Say this much for California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger: He is never boring. The "Governator" proved that again recently when he said that opposition lawmakers campaigning against his budget proposals were "girlie men." The remark caused a furor among U.S. Democrats. It also reignited a more general debate about political propriety that began last month when Vice President Dick Cheney uttered an unprintable profanity to a Democratic legislator on the floor of the Senate. But above all it got attention. There is surely a lesson here that reverberates far beyond the shores of the United States.
First things first, though. What bemused observers abroad want to know is: What is a girlie man?
In using the phrase, Mr. Schwarzenegger was not translating some obscure Austrian slur. Ever attuned to show-business lingo, the former champion bodybuilder was actually recycling a joke from a U.S. television comedy show skit satirizing his own physique and accent, along with the entire macho bodybuilding culture. In the skit, two pumped-up characters named Hans and Franz cut their imagined foes down to size with the line "You are a girlie man!" -- by which they seemed to mean nothing more profound than an undermuscled wimp. (Oscar Wilde would have approved of this borrowed quip, as well as Mr. Schwarzenegger's frequent resort to lines from his movies "Terminator" and "Kindergarten Cop," a near-daily example of life imitating art.)