Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Apparently, Austrians don't like the death penalty. Socialists and Greens particularly don't like it, so when Arnold got wind of the fact that the City Council in his home town of Graz was going to remove his name from the "Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium" over the execution of Tookie Williams, Arnold finally had enough.
SacBee: Governor tells off his hometown
Angry over local politicians' threats to rename "Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium" in protest of the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, the governor promised the mayor of Graz a follow-up letter from his personal lawyer.
"I expect the lettering to be removed by the end of 2005," Schwarzenegger declared in the letter released by his office, "and in the future, the use of my name to advertise or promote the city of Graz in any way is no longer allowed."
Schwarzenegger, who makes regular trips back to Graz, told the mayor he's even returning his coveted Graz "Ring of Honor." The award was given him during an elaborate City Hall ceremony in 1999 for the "pride and recognition" he brought his hometown.
During the ceremony, which is on his Schwarzenegger.com personal Web site, he called the ring "the most precious award I ever got."
That was before he learned the Graz City Council was considering stripping Schwarzenegger of that honor, too.
"It was a beautiful day in 1999 when I received the ring at City Hall, and I assumed at the time that it would be a token of sincere friendship between my hometown and me," he wrote Mayor Siegfried Nagl.
"Since, however, the official Graz appears to no longer accept me as one of their own, this ring has lost its meaning and value to me. It is already in the mail."...
Also see the Telegraph: I won't be back, says Arnie as home town attacks him over execution
Good for Arnold. When someone's about to kick you (and, in fact, has kicked you before), kick 'em first.
What i love about the european attitude towards the death penalty is how it serves them as their mark of moral superiority, which they use to look down on the USA. But when they turn their gaze to the middle east, the only country without a death penalty - under conditions that would lead most european countries to reinstituting it quickly -- is israel. So who do they favor, the palestinians who do not hesitate to execute their own collaborators without trial.
As a friend of mine once put it, if your going to get morally indignant, it probably a good idea not to also be a hypocrite.
"... their mark of moral superiority, which they use to look down on the USA. But when they turn their gaze to the middle east, the only country without a death penalty - under conditions that would lead most european countries to reinstituting it quickly -- is israel."
Precisely, and illuminating. Indeed, the precision is laser-like and the illumination is total - excepting for the self-enamored and the preemptively self-blinded and self-exculpating.
And good for Governor Schwarzenegger, I'm sure it wasn't a decision he particularly wanted to make. Too, think of the contrast between the superficial arrogation of moral "superiority" on the part of the officious officials of Graz with the considerations of conscience which Schwarzenegger must have gone through vis-a-vis the Williams decision. And yet, none of that for the superfluities and officious who comprise Graz's "community of the upright"; for them it's all viewed via a reductionist imagination and vanity. Don't be overly surprised it we hear about the Tookie Williams Stadium in Graz.
Gov. Schwarzenegger should be commended. I intend to write a brief email or letter and do precisely that.
Brilliant.