Cat mentioned to me an interesting article she saw today that seems to have been missed by me. I was able to find an Associated Press article which covers the same story:
Historians criticize governor for flubbing Austrian history at GOP convention
"
What's more, when Schwarzenegger left in 1968, Austria was run by a conservative-only government headed by People's Party Chancellor Josef Klaus, a staunch Roman Catholic and a sharp critic of both the Socialists as well as the Communists ruling in countries across the Iron Curtain.
Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a Socialist one," said Polaschek, referring to East European Communist officials' routine descriptions of their countries as Socialist.
Polaschek saw the moderate Republican governor's recollections at the convention as a tactical move. Schwarzenegger, he said, was "using the old Communist enemy image for Bush's election campaign."
"He did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician," Polaschek said.
Norbert Darabos, a ranking official of Austria's opposition Social Democratic Party, sharply criticized Schwarzenegger's "disdain for his former homeland."
"The Terminator is constructing a rather bizarre Austria image," he said."
Leave a comment