Arnold Schwarzenegger played one of the most iconic villains ever in the original Terminator, but these days he's known for trying to do good. recently went viral on Twitter for trying to do a good deed, but now the response to that good deed has been some blowback that has the former governor quite upset at a CBS headline that seems to imply that the work Schwarzenegger and others did wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Last week Arnold posted a video of himself and others fixing a pothole that he said on Twitter had been a problem for weeks but had remained undealt with by the city of Los Angeles. It was seen by many as a great example of members of a community going out and doing something about a problem. However, this was followed by a news story that Schwarzenegger took issue with, as it implied that what was fixed wasn’t a pothole, but was rather a trench dug for utility work.
This headline/tweet is bogus. The story is correct - the utility work was finished in January. I filled in the hole 3 months later and the city left my fix in place.This story should be taught in a class for people who are confused about why institutional trust is in decline. https://t.co/yq0VZwVqr3April 16, 2023
While the Terminator actor attacks the headline for being misleading, he does admit that there is some truth to what happened, which the body of the news story does include. Apparently, there had been utility work done on the street a few months ago, but the work had been finished for some time. However, the repair work on the trench had not been completed, and this combined with the heavier-than-usual storms that California has seen this winter led to the pothole problem.
This is quite different from the idea that Schwarzenegger and others simply filled a utility trench, which sounds like they potentially could have been interfering with important roadwork. That certainly doesn’t appear to have been the case, but one can read the headline that way.
Schwarzenegger calls out the headline for being part of the reason that people have lost “institutional trust.” If one only reads the headline, as many are likely to do, they might come away with the impression that Schwarzenegger and others simply didn’t do the thing they claimed to do. It makes it sound like the city is claiming there was no pothole, which isn’t the case according to the actor. If one does read the story, however, one learns what happened. Including the fact that once the city went to do the repair work, after the initial tweet went viral, they kept the work already done in place, and simply reinforced it.
Teamwork. Happy to help speed this up, and thanks to the crew for pumping up my fix. https://t.co/3PMiegYGZs pic.twitter.com/UgoPLUpdbMApril 14, 2023
While Schwarzenegger is back to making movies again following his time as California governor, he's also a very active user of social media. Arnold uses it to promote worthy causes and use his celebrity to reach out to the public about issues he thinks are important.
At the end of the day what seems clear here is that Arnold Schwarzenegger and others in his neighborhood came together to do something good for the neighborhood. While the details surrounding why the work needed to be done got a little confusing, it seems that in the end, everything worked out.
