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When in doubt, use a cliché.  Okay, so I'm still on vacation, but I just have to say something about the recent buzz over the mocking insult Arnold Schwarzenegger directed at his Democratic opponents in the California legislature.  At a photo-opportunity during a stop at a mall food court, the Governator said: "If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ? if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men.'"  The term "girlie men" he swiped from the well-known Saturday Night Live skit that lampooned the iron-pumping Schwarzenegger.  In response, his critics jumped in and labelled his remark sexist, homophobic, and "as misogynist as it is anti-gay."

What's most interesting here is that there's absolutely no substance to any of it.  They are all floating on a sea bed of shifting clichés.  Schwarzegger, unable to come up with anything original, relaxes his brain and reads from a television script; his opponents stab at him with the airy knives of overworked bromides?"sexist," "homophobic," "misogynist," and "anti-gay."  What is worse is that media sources actually reported these crosscurrents of hot air.  Perhaps it's interesting that "when in doubt, use a cliché" is itself a cliché, but, hey, I'm still on vacation.

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