Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Son of Give 'Em Hell, Arnie”

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December 27, 2005

Son of Give 'Em Hell, Arnie

Hatched by Dafydd

Just a fast addendum to my post of eight days ago, Give 'Em Hell, Arnie. In that cheery missive, I noted that a coalition of Greens, Pink Helmets, and two Reds in Arnold Schwarzenegger's home town of Graz, Austria, had scheduled a vote to strike his name from the local sports stadium to punish him for doing his duty as California governor and not stopping the execution of the execrable Stanley "Tookie" Williams. But the Governator beat them to the punch, sending official word (on official stationery) that he was revoking Graz's right to use his name in any way -- and was even returning the town's "friendship ring," since evidently the town council were no friends of his.

I noted in that piece,

Mind, it wasn't the citizens of the town... it was the city council that decided to make a big stink, thus ingratiating themselves with the internationalist Left and the U.N. toadies.

Well sho' nuff, today the New York Times dropped the other shoe:

[Wolfgang Benedek, a professor of international law at Graz University and a leader of the anti-Schwarzenegger faction] allows that there is an element of elite versus popular opinion on this matter. A poll by the local newspaper found that over 70 percent of the public opposed removing Mr. Schwarzenegger's name from the stadium.

This adds to a practical consideration very much on Mr. Nagl's mind: that Graz will no longer be able to count on using its special relationship with the governor to promote its image.

Heh. No kidding, bub.

I also love this bit of Grazian boosterism:

"We had the great classical culture on the one side," Thomas Rajakovics, the mayor's spokesman, said, referring to other important figures who are associated with Graz, from the astronomer Johannes Kepler to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger, to the conductor Karl Böhm. "And on the other, we had Arnold Schwarzenegger and the popular culture. These were the two poles for us, but we're not allowed to use his name any more."

Yeah, well Kepler was born and grew up in Weil der Stadt; his only connection with Graz is that he got a job there later. Schrödinger was born and grew up in Erdberg and attended university in Vienna; he too got a job in Graz at one point in his life, which is his only connection with that city.

Of those three great men to be proud of, only Karl Böhm was actually born and raised in Graz. He was also an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. I'm not exactly sure this is the image the town really wants to convey.

Better stick with Schwarzenegger!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 27, 2005, at the time of 4:21 AM