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Books on Arnold Schwarzenegger:
 | The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding : The Bible of Bodybuilding, Fully Updated and Revised Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins
EDITION: Paperback MANUFACTURER: Simon & Schuster RELEASE DATE: 05 November, 1999 |
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 | Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger
EDITION: Paperback MANUFACTURER: Simon & Schuster RELEASE DATE: 01 January, 1993 |
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 | Arnold's Bodybuilding for Men Arnold Schwarzenegger
EDITION: Paperback MANUFACTURER: Simon & Schuster RELEASE DATE: 12 October, 1984 |
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 | Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins
EDITION: Paperback MANUFACTURER: Simon & Schuster RELEASE DATE: 15 March, 1987 |
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 | Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger Laurence Leamer
EDITION: Mass Market Paperback MANUFACTURER: St. Martin's Paperbacks RELEASE DATE: 30 May, 2006 |
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 | Brothers of Iron: Building the Weider Empire Joe Weider, Ben Weider, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Mike Steere
EDITION: Hardcover MANUFACTURER: Sports Publishing RELEASE DATE: 01 September, 2006 |
 |
 | Party of One: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of the Independent Voter Daniel Weintraub
EDITION: Hardcover MANUFACTURER: Polipoint Press RELEASE DATE: 15 January, 2008 |
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 | Conan the Barbarian - The Original Stories
EDITION: Kindle Edition |
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 | The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger And the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy Joe Mathews
EDITION: Hardcover MANUFACTURER: PublicAffairs RELEASE DATE: 07 August, 2006 |
 |
 | Arnold Schwarzenegger (Biography (a & E)) Colleen Sexton
EDITION: Paperback MANUFACTURER: Lerner Publications RELEASE DATE: October, 2004 |
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Latest news on Arnold Schwarzenegger
North AmericaSchwarzenegger Considers New Taxes To Solve Budget Deficit (AHN)
(AHN) - As California's budget impasse stretches to almost two months overdue, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is reconsidering his options to address the huge budget deficit. - Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:03:16 GMT
Published: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:57:05 GMT - Source: Allheadlinenews.Com - Read the articleIssues"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser
Sixteen years later, media still peddle Bob
Casey myth
For the past 16 years, news organizations have been
repeating an obvious falsehood about the 1992 Democratic convention. According
to countless news reports -- in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the
Associated Press, ABC, NPR, Time,
Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, The Wall
Street Journal, and
on and on and on -- then-Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey was denied a speaking
role at the convention because he opposed abortion rights.
That's false. And it's obviously false.
Here's all you need to know in order to know with
absolute certainty that Casey's views on abortion were not the reason he
was not given a speaking role: that very same Democratic convention featured
speeches by at least eight people who shared Casey's anti-choice
position, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley Jr., Sens. John Breaux and Howell Heflin, and five
governors.
This is really, really simple: if there were eight speakers
at the 1992 convention who were "pro-life," then it cannot
logically be the case that Casey was excluded solely because of his position on
abortion.
Yet here's The New York Times, just last week:
"Sixteen years ago, the Democratic Party refused to allow Robert P. Casey
Sr., then the governor of Pennsylvania, to speak at its national convention
because his anti-abortion views, stemming from his Roman Catholic faith,
clashed with the party's platform and powerful constituencies."
No. That is not true. That cannot
be true. It cannot be the case that
he was not allowed to speak because of his views -- other people with the same
views were allowed to speak. Forgive the repetition, but reporters at nearly
every significant news organization in the country are inexplicably incapable
of grasping this extraordinarily simple concept. And when Media Matters pointed out the error, did
the Times run a correction? No.
The Times apparently stands by
its transparent falsehood. That is not a sign of a newspaper that gives a damn
about the truth.
Not that the Times
is alone in its willingness to
traffic in obvious falsehoods. The Associated Press joined in this week,
embellishing the claim: "the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey ...
was not given a marquee speaking spot at the 1992 convention because of his
anti-abortion views." ABC put it similarly: "Casey ... was denied a prime
speaking spot at the 1992 convention because of his opposition to abortion
rights."
Those reports contained a new twist to go along with the old
falsehood: They assumed
that absent Casey's views on abortion, he would have been entitled to a
"prime" or "marquee" speaking spot at the convention.
But there's simply no reason to think that is the case. Casey
wasn't a nationally renowned
orator like convention speakers Mario Cuomo, Ann Richards, and Zell Miller, or the governor of the host
state like Cuomo, or a leader influential with a large party constituency like
Jesse Jackson.
Casey certainly wasn't a nobody -- he was the governor
of Pennsylvania,
and that's a significant thing. But it isn't something that would have entitled him to a speaking
spot at the convention, much less a "marquee" spot. Not everybody
gets to speak at a national party convention.
And based on contemporaneous media coverage from the months
preceding the Democratic convention, there simply wasn't a widespread
assumption that Casey would speak -- or even speculation that he might. In fact, a review of the news
reports available in the
Nexis database that
mention Casey's name within 20
words of the word "convention" for the several months preceding the
party gathering suggests that the only person suggesting that Casey might speak
was ... Bob Casey himself.
It seems from the public record that Casey wasn't "denied" a
speaking spot because of his views on abortion -- he was never really
considered, and nobody was suggesting he would be a good choice to speak. (By
contrast, there were scores of news reports about Democrats wanting Cuomo to
speak at the convention before an announcement was made that he would do so.)
People involved in planning the 1992 Democratic convention
have long maintained that Casey was not given an opportunity to speak because he
refused to endorse Bill Clinton, who was to be nominated at the convention.
That's what they said at the time, too. The
Washington Post's first report on Casey's request for
speaking time included a quote from the Democratic National Committee's
press secretary: "anyone who is speaking at the
convention will have endorsed Governor Clinton by the time of the convention
and Governor Casey has not."
It should be noted that it wasn't merely that Casey
hadn't gotten around to endorsing Clinton.
He was arguing that Clinton
had only a "flyspeck" of support and that the party should consider
nominating someone else at the convention.
Of course, only those involved in the decisions about who
would speak at the convention know for certain if Casey's refusal to endorse
Clinton was the
reason he wasn't given a speaking role. But we do know that as soon as
Casey asked for one, the Democratic Party publicly indicated that his failure
to endorse Clinton
would prevent him from speaking. If the convention organizers were making a bluff, Casey
could have called it by simply endorsing Clinton.
He chose not to. Instead, he began denouncing the party for having a
"radical, extreme position" in favor of abortion rights and
claiming it was bowing to "the radical far
left." Members of
his own delegation were quoted saying he was "being a jerk" and
said they were considering removing him as head of the delegation.
It's also important to keep in
mind that Casey didn't merely want to speak at the convention. He wanted to devote his
entire speech to opposing the Democratic Party on a single issue. After the convention ended,
Casey released the text of the speech he would have delivered had he been given
the chance. The speech
ran more than 1,000 words --
and not one of those words was
"Clinton." Nor was the word
"Gore" mentioned. Casey's
speech did not include a single word of praise or support for the ticket being
nominated at the convention he wanted to address. Instead, it accused the party of being
"far out of the mainstream and
on the extreme fringe" on abortion. That's what the entire speech was about: disagreeing with,
and insulting, the Democratic Party on abortion.
And yet the media pretend
Casey's lack of a speaking role at the 1992 convention tells us something
about the Democratic Party. OK, quick: Name a single example in modern history of a
Republican who has not endorsed the GOP nominee being given time to give an
address at the party's convention -- an address that does not support or even
mention the nominee, but rather consists solely of arguing against and
insulting the party's position on abortion. You can't name one, because it has
never happened. Nor do
I recall many speeches at recent Republican conventions arguing in favor of gay
rights or against the Iraq
war. Nobody points to that as evidence of the Republicans' intolerance of
divergent viewpoints.
And yet, ever since the 1992
convention, the news media have
portrayed the lack of a speaking role for Casey as evidence of the Democratic
Party's supposed intolerance of anti-choice
politicians -- a
portrayal gleefully encouraged by Republicans. As ABC reported this week:
The 1992 snub has become
a symbol over the years of the Democratic Party making support for abortion
rights a litmus test. In 2004, Republicans contrasted the Casey snub with
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., and former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, R-NY., two Republicans who support abortion rights, speaking to their
convention.
But unlike Casey, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger had endorsed their
party's nominee. And neither Giuliani nor Schwarzenegger delivered a
speech that consisted solely of disagreeing with the GOP's position on
abortion. Instead, they delivered strong endorsements of George W. Bush. The
situations aren't even remotely comparable. The Republicans' granting of convention speeches to Schwarzenegger
and Giuliani isn't a contrast to the Democrats' not giving Casey a speech; it is
instead a direct analog to John Breaux and Howell Heflin and other anti-choice Democrats who
have spoken at Democratic conventions. The comparison of Giuliani to Casey
would be laughable even if it were true that Casey's position on abortion
kept him from a speaking role. But ABC pretended the bogus contrast was apt.
If you spend a few minutes browsing through news articles
available on Nexis, you won't have any trouble finding absurdities like
this. Here's one particularly convoluted comparison, from a Buffalo News columnist writing in November
2004:
Last summer's Republican
conclave in New York City
was a skin-deep showcase for The Big Tent.
In August, Republicans paraded a squad of pro-choice
speakers on prime time. They didn't talk about abortion rights there,
certainly, but their prominence beckoned to the undecided. In the VIP box sat
Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, and her partner, Heather Poe.
Contrast these shallow bows to
cross-culturalism to what happened to the party of inclusion a dozen years
before in the same building. The forces of then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton
barred Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey from making any address to the Democratic convention.
Casey was the most influential anti-abortion voice in the nation. He passed
the country's most stringent abortion controls and won re-election by more than
a million votes.
[...]
Whatever one's
views on abortion, it is undeniable now that the Republicans have handled their
relationships with social-issue constituencies far more deftly than the
Democrats have with theirs.
Got that? The 2004 Republican convention featured pro-choice
speakers who didn't talk about
abortion rights. And that's supposed to be an inclusive,
tolerant contrast to the 1992 Democratic convention at which eight anti-choice
Democrats spoke. Why? Because Casey (supposedly) wasn't
allowed to give a speech that would have
been entirely about his opposition to abortion. The Republicans
handled things more deftly than the Democrats by doing exactly what the Democrats did -- featuring speakers
who disagree with them on abortion, but who didn't give speeches about
the topic.
Let's end where we began, by making this as simple as
possible.
Eight Democrats who opposed abortion rights spoke at the
1992 Democratic convention.
Therefore, it cannot be the case that Bob Casey was
prevented from speaking at the 1992 convention because of his opposition to
abortion rights.
The fact that Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other pro-choice
Republicans have spoken at recent Republican conventions does not in any way
contrast with the way Casey was treated; their speeches were not devoted
entirely to disagreeing with and insulting their party. Unlike the speech Casey
wanted to give, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger devoted their convention addresses
to supporting their party's nominee.
Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, and other pro-choice Republican convention speakers
are, instead, directly analogous to the numerous anti-choice Democrats who have
spoken at Democratic conventions in recent years.
This really isn't complicated stuff. There's no
excuse for news organizations getting it wrong. They're just falling for
bogus spin, and they don't care enough to get things right.
Published: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:59:43 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the articleIssuesMedia outlets provide modified, baseless version of oft-repeated falsehood about Casey's denial of speaking slot at the 1992 DNC
In separate August 13
Associated Press articles, writers
Nedra Pickler and Kimberly Hefling claimed that "the late Pennsylvania
Gov. Robert P. Casey ... was not given a marquee speaking spot at the 1992
convention because of his anti-abortion views." Likewise, in an August 13
Political Radar blog post, ABC News' Teddy Davis and Arnab Datta asserted that "the late
Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey D-Pa., was denied a prime speaking spot at the
1992 convention because of his opposition to abortion rights."
Additionally, in an August 13 entry on The Page, Mark Halperin claimed that Casey "wasn't given
a marquee speaking spot at the '92 convention because of"
his "abortion views." They were each providing a modified version
of the old falsehood, much repeated, that Casey was denied a
speaking role at the convention because he opposed abortion rights. In fact, as
Media Matters for America has
repeatedly noted, others who opposed abortion rights were given speaking roles
at the convention, so Casey's views on abortion alone could not have been
the deciding factor in the Democratic National Committee's decision not
to give him a speaking role. By specifying that Casey was denied a
"marquee" or a "prime" speaking spot, the AP, ABC News,
and Halperin suggest that Casey would have otherwise been given a
"prime" or "marquee" spot, if not for his opposition to
abortion rights, an assertion that is baseless in its own right -- they provide
no evidence that he was being considered or would have been considered for a
"prime" speaking spot -- and that is reportedly refuted by DNC
organizers. As Media Matters has documented, Michael Crowley of The New Republic reported in 1996:
"According to those who actually doled out the 1992 convention speaking
slots" -- "prime" or otherwise -- "Casey was denied
a turn for one simple reason: his refusal to endorse the Clinton-Gore
ticket."
From Hefling's August 13 AP
article:
Democratic officials say Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who opposes abortion rights,
will be a featured speaker at the party's national convention.
Casey was
set to speak during the convention's Tuesday night session.
Casey
is the son of the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey, who was not given a
marquee speaking spot at the 1992 convention because of his anti-abortion
views.
Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama supports abortion rights. Casey endorsed
Obama over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and campaigned with Obama throughout Pennsylvania.
From Pickler's August 13 AP
article:
In an
effort to reach out to anti-abortion Democrats, Obama gave Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, long an
opponent of abortion, a speaking role the same Tuesday night that [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner and
Clinton were to address delegates.
Casey
is the son of the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey, who was not given a
marquee speaking spot at the 1992 convention because of his anti-abortion
views. Bob Casey endorsed Obama over Clinton
in his state's primary.
From the August 13 ABC News Political
Radar blog post:
Sen. Bob
Casey, D-Pa., an abortion rights opponent who endorsed Sen. Barack Obama,
D-Ill. over Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY prior to the Pennsylvania primary, will address the
Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 26.
Casey's
father, the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey D-Pa., was denied a prime
speaking spot at the 1992 convention because of his opposition to abortion
rights.
The
1992 snub has become a symbol over the years of the Democratic Party making
support for abortion rights a litmus test. In 2004, Republicans contrasted the
Casey snub with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., and former New
York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, R-NY., two Republicans who support abortion rights,
speaking to their convention.
The
decision to give Sen. Casey a featured speaking spot is part of a broader
effort on the part of the Democrats to broaden the party's appeal on abortion.
Published: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:24:45 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the article
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