‘I vant to make zis ze greatest state in ze greatest country in ze vorld!” With those chilling words, so resonant, in that chilling Austrian accent, of the same sentiments uttered by a much shorter man with a moustache in Germany in 1933, Arnold Schwarzenegger modestly accepted victory in the race for the governorship of California.
The thousands of Californians who had gathered at his campaign headquarters to hear the good news went wild. Red, white and blue balloons were released into the air, and red, white and blue ticker tape drifted down from the ceiling as the new governor, his loyal wife Maria Shriver at his side, waded out into the throng to shake the hands of his supporters.
In his speech Schwarzenegger thanked almost everyone there was to thank — especially the Shriver family (the aristocracy of the Democratic Party, although their son-in-law had won on a Republican ticket) and all the millions of Californians who had come out and supported him.
The one person he failed to acknowledge was Osama bin Laden, whose alleged attack on the World Trade Centre had made Americans suddenly believe that they were living in the middle of a real, live, Hollywood horror movie, and that the only person who could save them was Conan the Barbarian or the Terminator. In Arnie, of course, they have both rolled into one.
And so, in spite of the fact that he has no hard-core political experience whatsoever, the people of California have called him to serve.
It is likely that the rest of America would follow suit if they could. But there is one teeny-weeny little hitch to that scenario: Schwarzenegger’s dodgy accent gives his Austrian roots away, and according to the American Constitution, foreigners, no matter how patriotic they might become, are not allowed to run for president.
But hey: if the Constitution can be tinkered with here and there to erode civil liberties in the wake of 9/11, why can’t it be tinkered with some more if Schwarzenegger is the man who is really needed to save America?
One has watched the unlikely proceedings of the Californian gubernatorial race with some disbelief, like much of what has unfolded out of the United States over the past few years. A Democratic president caught with his pants down in the Oval office, succeeded by a Republican who takes over after a rigged election, who later proceeds to wage an illegal war against a Third World country halfway across the globe. Not to mention a series of financial scandals that seemed set to rock the very capitalist system on which the US of A is built to its foundations.
But when Hollywood writes the script, logic goes out of the window. Fifteen women moaning about being groped by an outsize actor from Austria is not going to make a blind bit of difference to what the electorate really thinks it wants. For those 15 disgruntled gropees, there must be at least 15-million women across the country, and indeed across the world, who wish they too had actually been groped by Arnie, and would vote for him at the drop of a hat (or anything else) if they could.
Those of us who foolishly continue to try to make sense of this glossy spectacle will also ask ourselves how it can be that Wasp princess Maria Shriver could have fallen for a body-building lunk head from Graz, and how, having taken him in, the family couldn’t persuade him to adopt the family’s democratic traditions. Instead he hit the campaign trail for George Bush Snr in the 1980s and never looked back. The lovely, scrawny, ungroped Maria stood by her man and was at his side in his moment of final victory.
I guess the message is that most of us are just spectators, and should buy our tickets, shut up and watch. Either that or stay at home.
(Which reminds me of the bad-taste joke that’s doing the rounds at the moment: ‘Come to America before America comes to you.” Which means you’re not even safe if you do decide to stay home and mind your own business. Hollywood will come and find you and ask you to explain yourself or get your head blown off.)
Hollywood is certainly relentlessly inventive in pumping out the dramas. In the same week that Arnie got elected, a performer in an up-market circus in Las Vegas in neighbouring Nevada got himself mauled by his own tiger in the middle of a show that raked in something in the region of $44-million a year from gawking spectators, many of whom would finally have got what they had come to see — a man getting mauled by a wild animal.
This, after all, is Las Vegas. It’s a gambling town — some you win, some you lose. No hard feelings.
On the other side of the continent, a New York Negro called Antoine Yates was arrested after showing up at a local hospital with signs of also having been savaged by a wild animal in the heart of the city. He told hospital staff that he had been bitten by a dog. The quacks looked at him with raised eyebrows and called the police, who kicked down his door and found a full-grown tiger roaming around his small apartment in an upper floor of a tenement block.
Having shot the tiger with a tranquilliser dart, they searched the apartment and found the guy also had a pet alligator hanging around. They suspect he also has a pet lion, which they had not yet found at time of going to press.
Yes, everyone eventually gets sucked into the American dream. If you can’t get a job in a wild animal circus in Las Vegas, go ahead and have your own wild animal circus at home.
And if you can’t find a place in the murky, right-wing politics of Austria, pump some iron, get on a plane to Los Angeles, do a couple of movies, and then run for governor of California.
You might just make it.