For Some, Schwarzenegger Comes Across as a Barbarian

Schwarzenegger downs 15 tequilas an evening, used to smoke pot and puffs incessantly on cigars. This is conducive to health? No wonder George Bush hasn’t replied to his request to head up the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.

My own favorite portion of Mathews’ profile is the sentence near the end: “. . . He gamely attempts to open up by mentioning the pain he felt when he lost both his father and his brother during the same year.” C’mon, who’s kidding whom? The 1977 documentary, “Pumping Iron,” covered this area much more thoroughly. When the muscle man’s mother wired him about his father’s death and asked that he come home to help her, he declined. And his petulant voice on the film’s sound track informed us that this decision had been reached, in effect, because he was busy psyching himself to win an upcoming bodybuilding contest. In other words: Sorry, Mom and Dad, but your timing is lousy.

DAVID R. MOSS

Los Angeles