The fallout from Gov. Schwarzenegger’s demeaning comments about small-town Californians continue to reverberate.  Chairman Torres weighed in, and noted that rural Californians don’t exactly use a horse and buggy to get around, and some of them even have the teevee and the Internets!

“The Governor’s comments are insulting,” Torres told PolitickerCA.com today. “California does not have villages. This is not Austria, this is California. Voters in Central California and others from small towns have more on the ball than Arnie!”

State Senator Dean Florez, from the small Central Valley town of Shaffer, went a step further, introducing a resolution to have the Governor take the high school exit exam.

Like every other kid around the state, small town students take the same graduation tests as big city kids to show competency. Rural kids can make the grade. Given the Governor’s distasteful comments, what’s unanswered is whether he can make the grade.

That’s why, today, I’m introducing a senate resolution asking the Governor to take the high school exit exam. If the Governor fails the test, then we certainly have a capable Lt. Governor who can assume his duties until the Governor successfully passes the exam.

I hope that he accepts this challenge and that he doesn’t cower behind some excuse. This is a serious effort to bring attention to the divisiveness of placing labels on people based on who they are, how they live or where they come from — or even how well they do on a test.

If it is a good enough test for our twelfth graders, then certainly it is a good enough test for the Governor to demonstrate his competency.

And after he takes the exam, maybe he’ll think twice about the massive cuts to education funding he’s proposing — he just may have to return to school to brush up for the test.”

I would pay money to sit in while Arnold fills in the bubbles on the Scan-Tron sheet.  Can we get this on television?  It’d be the first time local news covered state politics all year!

I almost get what the Governor was trying to say, but the fact that it was a proud endorsement of lobbyist-paid junkets, as well as the demeaning stance toward small-town Californians, doesn’t come off well:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday encouraged lawmakers — especially those from small towns — to do more globe-trotting on the dime of special interests.

Speaking at a forum on global economics held by the nonprofit Milken Institute, the governor suggested lawmakers would be more willing to embrace his plans to privatize the building of roads, schools, high-speed rail systems and other public works if they could see how effectively it has worked in other countries.

“Some of them come from those little towns, you know what I am saying, they come from those little towns and they don’t have that vision yet of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes or of putting a highway on top of a highway,” Schwarzenegger said. “They look at you and say, ‘We don’t have that in my town. What are you talking about?’

“So they are kind of shocked when you say certain things. So I like them to travel around.”

Remember, folks, it’s Barack Obama who’s the elitist.  Arugula!

What shouldn’t get lost here is that Schwarzenegger made this little comment to justify what he has done multiple times since entering public office – jetsetting around the world on trade missions paid for by shadowy interests who expect a return on their investment.

There’s a virtue and value in world travel, and the country could go a long way to fostering it by providing grants for international study, for example.  If he wants to build a program like the “overseas experience” they have in New Zealand for California’s young people, great.  But Schwarzenegger isn’t really endorsing that.  He just wants his secret free trips.  The “y’all are hicks” part is just frosting on the cake.