View from the distance (Toronto) on Ahnold

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http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031006.urecall1006/BNStory/Entertainment/

An excerpt from an interesting article:

SACRAMENTO — A special-effects man (crushes a car with a block of iron). The crowd goes mad..."Hasta la vista, car tax," Arnold Schwarzenegger shouts over an adoring crowd that resembles a rock concert more than a Republican Party rally. "Hasta la vista, car tax!"

Teenaged girls are perched on their boyfriends' shoulders. Intense young men in T-shirts reading, "My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor" clutch copies of a body-building encyclopedia.

Several thousand people dance and wave their arms as a deafening sound system begins blasting the 1980s Twisted Sister hit We're Not Gonna Take It.

On the other side of the parking lot, a group of women has quietly emerged on the edge of the crowd. They hold up placards reading, "No groper for governor," and are soon bullied by a throng of large, male Arnie supporters, the scene recorded by dozens of TV cameras. One man yells repeatedly, "Are you some kind of lesbians?" A woman in an Arnold T-shirt yells, "Everyone has a history!"

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My opinion: California, be careful! Always be careful of any politician who is so dramatic as to stir a crowd up into a kind of hysteria.