O. J. Simpson lived in my hometown of Laguna Beach. Peter Ueberroth, who is now running for governor on the recall ticket, spoke at my high-school graduation. But it is my vicarious brush with Arnold Schwarzenegger that has prompted this reverie about my homeland. News flash: Arnold and I once shared the same pedicurist!
Yes, Arnold is the ultimate metrosexual. He not only wrestles with his soul over bikini waxes–as he told Jay Leno and the world–but he also has a dilemma with his toenails. If he does not get regular pedicures, he gets angry. And you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Oh, sorry, wrong superhero. Anyway, our mutual pedicurist told me about how he’d gotten mad at her once when he was in the hospital and she didn’t make it to his bedside to give him his regular toe job. The next time he came by her Beverly Hills shop, he pounded on the glass, demanding to know where she’d been. Let’s hope he is equally demanding of lawmakers in California if he becomes governor.
In so many ways, Schwarzenegger is the perfect candidate for California, where there is so little collective memory. Who even remembers that Orange County was once blanketed by orchards rather than the stucco clones that today pass for houses? (Bitter? Me?) Schwarzenegger has not only played a movie character who has no memory of his past, but in real life he has tried to sandpaper his own. Smart politician that he is, Schwarzenegger has bought himself insurance against his father’s Nazi Party affiliation in Austria. More than a decade ago, he went to Simon Wiesenthal’s organization and asked them to investigate his father’s background and then he contributed a wad of cash to the Holocaust studies center. If money can buy a recall election, why can’t it buy a clean family record?
Many of my friends back home think this recall thing is a big joke. It certainly is fun for headline writers who now have license to commit cliches such as “Conan the Contender.” But there is a reason that I moved “back East,” as we called the East Coast: I was too serious. I don’t think any of this is funny for public school kids trying to get some semblance of an education in the nation’s largest state. I barely survived the public school system in California 20 years ago. I got out with an opportunity to go to a good college because the high school in my rich little town was subsidized by the wives of wealthy men who taught for pleasure, as well as the occasional “back East” refugee with a Ph.D. who thought it would be a lark to teach in a beach town.
People blame the current government for the disaster in the California public schools. Wasteful spending certainly has something to do with it. So does the heavy toll immigration has taken on the schools. But decades before there was Proposition 187 (the curb on federal money to immigrants that Schwarzenegger reportedly supported), there was Proposition 13 and a man named Howard Jarvis. Jarvis remains a hero of the antitax movement because his proposition to put a cap on property taxes. But from my preteen perspective, he was an old guy who had gotten what he wanted out of life and didn’t see why he should have to pay high property taxes to help finance the education of other people’s children. The public schools have been suffering ever since. And–surprise!–state taxes are still out of control. I didn’t learn much at my California public schools, but I think I’ve figured out that if you fail to educate people they will end up costing society more in the long run.
Schwarzenegger’s education platform so far (he says he will elaborate on all his ideas soon) seems to consist of championing after-school programs. That’s great. But what about during-school programs? He has less than two months to explain his views. That’s plenty of time in California, where many celebrity marriages don’t last that long. His own celebrity marriage will no doubt serve him well. He has a smart, media-savvy wife who can advise him during the TV-driven campaign. Hopefully she’s more astute than his current spokespeople, who have said their candidate won’t be “driven by the media” to respond to their queries. But Arnold, as his one-name status suggests, is a creation of the media. He’d do well to start answering questions about something other than bikini waxes.
