Arnold's Memo

I wasn't going to comment on Arnold's naughty memo, but then I saw this post at The Corner.

Schwarzenegger deliberately etched an obscene word into the official public record, where it will stay forever.

It probably took his staff a good deal of effort to devise the acrostic. So think about it: Amid a fiscal crisis requiring severe cutbacks, a public employee had to use government time and resources to carry out the governor’s potty-mouth prank. This incident sends the message that he does not take the crisis very seriously. And one hopes that he did not assign a female aide to the task: Such is the stuff of sexual-harassment lawsuits.

Nobody should expect elected officials to be perfect in their private lives. But we can expect them to behave like adults in their public lives. By pulling a stunt that would land a junior-high-school kid in detention, the governor has flunked this standard.

I say good for Arnold. I thought the memo was amusing and appropriate.

As for the post at The Corner, I think John J. Pitney Jr., the Roy P. Crocker professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, is in serious need of lightening up.