Bullying the Nurses Union

The AP reports that Gov. Arnold “Girlie Man” Schwarzenegger recently managed to make some *big enemies* in the California Nurses Union.
Last month when a group of nurses gathered to protest Schwarzenegger’s decision to delay changing the state’s nurse-to-patient ratio, Schwarzenegger responded: “The special interests don’t like me in Sacramento because I am always kicking their butts.”
Are you *kidding* me? First off, if there is any special interest he’s playing to, it’s hospital administrators. And second, he’s “KICKING THEIR BUTTS”? Is this lame macho rhetoric the only way Arnie could come up with to respond to the *very* valid criticism by nurses that they are tired of being overworked?
Rose Ann De Moro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, explains that: “He behaves like an arrogant patriarch with respect to women’s occupations. Nurses, teachers, home health workers — it’s vulgar how he’s run roughshod over them. He’s arrogant, and he’s a bully.”
Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, chimes in that: “The arrogance of taking on teachers, nurses and other professions where women are underpaid, overworked and vital to society is beyond the pale. But Arnold is someone who treats women as objects, so it’s natural for him to have a tendency to disregard and devalue professions that are made up of women.”
But here is something to make you smile. The AP reports that: “Last week, some 300 nurses and their supporters disrupted a movie premiere in Sacramento, booing Schwarzenegger as he posed with actors Vince Vaughn and The Rock.” Wow. Now I would *love* to see that.