Pumping Irony
By SHELDON RAMPTON and JOHN STAUBER
For Jay Leno, it was a big night, scoring the highest Nielsen rating that The Tonight Show had seen for a Wednesday in more than four years. The big guest was movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was coming on the show to announce whether he would run in California's recall election against Governor Gray Davis. The buzz had been in the air for weeks. A month and half earlier, when Schwarzenegger visited the show to promote his latest film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Leno had playfully introduced him as "the next governor from the great state of California." And although Arnold's advisors had been hinting lately that the star was planning to forgo his shot at electoral office, Arnold had a surprise in store.
Bounding onstage, Schwarzenegger began with a warm-up joke, quipping that his decision was the most difficult in his career since his 1978 dilemma whether to get a bikini wax. Then he got serious. "The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing," Schwarzenegger said. "The man that is failing the people more than anyone is Gray Davis. He is failing them terribly, and this is why he needs to be recalled, and this is why I am going to run for governor." The announcement prompted whoops and cheers from Leno's studio audience, and Schwarzenegger rewarded them with some of the lines he had made famous in his movies. "Say hasta la vista to Gray Davis," he said, promising to "pump up Sacramento."
He also paraphrased a line from another movie--the 1976 film, Network. The people of California, Schwarzenegger said, were "mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore."
Written by Paddy Chayefsky, Network is a satire about television sensationalism run amok. In the movie, Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, a deranged newscaster who has rejuvenated his network's ratings by promising to kill himself live in front of the cameras. Instead of committing suicide, though, Beale urges his viewers to join him in chanting that they are "mad as hell," and a cult-like movement forms around his diatribes against "the system." Ironically, Beale's anger eventually becomes a predictable television ritual, his ratings drop again, and the network itself arranges to have him killed. The movie's message was that even when the public gets "mad as hell," nothing changes in the end. It was a grim and cynical cinematic statement--almost as cynical as Schwarzenegger's seemingly non-ironic use of Beale's line.
By all accounts, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a shrewd man, and his remarks on The Tonight Show were carefully crafted. He made a point, for example, of getting out in front of the main criticisms that his campaign would encounter. "I know that they're going to throw everything at me--I am a womanizer, no experience, a terrible guy," Schwarzenegger said. "We all know that Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone, but we also know he doesn't know how to run a state."
Months previously, Schwarzenegger's approach had been spelled out by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who conducted focus-group research for the party's "Rescue California" campaign to recall Davis. In a memo to "Rescue California," Luntz outlined 17 ways to "kill Davis softly." It was important, he advised, to "trash the governor," but, "Issues are less important than attributes and character traits in your recall effort." Accordingly, Schwarzenegger carefully avoided mentioning the budget or raising any policy questions during his Leno appearance, sticking to Luntz-tested lines such as, "Do your job for the people and do it well, otherwise you are 'hasta la vista, baby!'"
