Arnold’s Charity 2

Posted on August 15, 2003 in Gray Davis Recall Morals & Ethics

The only comment on my remarks regarding Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “acts of generosity” deserves bringing to the fore and further comment. Desertviking writes that she has

….always felt that while giving money is all well and good– what really defines an individual’s character is the work that s/he undertakes. Are you working to leave the world a smidge better than when you enetered it? This is what matters to me. The work you do– for the planet, and for her inhabitants– flora and fauna. In the words of one of my favorite folk singers, Shawn Colvin, ” May we all find salvation in professions that heal.” Now. Arnold’s work, has been, definingly, the large-scale marketing of violence….If he were working block by block to end shootings, bring people together to comminicate and share, and rebuild schools, healthcare centers and brownfields in places like Echo Park or Watts– with his hands, heart and soul– every day– not just by writing the ocassional check (or most likely, telling someone else to write a check) THEN. Then I could respect him.

Her words prompted me to further reflection, particularly about those who take donations from the likes of Arnold. The focus here must be on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Weisenthal Center who by taking his donations uncritically have sanctified his every act. Jesus said to the woman living in sin “Go and sin no more” after he saved her life. Charities such as the Simon Weisenthal Center and the Archdiocese gratefully accept the earnings that stem from Schwarzenegger’s 70mm odes to destruction. Despite the resemblance of Arnold’s self-made physique to the ideal of the perfect human body as portrayed in the films of Leni Riefenstahl and despite the celebrated multilation of countless human bodies which are the hallmark of his films — an iconography that is profoundly unrabbinic and unChristian — Jewish and Catholic charities make no remonstrance about the way he promotes hatred and violence. No one questions him when he tells reporters “I’m for gun control. I’m a peace-loving guy.”

So, Arnold, where’s the renunciation of your films? Where are your demands to suppress your oeuvre of violence? Why did you make a Terminator 3 if you are a “peace-loving guy”?

Those whose mouths fall open at reports of Arnold’s beneficience should also keep in mind the wisdom of Matthew 6:1-4:

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus when you give alms, sound no trumpets before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Jesus spoke these words under Roman occupation, an occupation of military rule. We live in a democratic society and we can do something to protect ourselves from hypocrites: we can refuse to be impressed by their self-promoting charities and reward those who silently go about doing the work for which they were elected. Were Jesus alive today, I do not doubt that He would see right through Arnold’s “testifying” to his Christian faith and speak to it. The way Arnold made his money speaks volumes about the kind of man he really is: at best, he’s a weak hypocrite who cannot break the addiction he has for the lucre he reaps by glorifying violence; at worst, he’s a full-blown antiChrist, fully conscious that his rise to power depends on a Big Lie and statements that are at variance with the way he lives.

California deserves neither. A wise voter rejects both.