Impromptus

The wisdom of Arnold, &c.

By
Arnold Schwarzenegger and his daughter Christina look on during the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Kitzbühel, Austria, January 21, 2023. (Leonhard Foeger / Reuters)
On Schwarzenegger and achievement; the release of Rwanda’s ‘hotel manager’; nasty conspiracy theories; P. G. Wodehouse and golf; Kenzaburo Oe; and more

One of the things I most love about sports and music — and other arts — is that they are “no respecters of persons.” They don’t care where you were born, what color you are, how much money you have, etc. I have named sports and the arts. But you can name other fields as well.

On Twitter, someone said to Arnold Schwarzenegger, “When you’re rich, anything is possible, huh?” I thought Arnold’s response was just right:

• The world is awash in bad news. It was so gratifying to get such good news — news so long awaited:

I met Carine — Carine Kanimba — last year. She and her sister were at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Maybe I could quote from a dispatch of mine from that event:

Carine and Anaïse Kanimba are delightful young women. They are about an important mission: getting their father released from prison. He is Paul Rusesabagina, known as “the hotel manager.” It was he who saved more than a thousand people in the Rwandan genocide. His story was depicted in the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda. President George W. Bush saw it twice. He met with Rusesabagina in the Oval Office. They discussed Darfur (the genocide there). Later, Bush awarded Rusesabagina the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And now the hotel manager is a political prisoner of the Rwandan dictator, Paul Kagame.

Rusesabagina adopted Carine and Anaïse after their parents were murdered in the genocide. To meet these young women — it is really something.

It really was.

• I will now turn to something uglier. A report from the Associated Press begins,

In Arizona’s most populous county, elected officials are bracing for what could happen when it comes time to replace its $2 million-a-year contract for voting equipment.

Officials in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, say they have no concerns about their current vendor, Dominion Voting Systems. The problem is that the company has been ensnared in a web of conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential race that have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections among conservative voters, led to calls to ban voting machines in some places and triggered death threats against election officials across the country.

“I have concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican elected in 2020, said in a court filing. “It went from a company that nobody had heard about to a company that is maybe one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.”

Let’s listen to that county official again: “I have concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion.” All the people who lied about Dominion — lied viciously and constantly — should be filled with shame.

Do you think it will ever happen?

• They say that the weather is a boring topic (and it often is). But let me give you an AP report — one very different from the above-quoted one — which begins,

The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather.

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather.

George Washington referred to our “blessed location” — across a vast ocean from the tumult of Europe. Well, maybe not so blessed in every respect . . .

• I would like to share with you something I shared on Twitter — and I took the little video my own bad self:

In 2017, I wrote a piece called “‘Step, Step, Step.’” It is about that North Korean front and related matters. If you’d like to see it, go here.

• Ted Nugent and Kyle Rittenhouse are two stars on the right — two stars on the circuit. The former kicked off Donald Trump’s latest rally, in Waco. Warming up the crowd, Nugent called Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “homosexual weirdo.”

Ten or fifteen years ago, a colleague of mine, Mike Potemra, told me there was a belief on the right: a belief that Michelle Obama was really a man, and that the Obamas’ daughters weren’t really theirs. I figured it had to be a handful of kooks. Since then, I have learned that the belief is pretty widespread.

On the network Real America’s Voice, Ted Nugent and Kyle Rittenhouse sat down for a discussion. Affecting to address Obama directly, Nugent said, “Barack Obama, you punk. You horrible, anti-American, Communist Islamic terrorist.”

He went on to say, “Thanks a lot, Barack, and your buddy Mike, and your two fake daughters. And if I’m wrong, somebody show me a picture of Mike Obama pregnant. Show me a picture of Mike Obama pregnant, and show me the two daughters in their youth. Show me Mike and Barack snuggling their infants in swaddling clothes.”

Nugent then turns to Rittenhouse and says, “Those pictures don’t exist, because his wife is Mike. Did you know that?” Rittenhouse replies, “I did not.” Nugent continues, “And the daughters aren’t theirs.”

He wraps it all up by saying, “Prove me wrong!”

See it here:

• On the matter of Donald Trump’s current legal situation, I recommend an article by Kevin D. Williamson: “The Indictment and the Problem of Discretion.” The subheading reads, “The question is fundamentally about trust, the great political lubricant of our society.” Kevin’s assessment is sober, non-tribal, and civic-minded. To see it, go here.

• No matter what, Trump can count on Viktor Orbán, his friend and soulmate in Budapest. Trump once said about Orbán, “It’s like we’re twins.”

The U.S. ambassador had a response to Orbán’s tweet:

(In late 2021, as Russia was massing troops along the Ukrainian border, Foreign Minister Szijjártó traveled to Moscow to receive the Kremlin’s Order of Friendship from the hands of Putin.)

• Reading an article by Matt Pearce in the Los Angeles Times, I thought of my friend Terry Teachout, the late writer. “Earlier this week,” Pearce says, “I asked a couple of my longtime Twitter fellow travelers where they planned to go if the place finally collapsed. They had no idea.”

Pearce later writes,

. . . the reality is we don’t have — and may never again have — another one-stop watering hole where many of the planet’s most interesting celebrities, politicians, activists, scientists, journalists, comedians and other assorted smart people will rub elbows with one another and also with you. Twitter, in its heyday, revealed that brilliant and well-informed people are everywhere, most of them aren’t famous, and sometimes they’d appear in your mentions in the dead of night.

Terry loved conversing with his Twitter friends (and they with him). He said it was like going to a wonderful dinner party every night (and without getting dressed and going out).

• I know it’s a losing battle, but let’s keep fighting. In an article about Trayce Thompson, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, we find, “Somehow, none of those accomplishments was the most unique aspect of Thompson’s performance.” Nope, nope, nope. A thing is unique or it isn’t. There are no degrees.

Damn it.

• I received a notice from the University of Michigan Golf Course, which made me think of P. G. Wodehouse. That notice:

One of my favorite opening lines in literature is, “It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore!” That is Wodehouse.

Many years ago, my readers and I had a forum, in this column: “What are the great opening lines in literature?” Fun and interesting times. Probably Googleable.

• Isn’t this a handsome manse? Complete with daffodils in front, in earliest spring:

(Daffodils or jonquils? I hope that I will one day know the difference . . .)

• Central Park is starting to perk up, y’all:

• I know that the world is stuffed with things to read. There are only so many hours in a day. But let me recommend, highly, the obituary of Kenzaburo Oe by Daniel Lewis in the New York Times: here. There is enough of interest in this one obit to last for many days.

Oe was an exceptional writer — the winner of the Nobel Prize in 1994 — and an exceptional man. He was born in 1935, not in Tokyo or any other big city but in a remote village of Shikoku, which is the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. He was, of course, ten when the emperor announced surrender. “We were most surprised and disappointed that the emperor had spoken in a human voice,” he later recalled.

In 1963 came a pivotal moment in Oe’s life: His son was born with a severe physical handicap. Oe’s instinct was to run away, which he did, briefly. Then he came back with a full heart. The relationship between Oe and his son is very touching.

Oe was a researcher into the World War II period, and he was unflinching about Japanese war crimes. This earned him a lot of grief from his countrymen. Oe bore it. He was not trying to be popular, he was trying to find out and tell the truth.

In 1994 — the year of his Nobel — Oe was offered a Japanese award, the Order of Culture. It is bestowed by the emperor. Oe declined the award, for that reason. He said, “I do not recognize any authority, any value, higher than democracy.”

You could approve or disapprove, like Oe or dislike him. But he was his own man. A good kind of man to be.

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