Jan. 19, 2007
Will Beckham Try to Bend Voters’ Ears Down the Road?
By Sam McManis
Sacramento Bee
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| David Beckham. (SHNS photo courtesy photorazzi.com)
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David Beckham -- world-renowned soccer player, spouse to a Spice Girl, overall dazzling collection of hunky Y-chromosomes and soon to be one of Los Angeles' own -- will be the new governor of California.
OK, not really.
We're just sayin', is all. It's our theory that, four years hence, once Arnold Schwarzenegger's second term withers away like, er, an aging bodybuilder's biceps, Beckham will move in on the state Capitol.
That, we suspect, is the real reason the soccer star is darting across the pond and decamping in L.A. That $250 million, five-year contract with Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy, announced just last week? Merely Beckham's clever ruse to get a green card and begin his steady climb up California's political ladder, much in the same mercurial manner that Schwarzenegger ascended.
You don't have to bend your imagination like, well, Beckham to picture the common bond between "Becks" and "Pecs." Indeed, we think the similarities -- eerie, really -- between the two, not to mention between their wives, Maria ("Posh Kennedy Lineage") Shriver and Victoria ("Posh Spice") Adams, are irrefutable proof of the soccer king's ulterior political motives.
To wit:
Both men are foreigners with "funny" accents.
Both men are expert in athletic endeavors that many Americans simply will never understand. (So, like, you grease your body and pose for a score? And, you mean you kick a ball around for 90 minutes and often don't score?)
Schwarzenegger abandoned his sports career to become an action-movie hero. And, if People magazine is to be believed (and who among us would doubt that bible of celebrity culture?), Beckham harbors aspirations to be an action-movie star himself.
In "Conan the Barbarian," Schwarzenegger wore a short, fur-lined skirt and carried a long sword. In paparazzi photos, Beckham has been captured wearing a skirt (excuse me, kilt) and carrying an MP3 player.
Both men have upset folks in their respective homelands. You'll recall that Schwarzenegger so enraged the denizens of his hometown of Graz, Austria, because of his pro-death-penalty stance that civic leaders there voted to take his name off a sports arena. And, the British tabloids have been positively brutal in their negativity toward Beckham after he announced he'll become an ex-pat.
Both men are injury-prone. The governor broke his right leg in a recent skiing accident. And Becks' 2002 season with Manchester United ended early with a broken left foot, which also hindered his play during that year's World Cup.
Both have put education near the top of their agendas. With Schwarzenegger, it was a major part of his re-election platform. And Beckham told reporters that he signed with the Galaxy, in part to teach American youth the love of soccer.
When it comes to their personal lives, both men have reputations as womanizers, which they vociferously deny. Remember those L.A. Times stories just before the recall about Schwarzenegger's carousing, and that claim by Beckham's former "personal assistant" in Spain that the two had had an affair?
Not surprisingly, both guys position themselves as hardworking family men. Schwarzenegger and Shriver have four stunningly beautiful offspring; the Beckhams three.
Both have stick-figure-slim wives who are media darlings. Victoria Beckham is a former pop tart who climbed the charts. And Maria is a former TV talking head -- which, in TV news circles, is sometimes considered to be the equivalent to pop tartitude.
Both spouses are fashion plates. Shriver's outfits are examined by the state's fashionistas more closely than conspiracy theorists watch the Zapruder film. And the tabs tell us that Victoria Beckham, who favors her own brand of jeans and high-heeled boots around town, was recently spotted on the slopes decked out from ski cap to binding in tres chic Chanel.
Shriver is the best-selling author of such feel-good tomes as "Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into The Real World"; Victoria Beckham recently published a feel-good book of beauty tips, "That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between," that cracked the best-seller's list in the U.K.
And finally, both men are politically hard to pin down. England may know every detail of Beckham's personal life and ever-changing hairstyles, but an extensive database search failed to reveal whether he backs the Labor Party or the Tories. And, after the last gubernatorial campaign, Republicans think the governor's a Democrat, and vice versa.
Scary? Told you so.
Sam McManis can be reached at smcmanis@sacbee.com
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.
