Beatty takes left jabs at Schwarzenegger

LOS ANGELES -- ''I see nothing wrong with Maria [Shriver] becoming a Republican. I'd say many of my best friends are Republicans," said Warren Beatty, Oscar-winning actor-director and liberal citizen-activist. Over the phone, his legendary voice purrs. He knows exactly what he's saying, and although his tone is wry, he's not really joking.

Although California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's poll numbers have been dropping thanks to advertising campaigns by teachers and nurses, Hollywood, usually a hotbed of liberal activism, has so far remained mum about this former denizen.

In the last few months, Beatty, the star of and force behind such seminal films as ''Shampoo" and ''Bonnie and Clyde," has become the first big name to break the entertainment community's unofficial speak-no-evil toward Schwarzenegger and his wife, Shriver.

Last weekend, Beatty, 68, gave his first commencement speech ever to the graduating class of the University of California at Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and used the occasion to humorously but witheringly attack Schwarzenegger -- much like the candid candidate Jay Billington Bulworth from Beatty's 1998 political satire. He derided the governor for ''his reactionary right-wing agenda," ''his bullying of labor and the little guy," his plan to spend money on a ''totally unnecessary special election," and his refusal to raise taxes on the rich. Beatty asked Schwarzenegger to ''cut down the photo ops, the fake events, the fake issues, the fake crowds . . . the scapegoats, the 'language problems,' the broken promises, the 'Minutemen,' the prevarications, and put some sunlight on some taxes.

''It's become time to define a Schwarzenegger Republican -- a Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who says he's a Schwarzenegger Republican," Beatty said. ''Can't we accept that devotion to the building of the body politic is more complex and a little more sensitive than devotion to bodybuilding?

''Does that make me a 'girlie-man'?" asked one of the 20th century's most famous Lotharios.

Beatty, a political veteran who's worked for every Democratic presidential candidate since Robert Kennedy in 1968, dismissed Schwarzenegger's claims of uniting both sides of the political aisle. ''By bipartisanship, do you mean the Kennedy family?" he said to the Berkeley crowd. ''Governor -- I knew Jack Kennedy.

''Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Kennedy Democrat."

Within hours, Beatty, a blue-chip Hollywood figure famous for 46 years, was swatted down by the Schwarzenegger team. The governor's communication director, Robert Stutzman, dismissed him as a ''crackpot."

''I don't think that that's the most intelligent response for Arnold to have his people give," Beatty mused a couple of days later.

A spokesman for Shriver declined to comment about Beatty's remarks, and Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said, ''His comments don't merit any more of a response than we provided before. We didn't believe that they're personal in nature." He added a refrain that the governor's office has tried to inject into the debate: ''Warren's just mad at Republicans because he's afraid they're going to cut off his Social Security."

Beatty advised the Kerry campaign during the last election, but he stayed in the background because, he said, ''I felt that the Republican campaign was too successfully demonizing the entertainment community. To be more publicly visible in that campaign could do as much harm as it would help." Of course, the stakes change when it's all-Hollywood mano a mano.

''In California, it's much more difficult to demonize the entertainment community when the governor is an entertainer. If I'm leading the way on that, that's good," Beatty said. Indeed, last weekend's speech was the second anti-Schwarzenegger speech Beatty had delivered in recent months, and he wasn't ruling out more.

In Hollywood, Beatty's ''the only one out there," said Andrew Spahn, a DreamWorks executive active in Democratic politics. ''He's been out front on this and helped to give voice to some disorganized feeling."

Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, said, ''Schwarzenegger has such a long personal history with so many players here. On balance, they'd rather be quiet than express publicly their views that they disagree with him."

Before Schwarzenegger's political ascension, he was regarded as a waning action star, long on chutzpah and marketing might. Beatty's recent films might not have attracted legions of teenage boys, but inside the community, he is still viewed as an A-list talent, part of the permanent aristocracy.

Still, as it's been for decades, whenever Beatty talks, the media wonder if he's planning to run for public office. During his speech, Beatty said that Schwarzenegger ''knows I'm a private citizen just as he was a year ago, I'm an opponent of his muscle-bound conservatism with a longer experience in politics than he has, and, although I don't want to run for governor, I'd do one helluva lot better job than he's done." A couple days later, Beatty demurred, although he said, ''One never knows at what point one becomes sufficiently inflamed to take a step that one does not basically want to take."