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Monday, June 29, 2009

 

IS IT UP TO ARNOLD TO SAVE BODYBUILDING?

Point of View by Marty Gallagher

Jeff, it’s time for you to stop being an Arnold apologist and start asking some hard questions of the governor of California.

I can't think of too many things Jeff Everson and I disagree on – however Jeff’s flippant apology for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Sets and Reps segment of the July/August issue of Planet Muscle caused blood to shoot out of my ears.

So what’s my beef? A well-intentioned reader wrote to Jeff asking the question that those of us in the know have been asking, ever since the former king of Hollywood decided to enter the political arena and was voted governor. Why does the chief law enforcement officer in the state of California lend his name to an event that covertly (if not overtly) condones and rewards steroid use? Why does Arnold still enable and promote (literally), the largest single annual gathering of steroid users on the earth, year after year? Why does the Arnold classic offer the largest payday on earth for non-steroid tested sporting events thereby ensuring that in order to win, you better show up gassed to the maximum. Arnold is no longer the young carefree guy spending his time in Gold’s Gym, puffing on a joint for movie effect on the bus in Pumping Iron, or equating pumping his biceps to his orgasms.

My rhetorical answer to every one of the prickly questions asked above is summed up in one word: money. As Bob Dylan once said, “Money doesn’t talk – it swears.” Jeff, you defend our iron icon feebly, “Give the guy a break. He has enough to worry about trying to balance the Ca. budget.” Yet, the king, with so many worries, still finds the time to fly in his private jet, breaking away from unending crises, jetting over to Ohio to host his Arnold Classic and Arnold Sport Festival and possibly pocketing from it, well over a million from advertising, gate ticket sales, sponsorship and endorsements. Despite all those California problems, Arnold makes time to bank another cool million or maybe two, (as if he needs it). I would suggest my pointed criticism should not only be addressed, but is timely and appropriate.

Are we mere mortals not allowed to ask a few questions of the king of California? I know he is busy – but still, the unanswered question looms large: why is it that in California, a routine traffic stop and car search can result in jail time for any individual caught with say, $2,000 dollars worth of performance-enhancing drugs (that’s distribution quantity) – yet the chief law enforcement officer of California sanctions a (his) bodybuilding competition that provides the largest financial payday anywhere in the world for steroid -using bodybuilders, strongmen and lifters? Huh? Why is there no drug testing at the Arnold Classic per se, let alone parts of the entire festival?

The show PR firm makes comparisons to the Olympic Games, that the Arnold has more events and athletes. Meanwhile, when approached by bodybuilding organizations such that bodybuilding might become part of the Olympic Games, the IOC Olympic officials call security to have the fruits and nuts yanked from the hall.



Take a close look at the picture posted in sets and reps on page 36 of the July/August issue. It features Arnold congratulating a winner of his female bodybuilding event. If a picture is worth a thousand words and if you want visual confirmation as to why professional female bodybuilding is currently DOA, look at her more-than-ample development. She has bigger shoulders than Arnold ever did. Oh, I’m so sorry…is thinking that she is a walking pharmacy, a politically incorrect thing to say? My words are kind compared to what the commentators had to say when a similarly-built lady appeared on an episode of the Camp Japanese TV show Ninja Warrior. Somehow she had become a contestant on this male/female obstacle course show and the commentators had a blast calling her “him” and “mister” as the identified IFBB champion, at the time, lumbered and stumbled through the obstacle course. This woman was ridiculed and called a freak. Sorry more politically incorrect talk.

Does it matter that female professional bodybuilders taking huge amounts of androgens have to take a 4 blade razor to their faces, get male-pattern baldness, a voice as deep as James Earl Jones has, sprout a clitoris that fits the 50 foot woman, are diminished with breasts that diminish (or have been replaced with slugs of saline that turn rock-hard soon enough) and have hair and skin that looks sort of like a slowly-cooked Bratwurst? Does it matter that the public is repulsed by this damaging steroid-induced, gender-bending? Why do these women do this? In the USA we are semi-free, true! But, is it to differentiate themselves from the rest of humanity, to win contests, to see their photos in muscle magazines and make at least a tad of coin in videos or in pseudo-wrestling matches? Or, maybe it is to satisfy deep seated psychological issues of a lack of self esteem, (which esteem might be temporarily raised by sexual stalking from some men who also seem really stumped about their gender identity).

One thing is for sure: by offering prize money in a non-steroid tested format, the Arnold Classic creates a reinforcing payday for freakishness. The contest promoters perpetuate and encourage this perversion of the female body. Jeff, are your readers too young to remember the athletic elegance of Cory, the sultry shape of Carla Dunlop or the raw sexuality of Rachael McLish? Can’t Arnold at least test the women? Arnold is complicit, a co-enabler (along with Joe and Ben Weider who avoided the issue within the IFBB, in general), of what has become the complete disintegration and destruction of female bodybuilding or what it could be.

Just look at the governor’s face in the picture of him congratulating the female winner. It is said that the eyes are the windows into a man’s soul. What do Arnold’s eyes say? Perhaps they say, “I hope to God the LA Times (or the California democrats) doesn’t get a copy of this picture, run it on the front page, with the headline, is the governor promoting and rewarding steroid use and
making a million dollars?”

You say, “I really don’t think Arnie or Maria thinks much about the bodybuilding part” {of the Arnold Classic}. Oh really? Well, why does Maria attend then? Arnold is on the stage with the champs, is he not? As far as your point, “The media can’t make definitive judgments about
which bodybuilders may or may not be on steroids with certainty,” Well, I can, so why can’t they? Insofar as the top finishing pros competing at the bodybuilding sections of the Arnold Classic, be they male or female, I say all of them are gassed to the max and so does every single person with a functioning brain!

If the competitors feel they are being smeared by association, or POV vehemently disagree that they aren't on drugs, let them take the tests like other athletes do. C’mon Jeff, look at the picture again. Arnold is holding the microphone as if the gal is radioactive! Jeff you say that Arnold is at the Jim Lorimer run event {emphasis mine} to honor all the jocks without making moral aspersions, or judgments.

First off, it’s not called the Jim Lorimer Classic; it’s called the Arnold Classic. Secondly Jeff, Jim is not a state governor, one charged with upholding laws. The governor is supposed to make moral and value judgments – he’s the man that says greenhouse gasses are killing us and we have a moral obligation to save the planet; he makes moral decisions about who gets the pardon or who gets the lethal injection. He makes moral statements when he says kids should not take recreational drugs, that gay marriage should or should not be recognized, or how many indigent, poor and mentally-challenged may have to be taken off the welfare rolls to balance a state budget. He tells children to obey the law and that discrimination is morally wrong and he makes moral and value judgments every single day – that’s why the people of California elected him!

You state that no one wants to spend the money to rid the sport of drugs. Well, every major employer in the Fortune 500 requires new hires to submit to, and to pass a recreational drug test. Testing labs have become a huge entrepreneurial business and are everywhere. A cursory glance at the Columbus, Ohio phone book reveals no less than 20 accredited drug testing firms, offering 24 hour lab results. I am quite sure that if Jim Lorimer or Arnold wanted to, they could arrange onsite drug screening for performance enhancing drugs with a minimum of hassle and money. If Jim or Arnold can’t afford the $150 per test testing fee, perhaps they could raise the entry fee to contestants in order to cover this ‘bank-busting’ expenditure. Or, add $1 fee to the zillions who cram into the expo over 3 days. Then test, (or don’t make comparisons to the Olympics or give lip service, saying we need to get steroids out of bodybuilding, as Arnold pronounced at one Columbus event).

Oh sure, I know that you know, that this would only ensure the contestants would be ‘clean’ in the days and weeks leading up to the competition – but hey, the word start signifies a beginning. And Jeff – couldn’t they at least test the ladies? Here’s another little idea: test twice, randomly, in the 5 months leading up to the Arnold. The IFBB could require that the top 15 finishers from the previous year report to local labs in their various hometowns; where they must show up within 8 hours of being called and produce photo ID and give a supervised sample. Anyone who refuses will be banned from competing that year.

If Jim and Arnold wanted to, they could even practice more sexism and leave the guys alone: don’t test them. Arnold could even make a press statement similar to what you suggest, saying “Well, this is not baseball and no one cares much about steroids and bodybuilders; and besides, if I insist on tests for steroids at the Arnold Classic, then the freaky physiques will disappear and we would lose money. This is an unacceptable trade-off.”

I really don’t think we’re going to hear that speech anytime soon. In my opinion (and contrary to your assertion), I think Arnold knows that voters really do care about performanceenhancing drugs and if a public servant were placed in a situation of defending steroid use – and further it was determined that that same public servant was actually profiting off of individuals using steroids – than that would prove a public relations nightmare.

I will close by mentioning that I had occasion to have lunch recently with a retired IFBB professional bodybuilder and his girlfriend after they attended her first professional female bodybuilding competition at the Arnold Classic. He shook his head, saying, “I was embarrassed and my girlfriend was repulsed. I’ve been around and have known plenty of female steroid users, but in recent years it has gotten so out of hand that I honestly believe if the woman that won this year competition had been able to have been magically transported back to 1979, she would have easily beaten Frank Zane to win the Mr. Olympia. Seriously, she packed more muscle than Zane ever did and was far more ripped.”

My hall-of-fame pro bodybuilder’s girlfriend, put a final nail in the female bodybuilding coffin, adding: “I have seen lots of (local) amateur female bodybuilding competitions and have enjoyed them. While I was certainly expecting more muscle and definition, I was not prepared for the freaks that I saw at the Arnold. Why would females disfigure themselves? If female bodybuilding ever expects to be accepted by the general public then they had better start doing some drug testing or policing or something – I cannot imagine any parents in America getting a good, up-close look at any of the top finishers and encouraging their daughters to pursue bodybuilding. I will never attend another female professional bodybuilding event as long as I live. It was disgusting.”

One final thought for you Jeff. In the end, there is no way around it – both you and Arnold are acting like hypocritical opportunists on the issue of steroids.




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