Ze English, eet eez zo difikalt for me being


In a weird twist on yesterday's immigrant-baiting "let's close the borders" appeal to the far right, Schwarzenegger is now quasi-apologizing by saying that he misspoke due to his difficulty with English.

To wit, he said "close the borders" when he'd really meant "secure" them.

May I be the first to say: WTF?

This is a guy who's been in the US for almost three decades. He's in a highly public job; he's had a lot of experience with public speaking; and for crying out loud, he has writers. It's not credible at all that Schwarzenegger simply didn't understand the difference in denotation and connotation between the words "close" and "secure".

Furthermore: language gaffes of this kind don't happen that way, especially between languages that share a lot of cognates in the way that German and English do. The German word for the verb secure is sichern, and it's hard to imagine a poor Austrian bodybuilder struggling for "secure" would make it all the way to "close" before picking the more similar cognate.

So: I call bullshit.

Fortunately, the press isn't buying it, and the more vocal members of the Democratic party seem to be getting wise to a point that I made yesterday: Advocating tighter border controls is a way for Arnold to advertise to the extreme right that he's ready to play ball:

Schwarzenegger apologizes for 'close the borders' remark
Critics deride his explanation of 'language problem'
(Chron) California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly apologized Wednesday for his earlier statements that California should "close the borders" with Mexico to control illegal immigration, saying he had misspoken because of a "language problem.''

"The bottom line is, I misspoke, and I'm sorry if I offended anyone," Schwarzenegger said about his comments Tuesday to a newspaper publishers' group in San Francisco. "I meant 'securing' our borders, not 'closing' them. ...

But Schwarzenegger's retreat over a volatile issue of illegal immigration -- which came less than 24 hours after his statements to the Newspaper Association of America in San Francisco -- failed to mollify the governor's opponents. They insisted that Schwarzenegger's recent statements reflected a wider pattern of appealing to a more conservative GOP base and stepping to the right on issues ranging from immigration to union political activity. ...

Maria Blanco, the executive director of the San Francisco-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, an immigrant rights organization, said that "the apology is great -- but this is what moderate Republicans end up doing when they lose support; they think about seeking support from more extreme Republicans.''

"The governor knows what he's saying. He knows what his words mean,'' said state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a declared 2006 Democratic candidate for governor. "The visual image of closing the border is a clear image ... and it's not the first time he's done this." ...

"There's a pattern here,'' Angelides said. "You speak like (President) Bush does, with the language of compassion, but at the big moments, you throw red meat to the right wing.''


Sorry about all the ellipses, but there were just too many great quotes calling Arnold out on his swing to the right.

UPDATE: More about this elsewhere in the press:
Schwarzenegger backtracks over border closure blunder (Telegraph)

Posted: Thu - April 21, 2005 at 08:55 AM   | Category:     |   |   | |


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