Arnold finally gets his bones
Arnold Schwarznegger had never killed anyone, but he played plenty of people who killed. He has been in many respects the masculine epitome of the killer… the killing machine… the facist ideal of the agonal man, the warrior… all on the screen. He was an image, as he has always been an image, even to himself. He sees himself reversed, so long as he preened in front of mirrors. Arnold is an image, an icon, something that only stands for something that has never really been real. During his campaign for governor of California, all he had to do was duck questions and smile into cameras until his face fatigued — no different really than what he’s always done, work his ass off building an image then parading it around in front of an audience more comfortable with appearances than substance.
As another well-known conservative once said, “a hollow man, a stuffed man, heapiece filled with straw…”
But Arnold is not straw any more. Arnold has killed. It was as vicarious as his audience’s participation in his feigned killings of filmdom, except for one thing. This time, a man who was a man’s man once, albeit without Arnold’s white privilege and class privilege, and a man who recanted that violent masculinity… died. Stanley “Tookie” Williams was put to death by lethal injection last night by the State of California, under the signature of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So Arnold got his first kill. Arnold got his bones. But it wasn’t in ‘manly’ combat against a simplified nemisis like his cardboard characters on the big screen. It was done in the most cowardly and bureaucratic and banal way, with the victim taken carefully out of a cage, handled by nameless, faceless people, who strapped Tookie to a gurney and poured poison into his body through an 18-guage intravenous catheter.
The great Austrian ubermensch got his first kill thus, and he got himself a Black man, and it’s Arnold’s to own, because he alone had the power to stop this execution, knowing goddamn well that this man was no threat to society, and that the conviction that landed him in prison was questionable from the get. Arnold committed this passive murder because it was politically expedient… the same reason every one of these sack of shit governors sign death warrants. You can’t win elections if you are portrayed as unmanly, as a wimp, as someone afraid to end lives. the irony, of course, is that Schwarzenegger is going to lose his next election anyway for his gross imcompetence, and this was his one chance to salvage any real respect among future historians. But his image was more important than the hard life of this one human being.
Tookie Williams had already redeemed himself from his own circumstances — Black urban poverty, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, and serial dispossessions, abandoning young people to the lumpen-life for sheer survival. I won’t attempt to recount Tookie Williams’ life here. That is available elsewhere. I want to talk about Arnold… who can never be redeemed now, his manicured hands unblooded, his straw headpiece unbothered, his opulent life unperturbed.
All I can say is, What a MAN!
name:
> The dress-up image of the killer… and the real one
ROTFL bwaa ha ha ha ha !!!
i saw terminator 1 yesterday on TV. it looked so primitive and gross, far from the the better memory i had of the film.
he was, BTW, condemned across the political spectrum here in his ex-country. it was proposed to rename a stadium which was given his name during a past attack of arse-crawling of some local politico. also, it was proposed (but rejected) to revoke his nationality, what has base in law - his double nationality is more or less tolerated because of his prominence, so far my understanding of the law.
here in his old country people like him do not have much of a place. as the son of a policeman he was relatively privileged, and many like him used that to construct a good fundament for life. it is good (for himself) that he went to the US. here he’d probably become a resentful vokuhila drunkard living on the dole if he had not emigrated.
his true name BTW is arschold warzenlecker
13 December 2005, 6:14 pmBoris Epstein:
Stan,
I can’t say I agree with you all that often - but this time I am pretty much with you. Stan Tookie Williams is dead, this is for real… What a goddamn shame!
Peace,
Boris.
13 December 2005, 9:55 pmjohn steppling:
Just a personal note….
13 December 2005, 11:11 pmI used to train down in Venice, in the early 90s, at World Gym….and arnie was around a lot (I believe he was part owner with joe gold). He was always a bully — picking on the people under him at the gym, but never crossing the big guys who used the gym….myself included. He harrased women and generally was an asshole and roundly disliked by just about everyone.
I took a great dislike to him….and this latest refusal to grant clemancy is utterly in keeping with his fascist mindset.
Stan:
I had the peculiar experience of working with him, too.
http://freedomroad.org/content/view/178/69/lang,english/
Hope you are well, John.
13 December 2005, 11:18 pmblubonnet:
He seems like a bionic experiment that went awry. I often call Republicans Roboticans by their mindless adherance to party, disregarding facts and common sense, but this neandrathal is the epitome of “Robotican” . After the RNC it should have been evident to all. Amazingly though, it wasn’t. (sigh)
14 December 2005, 4:16 amWell, at least now, the posterboy for “tough Republicanism” is showing the bumbling stupidity that he and his party represent. Also, the “compassion”. They all can go to hell.
Devans00:
Arnold Schwarznegger seems to suffer from one of Bush’s diseases. If a fact doesn’t fit with the story you’re trying to tell or the image you are trying to portray, then it doesn’t exist. Plus the reality that the Governator’s gross imcompetence doesn’t hold a candle to the President’s.
It may be asking a lot for him to take into account Stanley “Tookie†Williams’:
- Lack of threat to society
- Choices made in the name of survival as a result of black urban poverty, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow
- His attempts to redeem himself and make positive contributions to society
But then again, an articulate, respectful Black Man could be the biggest threat of all. Sad to say, the fact that the conviction that landed him in prison was questionable from the get is about par for the course.
14 December 2005, 2:21 pmJeb S.:
We don’t fuck around in Long Beach. Schwarznegger has not been back since…
14 December 2005, 8:39 pmJeb S.:
See the infamous egging of arnold in Long Beach here:
http://communitybarf.com/img/arnold%20egg.jpg
14 December 2005, 8:41 pmrsklnkv:
Thanks for touching on this Stan. As usual, you’re right on the mark. I was fairly certain Arnold would never in a million years have granted clemency to Williams considering who he panders to in the white house. I did have some bit of hope, however naive, that there was a possibility of a moratorium until this so-called ‘inquiry’ happens in January of 2006.
14 December 2005, 9:47 pmI’m somewhat frustrated that the issue of clemency took off the direction it did, though. Not that Tookie didn’t deserve the energy put into trying to stop his murder (every human life should be preserved with such passion), but I feel that by such direct focus, the issue will be forgotten by the mainstream now that he is in fact dead. Whatever the specifics of Williams case, the facts remains that we have close to 3500 more people on death row today, nearly half of them black (that’s pretty skewed when we consider only 14% of the population is African American), most of them poor, 90% who could not afford an attorney. The illiteracy numbers are sickening. I could go on…
I read not too long ago (’Surviving Justice’ Eggers 2005) that there are an estimated nine to eleven thousand folks locked up who are innocent of the crimes they were convicted of. Over one-hundred and sixty exonerated in the last decade! How much is too much?
In my opinion, we will need to focus on the fact that the system is absolutely broken, racist and far too prone to abuse, rather than ‘this guy is reformed so we shouldn’t kill him’. I think too many mainstream Americans support the death penalty in concept for us to expect mercy or reconciliation of some sort. But how do you prove it’s broken when no one will admit fault and when ’soft-on-crime’ is political suicide? Arnold has taught us well that killing the bad guys is Fun and Good For You Too! How soon the facts of our black brothers and sisters histories in this country are forgotten. I have yet to read any form of critical news regarding the fact that gangs in California arose from oppression, racism and marginilization. As you said: “Black urban poverty, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, and serial dispossessions, abandoning young people to the lumpen-life for sheer survival.” Well spoken!
Brian:
I concur with your comments about Schwarznegger. I was especially disgusted with CNN’s treatment of this execution. That Paula Zahn is a real piece of work. I’ve written a little about it on my blog:
http://zerra.net/blog/?p=22
14 December 2005, 10:50 pmKevin Hornbuckle:
The governor of California is a fucking coward. Capitalism creates monstrous ego driven men (and some women, e.g. Condi Rice) for whom compassion is anathema, not possible. The whole election system is based on and exploits this sort of individualism. Its killer, isn’t it. Let the peoples of the world behold the American ‘justice’ system where due process is habitually violated and where doing verifiably good with one’s life simply is not enough. For Schwartzenegger it was a political killing. And shame on me and others for ever having wasted a momemnt thinking, hoping ‘well, maybe he’ll give Williams fair consideration’! They are all political killings whose purpose is to legitimize the systematic subordination of the reserve army of the unemployed. Let us read and re-read Soledad Brother. Long live George Jackson! Long live Stan Tookie Williams?
18 December 2005, 2:49 amdave-leon czolgosz:
I got an email from my mother regarding this subject yesterday. She is currently in Jerusalem and said that an Israeli newspaper reported that the Governator had reviewed Tookie Williams’ case over a weekend, giving attention to only a few case forms in a single file folder. So in a way, we can’t really blame Ahnold for making a bad decision, but for making no decision at all. My satiric letter to the Gov’s office is on http://daveleon.blogspot.com. I’ll be posting the secretary’s response and my follow up soon.
19 December 2005, 4:50 pmPeace to you, my friend.
Charles Brown:
Graz removes Schwarzenegger’s name from stadium
Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:50 AM ET
http://today.reuters.com/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=uri :2005-12-26T165049Z_01_ARM660603_RTRUKOC_0_US-AUSTRIA-SCHWARZENEGGER.xml
VIENNA (Reuters) - Californian Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian
home town of Graz removed his name from the city’s stadium over
Christmas, amid anger over his decision to deny clemency to a death
row inmate.
Austrian news agency APA showed the stadium’s entrance displaying only
its historical name, “Graz-Liebenau,” and quoted an anonymous city
official as saying Schwarzenegger’s name had been removed overnight to
avoid a public furor.
Graz city officials were not reachable on Monday, a holiday in Austria.
Left-wing politicians launched a petition drive in Graz to have the
town rename the stadium because the Austrian-born governor allowed the
execution of death-row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams this month.
Williams, an ex-leader of the Crips gang who supporters say had
redeemed himself by campaigning against gang violence, was executed by
lethal injection on December 13 after Schwarzenegger and the courts
rejected all of his appeals.
While conservative mayor Siegfried Nagl opposed renaming the stadium,
a city council majority of social democrats, communists and greens
supported it. That prospect prompted Schwarzenegger to turn the tables
and withdraw his name himself.
On December 19, Schwarzenegger demanded Graz stop using his name on
the stadium and in promotions and returned a “ring of honor” he had
been awarded by city officials in 1999, saying politicians in his
hometown appeared to have rejected him.
Schwarzenegger, a former body building champion and Hollywood star,
26 December 2005, 5:16 pmtrained at the stadium as a young man. It was renamed in his honor in
1997.