It was such a good story that David Letterman worked it into last night's monologue. And before Letterman, there was our own Matt Coker pointing out the story on the Weekly's ur-blog, A Clockwork Orange. The story: according to London's Daily Mirror, Arnold Schwarzenegger had taken his commitment to the environment to a previously unimagined level and gotten rid of his beloved Hummers. Even though this election year has seen Arnold undergo a revival tent's worth of conversions on a wide range of issues, it still seemed almost too good to be true– the equivalent of Dracula selling his coffin or Dr. Frankenstein swearing off used body parts. And as it turns out, there's nothing “almost” or “seems” about it– the story was just too good to be true.
Both the L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have looked into the cavernous depths of Arnold's garage and discovered that he still has four Hummers. Four– that pretty much gives him a lock on the insecure-male-desperately-trying-compensate vote.
Speaking of desperate, this is just another black mark for the Mirror, which only a few years ago, was on its way to being a very respectable newspaper. In 2002, the Mirror was hailed for demonstrating a newfound devotion to fact-driven, hard news reporting under the direction of its editor, Piers Morgan. That devotion, alas, only lasted two years. In 2004, Morgan was fired after it emerged that the Mirror had faked some photos of British troops abusing Iraqis. After such a disgrace, where can someone like Morgan find work? America, of course. American TV, to be specific. Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan was the obnoxious English judge on NBC's American Idol knockoff, America's Got Talent. From editor of one of his country leading newspapers to being the Simon Cowell-lite on a third-rate American talent show who is most famous for making a 12 year old contestant cry— it's not as good a story as Arnold Schwarzenegger giving up his Hummers, but it is true.
