Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a narcissist that he gives other narcissists inferiority complexes. He's a deeply unserious man, as we saw when he recently gave a gift of a sculpture of bull testicles to one of his opponents in budget negotiations, California Senate Majority Leader Darrell Steinberg. Steinberg returned the gift. Schwarzenegger is now convinced that he can ridicule the Democrats into submission. It's worth taking a look at this tape of Sen. Steinberg from Tuesday night, after Schwarzenegger simply refused to go along with any meaningful compromise on the budget, to remind oneself of what a serious public servant looks and sounds like.
I've been trying to figure out how to break through Schwarzenegger's resolve to let the state -- and the nation, if it comes to that -- suffer rather than compromise. That doesn't seem to take "balls." And then I remembered -- oh year, Arnold was a steroids abuser back in his preening weightlifting days. His balls may not quite have survived all of that.
So let's aim for his vanity. Let's send him raisins.
Ah, yes, raisins. California raisins. Better yet, golden raisins for the Governor of the Golden State who, perhaps as an after effect of his longterm drug abuse, doesn't have the balls to put his state's interests ahead of his own vanity.
Golden raisins for the man who would rather see schools close than sign a budget that didn't cater to his every whim.
Golden raisins for the man who embraced expanding the budget shortfall by an additional $7-8 billion last night rather than accept a plan that would not further slash pension grants for the elderly.
Golden raisins for the man who would rather see CalWORKs grants for low-income families with children cut by 4 percent, the maximum grant being reduced to 1989 levels, and see Medi-Cal dental exams, eye exams, and incontinence creams and washes are eliminated for most adults. Give the man some tiny shriveled fruit to celebrate his victory over his enemies, the people of California!
Now, I'm not sure of the legalities of mailing fruit to the Governor. I suspect that, given California's tough agricultural laws, you can't do it from out of state. Within state, I expect that you can -- perhaps you have to wrap some plastic wrap around your two shriveled raisins, maybe with a frowny face drawn between them -- but I hope that someone who knows definitively will weigh in. (Until then, I'm not suggesting that you do it. Really.)
But while we try to being humiliation down on the head of the callow, shallow, hollow Governor, let's consider making the golden raisin our symbol for his lack of what he would like us to think he has. I hope that the Kennedys and Shrivers, whose family he has shamed by marriage, will pose with some golden raisins to let it be known that they know that a man who would drive a state and perhaps a nation deeper into a ruinous recession to serve his own vanity -- listen to that Sen. Steinberg video -- is no man at all, and especially no man who should be joking about having big balls.
Let's do something creative to drive the point home, to get people laughing at this laughably vain and incompetent man. I look forward to your thoughts. I even look forward to your Photoshops.