The cad behind the candidate

How many of you have smoked pot or had sex before marriage and then bragged about it when asked? I would guess (knowing what little I do about who reads this paper each week) that the majority of you would say you have. You don’t talk about that wild stuff much now because most people could care less. But Arnold has thrust himself into our lives in a typically dramatic way, and he is getting all the scrutiny he deserves—perhaps more. But, unlike many of the candidates, Arnold has a well-established history worth exploring (see “Arnold, uncut”).

Remember when one of your teenage friends’ fathers with a crew cut would overreact to the drugs and sex and be labeled a Nazi? Well, Arnold really had a Nazi for a father, and to say he was stern and harsh would be an understatement.

So, the innocent farm boy took off in the heat of rebellion to Munich to hang out with night people, hookers and bar owners. Sound familiar? It matches many of our personal stories in some fashion.

But most of us stopped short of injecting drugs such as anabolic steroids. I also would guess that most of us were not involved in gang bangs in gyms, as was recently revealed through Arnold’s own words in a 1977 magazine article. I can picture Arnold getting pumped up for the interview in Oui magazine, a slightly more sophisticated version of Penthouse, right as the Pumping Iron movie was coming out. Such bragging about sex is pathetic, but it’s typical of muscular young men.

Those youthful, stupid comments are serious to Republicans who follow the puritanical pattern: It’s OK to think of such things, but never talk about them.

But for people like us, who’ve walked that road of indiscretion, it will matter little. Other issues he’s reluctant to discuss are of concern. His sound bites, written by poll numbers, are useless, and now he has amnesia about the magazine interview.

So, what will it be, you boomers and Gen Xers: stones, or fine with getting stoned?