Governor Could Have Found Himself on ‘Crusade’

Move over, Mel. There’s no lock on the cross-to-bear movie market.

A new book reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once considered a film titled “Crusade.”

“Why Arnold Matters,” by cultural anthropologists Michael Blitz and Louise Krasniewicz, says the “Crusade” project was to have starred Schwarzenegger as a medieval thief condemned to death.

While he’s languishing in the clink, the pope issues a call to the Crusades and tells believers to look for a sign. The Schwarzenegger character (evidently subscribing to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano), manages to burn the image of a cross into his back. His overwhelmed jailers take that as a sign and release Schwarzenegger to join the Crusades. In some versions of the script, the authors write, he finds the True Cross and carries it off to Rome.

The authors report that some Christian groups who saw a purported “Crusade” script declared that the film’s scenes of rape, violence and cannibalism would render it anti-Christian.

The film was never made, but the book will appear later this spring, just before the governor’s scheduled trip to Israel.

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Lieutenant Governor Plays Matchmaker

No “strange bedfellows” jokes, please.

Arianna Huffington’s new book, “Fanatics and Fools,” features accounts of her run for the recall job of governor -- among them the phone call she received three weeks after the election.

It was Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor and a fellow candidate for governor, whose “dulcet baritone voice” informed Huffington that a good friend of his had “watched you on television a lot during the campaign and, well, he would really like to take you out on a date.”

Bustamante continued his pitch. “My friend is 6-4, looks just like Tom Selleck and is a labor leader.” Huffington agreed to take the call.

The suitor phoned the next day -- but not before having white tulips delivered to Huffington’s office. (Bustamante had surveyed the women in his office on the flower question, and tulips had beaten orchids 2 to 1. Huffington wrote, “These guys even use focus groups for dating!”)

Bustamante chivalrously declined to discuss the result of his matchmaking.

Don’t send in your photo and ideal-mate requests. “This is not,” Bustamante tells This Space unequivocally, “a career path.”

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Congressman on Side of ROTC Recruiters

Homeland Security 101?

Newport Beach Republican Rep. Chris Cox, who heads the Homeland Security Committee, has instituted the latest anti-terrorism tactic: allowing ROTC recruiters back on college campuses.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps has been exiled from some college campuses since the Vietnam War. Cox singled out Harvard on the floor of the House, and such bans still stand at Stanford, Columbia and other campuses.

The measure, which passed 343 to 81, declares that any school getting homeland security money would be prohibited from barring its doors to military recruiters.

“Never,” Cox said, “have we had a greater need for well-educated leaders in our military.” No argument there.

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Lessons Learned in Measure R Mailer

Measure R, approved by Los Angeles voters nearly 2 to 1 last month, commits almost $4 billion in bonds to fix up its schools, most of which are in pretty pitiful shape.

However, in an excess of zeal as election day approached, one last mailer asking voters to vote “yes” didn’t feature the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of needy students.

Instead, pictures of children at the comfortable, well-equipped Topanga Elementary School were paired with made-up quotes about the deplorable state of schools -- observations that may be true of a lot of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but not Topanga.

The Topanga Messenger newspaper, reporting the matter, said a fifth-grader named Madison who had been shown in the mailer had been quoted as complaining that “the schools are so crowded it’s hard to walk to class,” and fourth-grader Edwin had been quoted as saying, “Some of my friends go to schools with science labs and libraries. We don’t have that in my school.”

Topanga has both, and is what they call “under-enrolled.”

Principal Liam Joyce apologized to the parents, and said that he wished that he had been asked to preview the mass mailer.

Glenn Gritzer, special assistant to Los Angeles Unified Supt. Roy Romer, said, “Basically we just need to be more careful.”

The students, who signed photo releases, “knew they were doing something for [Measure] R,” he said. “What we shouldn’t have done is use quotes from kids citing problems applicable to a huge majority of kids in the district -- just not these kids.”

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Points Taken

* Hydro, hybrid, whatever. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s press office sent out a hasty correction to its first e-mail announcing a photo op with FedEx’s “Hydroelectric Delivery Fleet Service” vehicle. It was really a FedEx “Hybrid Electric Delivery Fleet Service Launch.” But if anyone knows how to get a car to run on hydroelectric power, alert Hoover Dam and OPEC. Schwarzenegger pledged in September to have one of his Humvees overhauled to run on hydrogen, and that it would take a couple of months. Are we there yet?

* Martinez Democratic Rep. George Miller has joined with Arkansas Republican Don Young to launch GO, the Get Outdoors Act, to battle the nation’s costly obesity epidemic by “expanding the number of goal lines and foul lines in suburbs and inner cities,” with more parks and other enticements to exercise.

* How soon they forget: The clue on a recent “Jeopardy!” quiz show asked the name of the mayor of Los Angeles, who, in 1989, had been elected to his fifth term. There were two answers offered: Willie Brown and Andrew Young. Bzzzt -- correct answer is, “Who is Tom Bradley?”

* An item on the Hotline, a political junkies’ news roundup, cited a San Francisco Chronicle report that Gov. Schwarzenegger had, like virtually every other new state worker, “voluntarily participated in a sexual harassment prevention course along with his senior staff.” The Hotline’s headline: “A Little Late?”

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You Can Quote Me

“You would think, at least I did, that some things in Sacramento would be immune from political intimidation, or partisan politics. And apparently I was mistaken.”

-- Fresno Mayor Alan Autry, who was dis-invited to speak June 9 at the California Prayer Breakfast, where the guests will include Gov. Schwarzenegger. Autry has not stinted in his criticism of the governor’s budget.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Joe Mathews, Peter Nicholas and Jean O. Pasco.