you’re a wimp, it pretty well establishes that you are. Hold that thought and fast forward to last week.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a war to the death with the Democrat leaders in the California Assembly and Senate over passage of the state’s annual budget, which is now constitutionally late (as usual). Once again, the ''Governator'' is battling his foe in a place where they cannot hold a candle to him, namely in public and in the press, which cannot help giving Arnold all the ink he wants any time he wants it.
Well, Arnold's latest shot was to accuse the Democrats of being ''girlie men.'' Here’s the actual and complete quote: ''If they don’t have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, ‘I don’t want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers’ ... if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men.''
Of course, the response of the Democrats was not to address the contents of the charge, that they have sold out to special interests. Instead, they changed the subject to the ''inappropriateness'' of the ''girlie men'' charge.
Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez said that he ''was not personally ... intimidated or threatened,'' but that his 13-year-old daughter was offended. ''She's a young girl who knows the governor and really likes him a lot and didn't find the term to be a positive term, and finds it to be derogatory. It was no question a very, very insensitive comment to make.''
You see why I raised the Adlai Stevenson analogy. Speaker Nunez tried to attack the phrase by saying nothing for himself, but hiding behind the skirts of a girl, namely his daughter, who probably would have found the remark funny if addressed to anyone except her father.
Democrats said Schwarzenegger's remarks were insulting to women and gays and distracted from budget negotiations. State Sen. Sheila Kuehl said the governor had resorted to ''blatant homophobia.'' ''It uses an image that is associated with gay men in an insulting way, and it was supposed to be an insult. That’s very troubling that he would use such a homophobic way of trying to put down legislative leadership,'' said Kuehl, one of five members of the Legislature's five-member Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus.
''Wuss'' means weak, spineless, gutless, wimpy and wishy-washy, to offer a few synonyms. It is NOT a derogatory comparison of men to women, or masculine to feminine. Nathan Lane definitely played a ''wuss'' in ''The Birdcage.'' Recall his high-pitched squeaks of dismay. Compare the character he played with Lady Margaret Thatcher. In her career as prime minister of England, on numerous occasions she demonstrated why she deserved the unofficial title of the ''Iron Lady.'' No one would ever apply wuss or any of its synonyms to her.
Consider the scene near the end of ''Blazing Saddles,'' when the free-for-all fight between the cowboys breaks through the wall of a closed set where Dom DeLuise is filming a dance number called ''The French Mistake,'' using men in white tie and silk hats on a staircase. This scene is shot with an entirely male cast, yet it offers a wide variety of examples of both ''girlie men'' and regular men.
For instance, would one consider a man to be a wuss if he dressed somewhat like Liberace, and was the proprietor of an international cooking show, broadcast from his specially-designed ''kitchen stadium''? Your quick judgment might be yes, of course, are you kidding me? I encourage all who have not seen the ''Iron Chef'' to click on the Food Channel and reach your own conclusions. I think you will unanimously conclude that Takeshi Kaga is, in his own way, as strong and dominant a character as any role ever played by John Wayne.
Contrary to the reactions of some of the California Democrats, ''girlie men'' has nothing to do with gender, either actual or perceived. It is a habit of character, not biology. Wuss is a fine Yiddish--yes, Yiddish--word, and its best definition is unisexual, applying equally to men and women. It is: invertebrate, spineless, being a jellyfish, or a wimp. And by that definition, we as a society are deep into wussification.
The press and many of the talking heads on political shows are in the habit of attacking resolute people, those who are firm in their opinions and intentions, as ''cowboys,'' or ''shooting from the hip,'' or not ''thinking things through.'' Men and women who are dedicated to action and getting results are condemned as if they were bulls (or cows, as it were) in a china shop.
On the other hand, those men and women who hesitate on the brink of action and fail to reach a conclusion are hailed as ''nuanced'' or ''thoughtful.'' Apparently the press and the talking heads are deficient in their classical education. They forget that the play ''Hamlet'' ends in disaster because of the indecision of the hero. They forget the satiric observation of Shakespeare that ''Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.''
Notice the attack later this week by former Senator Max Cleland on President Bush, saying that the president was ''Mr. Macho Man'' and that was why he ''invaded Iraq.'' None of the reporters covering the story of the Cleland attack even noted that this was the inverse of the Schwarzenegger attack on the Democrats. The first caused the press to get its knickers in a twist. The second passed unnoticed as if it were ordinary and logical. Can anyone see a touch of hypocrisy here?
Today, entirely too many talking heads and members of the press praise and promote wusses in all careers, but especially in politics. Never, however, do they ever have the candor, or maybe even the perception, to realize that they are promoting wusses. That they are now insisting on the wussification of America. Here are some examples.
Is someone a wuss if he rides a $8,000 bicycle? If that person is Lance Armstrong, about to win his record-setting sixth Tour de France, the answer is of course not. But if that person is John Kerry, a well-heeled Yalie using such a bike to tour the high-rent district of Boston at 10 MPH, the answer is yes.
Assume you are a former National Security Advisor. Assume that you go into a storage facility for Top Secret documents concerning the international security of the United States. Assume that you smuggle such documents out of that facility on numerous occasions by stuffing them into your pockets or into your socks. Assume you get caught.
If you then offer the explanation that these were ''mistakes'' or a matter of ''sloppiness,'' would that qualify you as a ''wuss''? Part of having a backbone is facing up to your mistakes. It means admitting what you have done wrong, and accepting what comes your way as punishment for your mistakes. Only those who plead guilty and accept their punishment can possibly be described as having backbones. All the rest, like Sandy Berger, like Martha Stewart, are properly described as ''wusses.''
Political correctness is, of course, the leading edge of the wussification of America. If members of every possible subgroup in American society are too delicate to survive being joked about, then we have become a nation of wusses. People who are afraid of humor can only make up a nation that is afraid of its own shadow.
At the end of only half of the press reports on the ''girlie men'' contretemps do the reporters take time to mention that the phrase is borrowed from a twenty-year-old skit on ''Saturday Night Live'' which made fun of Schwarzenegger himself. Remember the catch phrase, ''We are here to pump (clap) you up''? People who cannot either understand or tolerate humor do not belong in public office.
Humorless people take themselves way too seriously and have too great a tendency to step on those who disagree with them, rather than work with them as necessary. The California Democrats have already displayed this self-destructive tendency, threatening to string out the budget crisis in that state for ''three more weeks'' because they are upset at being called ''girlie men.'' Isn’t that exactly how girlie men should be expected to react? Crying, stamping their feet, and saying ''Shan’t''?
Are we steadily becoming, more and more, a nation of timorous little old ladies? Mind you, this is no condemnation of little old ladies. Some of the strongest and most memorable people in my family, ever, have been the three Henley sisters, one of whom yet survives. No, I’m talking about little old ladies of whatever age and sex. It’s a state of mind, not a condition of biology and chronology. And the trends in this nation are not favorable at the moment.
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