Jesse Ventura, the professional wrestling bully boy who parlayed his celebrity into one term as Minnesota's governor, has some advice for a fellow entertainer-turned-politician, while offering this opinion on the California recall drive: "It's ridiculous. It's absurd."
Having said that, Ventura added that if Californians "are stupid enough to vote for this recall," then people cannot blame his friend and former co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger for capitalizing on it.
So Jesse, The Body, has this to say to Arnold, The Terminator.
"First of all, I'd tell Arnold, be yourself," said Ventura, a man who made his name and fortune dressing in leotards and boas and playing the heavyweight foil to Hulk Hogan. "Don't be spun doctored and stay away from the Republican Party, who will try to make you something you're not."
Ventura, who ran as an independent, said that Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican, should also be mindful that Ronald Reagan served six terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild before he was elected California's governor in 1966. Ventura served four years as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, before he reached the political major leagues.
"I won that election because I was real," Ventura said. "If I was Arnold, I wouldn't let them make me into a cookie cutter. I mean, look what they're doing to him. He looks wooden."
Indeed, Schwarzenegger, usually magnetic and capable of charming an entire ballroom, has appeared on the campaign trail as something of a nervous hen venturing into a strange barn.
The favorite to replace Governor Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger, 56, was told by his advisers not to make mistakes out of the box. And so, he holds news conferences without taking questions.
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