He’ll be back? Arnie shouldn’t get a second go
That is what anyone with a sense of a woman’s dignity was thinking last week when reports emerged that Maria Shriver was considering reconciliation with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder emeritus and former governor of California who, over at least 14 years, exercised his sordid droit du seigneur over the family maid.
“I just don’t see much of a future here,” says divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, with rare understatement. “What is she thinking, that something is going to be different now?” It was less than a year ago that Schwarzenegger’s spectacular betrayal came to light: a prolonged affair with Mildred “Patty” Baena, the family’s housekeeper. The ugliness of the infidelity was compounded by the abuse of power at the heart of a relationship between a public figure and his domestic help. We soon learned that the liaison with Baena had resulted in a bouncing gap-toothed child. Stories then poured forth of Arnold’s dog days: a pattern of such promiscuity as to make Tiger Woods look like a bashful cub.
