More On Arnold
The love affair between Schwarzenegger and Graz is over. Arnold has returned the ring.
The ring in question? The “Ring of Honor,” previously bestowed upon favorite son Arnold by Austria’s second largest city, Graz.
The rift started with Schwarzenegger’s refusal to grant clemency to Tookie “You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him” Williams. Seems his hard-heartedness irked some of the politicians there in Graz, and they decided to express their disapproval last week with a proposal to remove Schwarzenegger’s name from their city’s big soccer stadium.
Representatives from the Social Democrats (SP), the Greens and the Communist Party (KP), traditionally strong in Graz, joined forces to push through the proposal, despite the objection of mayor Siegfried Nagl of the conservative People's Party (VP)."It's getting on our nerves that we're again and again being criticised for Schwarzenegger's actions in California," said SP vice mayor Welter Ferk.
"We're not exactly basking in glory for being brought into the public limelight in connection with the death penalty.
The proposal passed, but apparently public signatures still needed to be collected to properly enact it. And that delay gave time for Schwazenegger to go on the offensive. The governor fired off his own request that his name be removed and upped the ante by returning their “Ring of Honor” in the mail.
On Monday, Schwarzenegger caused a stir by turning the tables on Austrians who criticized the governor's refusal to block the executions of convicted killers. He sent Graz officials a letter asking them to remove his name from a soccer stadium and stop using it to promote the city, and said he was giving back the ring because it "has lost its meaning and value to me."
…"Graz will not have problems in the future with my decisions as governor of California, because officially nothing connects us any more," Schwarzenegger told the daily Kronen Zeitung in an interview for Tuesday's editions.
Hard words for his home town. And their reaction?
In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Graz City Councilman Karl-Heinz Herper called Schwarzenegger's reaction to the dispute "not exactly nice."
Well, what the hell did you expect, Karl? That he should accept your euro-slap with a smile? Let his hometown betray him like a good Austrian? Screw that. This is Schwarzenegger we’re talking about. You knew he was gonna come after you like your name was Sarah Connor.
Arnold played this just right. The ring was never that big a deal. Graz though Austria’s second biggest city, ain’t Vienna. (Dear Austria: Graz? Seriously? That’s your number two?) The prestige rankings for Austrian citys’ “rings of honor” take a big tumble after number one.
And, frankly, even Vienna’s ring ain’t all that. It’s still in Austria. And Austria, last time I checked, was still a landlocked country.
Me, I wouldn’t have accepted it in the first place. Yes, it’s one thing to accept a ring of honor from a city in a European country. It’s quite another to accept one from a landlocked European country.
Well, it's not land-locked if you're playing Diplomacy. But that was circa 1900. And it was Austrio-Hungary. So I guess I really don't have a point.
Yet another reason why Arnold rocks. (1) He showed Graz who's boss, (2) he killed the evil mercenary Freddy Mercury, and (3) he gave us Governor Jesse Ventura.