ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

If they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men.

 

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“Girlie men” is a pejorative term, notably used by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to characterize opponents in the state legislature of California over the state budget.  Schwarzenegger borrowed the term from a series of Saturday Night Live sketches in which Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon played bodybuilders named Hans and Franz, large men with Austrian accents. The two characters, for obvious comic reasons, were characterized as cousins of Schwarzenegger’s. The inverted usage provides an element of irony to the comedy and the term, as well.

The term was first used by Schwarzenegger in the 1988 Presidential election, accompanied by then Vice President George H.W. Bush. He was shown attacking Bush’s opponents, saying “They all look like a bunch of girlie men, right?” He repeated it in the 1992 election, then campaigning for President Bush, again applying it to the Democratic candidates, as seen in the documentary Feed (1992) by Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway. He used the phrase again on July 17, 2004, where he stated “[i]f 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.”

Source – wikipedia

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