Schwarzenegger Flips Off Lawmakers in Hidden Message (link)
By Kim Zetter  October 27, 2009  |  8:11 pm

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is ticked off.

He’s tired of signing bills that don’t address the pet causes he deems important. So when another unworthy bill crossed his desk recently for signing — addressing funding issues for the Port of San Francisco — the guv vetoed it and sent lawmakers a little note saying why. Only the note said a little more than lawmakers were expecting.

Buried in the text was a hidden message directed at State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, author of the bill, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Ammiano had strongly criticized the governor in early October and reportedly told Schwarzenegger at the time to “kiss my gay ass.” Schwarzenegger’s veto letter, issued a couple of days later, reads:



Missed the hidden code?

The Bay Guardian has helpfully picked it out:



When asked by the Guardian if the message was intentional, Schwarzenegger’s spokesman said only, “what a strange coincidence.” The paper noted that he was “clearly being sarcastic.”

A spokesman for the governor told Threat Level that he’d been receiving a number of calls about the letter and hadn’t yet decided whether they were going to release a statement about it.

UPDATE 6:15 PST: The governor’s office decided it would make a statement, of sorts, after all. Spokesman Aaron McLear told Threat Level the hidden message was just “a strange coincidence,” repeating the response given to the Bay Guardian. He added that the governor’s office had written other letters that also had hidden words spelled out in them. When asked for examples of what was spelled out in those letters, he replied “soap,” “poet,” “ear.”

“When you do so many veto messages that’s bound to happen,” he said.

He promised to send examples of those other letters.