One day during the 2003 California gubernatorial election, Governor Gray Davis, facing an unprecedented recall (a ballot initiative which allows California voters to remove elected officials before their terms have expired), took a jab at Arnold Schwarzenegger, joking to a supporter, in the presence of a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, that anyone who can't pronounce 'California' shouldn't be its Governor. Schwarzenegger waited patiently to be asked about this, and then unleashed a classic sound bite for the evening news: "He doesn't like the way I say the word 'California,'" he declared, "because I say 'Caleefornia' rather than 'Caluhfornia.' But there's plenty of other words that he doesn't like. He doesn't like 'lost jobs.' He doesn't like that word. He doesn't like 'blackouts.' He doesn't like 'energy crisis.' And he definitely doesn't like 'recall'!"
[Davis eventually issued an apology, though only after the state Senate voted, 19-2, to demand one. Ironically, Schwarzenegger's pronunciation was actually closer to the original Spanish than was Davis's.]
[In 2004, a curious ballot initiative was proposed in Bolinas, California by a woman named Jane Blethen (aka "Dakar") who was often seen wearing burlap clothing and chocolate on her face. The measure passed by 314-152 votes: "Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town," it read, "because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful."]
Sources
The New Yorker, 2003-09-29
