He's no Bill Clinton
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been accused of sexual assault, not adultery or harassment – but for some reason, no one's recognizing the distinction

By Tali Woodward

Minutes after the Los Angeles Times published a story Oct. 2 detailing the accusations of six women who claim to have been the objects of unwanted sexual contact from Arnold Schwarzenegger, people were comparing him to Bill Clinton and other politicians who are notorious for womanizing.

It took about five seconds for Democratic leaders to point out that the Republican Party, after demonizing Clinton for adultery, was hypocritical in its support of Schwarzenegger. Republicans lobbed the hypocrisy claim right back, saying that Dem apologists for Clinton had no credibility.

But that's assuming these two things – promiscuity and sexual assault – are equal, when they simply are not. Granted, Clinton was slutty. But there's a big difference between sleeping around, even if you're married, and making unwanted physical advances on people you don't know.

In Clinton's case, since many people have apparently forgotten, there was one accusation of unwanted physical contact, but it was heavily contested, in part because Juanita Broaddrick herself had denied it under oath. Paula Jones said that Clinton made a lewd comment to her as he grabbed his own crotch. While crude, this is very different from reaching under a woman's skirt to grab her butt or feeling her up without consent, as Schwarzenegger is accused of repeatedly doing.

This distinction seems to have eluded most pundits. And the media, rather than clarify the debate, have used ambiguous language that further blurred sexual assault into other types of "sexual misconduct," a subjective phrase if ever there was one.

The L.A. Times presented a meticulous and specific record of alleged sexual battery by Schwarzenegger, but you wouldn't know it from other papers, much less TV. The phrases trotted out by reporters and commentators give euphemisms a bad name.

The New York Times has repeatedly referred to Schwarzenegger's "sexual activities," which implies that these activities were consensual and private and probably shouldn't be fodder for public debate. Chris Matthews, on his MSNBC show, described what Schwarzenegger allegedly did as "fondling," a word that hardly connotes pinning someone to the ground. Maureen Dowd went along with the Clinton parallelism, writing, "Feminists who backed Bill are ushering Arnold gropees up to the Democratic microphones.... Certainly, the body builder-turned-phenomenon has had moments of being, to use David Letterman's word, a lunkhead. But I find the selective outrage of feminists just as offensive."

Even journalist Greg Palast, who generally deserves his reputation as an iconoclast, furthered the notion that these accusations were trivial. "It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow," he wrote in an Oct. 3 story. "According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two years ago that's the real scandal."

The connections to energy companies explored in Palast's story are serious, but this lead is alarmingly flippant. We shouldn't be concerned by a record of sexual aggression?

Throughout this media flurry, the only person who's really been frank about the accusations and their meaning was Gray Davis, but his suggestion that Schwarzenegger be investigated for assault has generally been framed by the media as a desperate campaign stunt.

Apparently it's time to review the definition of sexual battery in the California Penal Code. "Any person who touches an intimate part of another person, if the touching is against the will of the person touched and is for the specific purpose of sexual arousal, sexual gratification, or sexual abuse, is guilty of misdemeanor sexual battery." And yes, "intimate part" includes the buttocks and "the breast of a female."

The L.A. Times delivered well-researched and fact-filled stories detailing allegations of inappropriate contact by 16 women, at least half of which seem to meet the standard of battery. The paper made it clear that it sought out the first six women; others came forward after the first piece ran. In most cases, the reporters spoke with friends or family members who recall being told of the incident before Schwarzenegger entered the governor's race. Eleven of the women were named.

When the first story hit, Schwarzenegger offered various excuses and apologies, mixed in with criticism of the coverage, but he didn't deny the main point: he has acted inappropriately toward women.

And it's not as if these alleged acts of aggression don't have a context. In last July's Esquire Schwarzenegger bragged about his experience on the set of Terminator 3: "How many times do you get away with taking a woman and burying her face in a toilet bowl?" Later he commented, "When you see a blonde with great tits and a great ass, you say to yourself, hey, she must be stupid or must have nothing else to offer."

These are the words of a man who has very little, if any, respect for women. Yet Schwarzenegger's comments and behavior were repeatedly written off as youthful antics, as Hollywood rowdiness, as incidental silliness with no relevance to the governor's race.

And in the end they seem not to have had much of an effect at all.

The fact that Schwarzenegger was elected with only a slight dip in support, even among women, indicates that we live in a society that expects this sort of aggressive, debased behavior from men. And judging from the media coverage, it looks like we're not even ready to talk about the problem in an honest way.

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