Schwarzenegger Mum on Case Bearing His Name

For a man whose name makes up half the name of a case in front of the Supreme Court, lame duck California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been remarkably silent about Schwarzenegger vs. EMA, a case which saw oral arguments presented in front of SCOTUS yesterday.

A quick look at Arnie’s tweet stream for the last week shows the Governator urging his followers to vote, congratulating the San Francisco Giants for winning the World Series, disclosing how he voted on various state propositions and congratulating his replacement, newly elected former governor Jerry Brown.

A similar look at recent press releases emerging from the Governor’s office also showed no mention of Schwarzenegger vs. EMA. In fact, the last time Schwarzenegger appears to have mentioned the videogame battle was right after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in late April of this year, when he stated, “I am pleased the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up this issue, and I look forward to a decision upholding this important law that gives parents more tools to protect their children, including the opportunity to determine what video games are appropriate.”

Governor-in-waiting Jerry Brown, who along with Schwarzenegger filed the petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court in the case, was too busy campaigning to argue before the Court, instead leaving that duty to the relatively overwhelmed Supervising Deputy Attorney General Zackery Morazzini.

Schwarzenegger is not currently running for any political office, so he most likely did not see a reason to further promote his involvement in the case.

Politicians, much like closers in baseball or cornerbacks in football, certainly need to have a short memory, but after spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on the fight against videogames, and trumpeting the importance of such a battle all along the way, it would have been nice for either of them to provide a comment on the situation in the days surrounding its appearance in the nation’s highest court.

Both Schwarzenegger and Brown have moved on to bigger and better things apparently.

So, you can say what you will about State Senator Leland Yee, but at least he has continued to back the bill he originally authored, and made the effort to fly to Washington D.C. for the day in order to witness yesterday's oral arguments in person. Yee, was also up for reelection and won handily, receiving almost 80 percent of the vote.