Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Is This Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child?

By John Cook

Is This Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child?

Is This Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child? News of Arnold Schwarzenegger having fathered a child with a member of his household staff more than a decade ago shouldn't come as a surprise. The alleged existence of an out-of-wedlock son, including his name and his mother's name, was reported by the London Daily Mail in 2003. That's him playing high school football.

UPDATE: I just heard from Wendy Leigh, the Schwarzenegger biographer and Daily Mail reporter who broke the love-child story in 2003, and she believes that today's revelations might be about a second love-child. "I'm hearing that this is a different child," she says. "Which means there are two." Leigh stands by her 2003 account Schwarzenegger being the father of Tanner Tousignant, but if what she's hearing today pans out, then Schwarzenegger's statement today wasn't about Tanner. So while he's still a Schwarzenegger love-child, he's not the latest Schwarzenegger love-child.

The boy, Tanner Tousignant, graduated from Brea Olinda High School in Brea, Calif., last year, according to his Facebook profile. His mother, Tammy Tousignant, served as a stewardess on Schwarzenegger's private jet for 20 years. In a story that's no longer online, the Daily Mail's Wendy Leigh outed her as the mother of Schwarzenegger's child just days before the special election that swept him into the governor's office. The story, which was picked up the National Enquirer, the Drudge Report, and the New York Daily News, bears quoting at length in light of today's revelations:

Now, amid the frenzy of the approaching election, Schwarzenegger is facing new and damaging claims that he also cheated on Maria with a voluptuous California blonde named Tammy Baker Tousignant.

Tammy was in her late 20s when Schwarzenegger first strode on to the chartered private plane on which she was flight attendant. He was instantly beguiled by her, and soon, according to several sources, they became romantically involved.

'Everyone knew that she was Arnold's lover - everyone,' said a source who is employed in the tightly-knit circle of the California charter-jet business.

Tammy would fly all over America with Arnold - to Colorado, to Sun Valley - and as soon as the plane landed anywhere, she would disembark with him, climb into his limousine and drive off with him, leaving the crew watching.

Although she was married at the time of their first meeting - to pilot Tom Tousignant - by 1996 she was separated from her husband and living with her son, Tanner, then three years old.

Tanner was a handsome boy with a wide, toothy smile and a love of sports.

Today at 11, he bears a remarkable resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to one of Tammy's colleagues, Kristin Campbell, she routinely boasted that 'her baby was Arnold's'. The same claim has been made by two other women who knew Tammy well.

By the late Nineties, Maria Shriver allegedly got wind of Tammy's affair with Arnold, and arranged for her to be sacked from her company, Elite.

Questioned about these suggestions yesterday, Tammy, now 38, angrily denied any romance with Schwarzenegger and insisted she was the victim of 'dirty politics'.

Speaking outside her family home in Brea, California, she admitted she worked with the star for 11 years. But Tammy, who is now reunited with her husband and has another son, Connor, six, emphatically denied any impropriety.

The Daily Mail goes on to quote Tousignant saying she hadn't eaten or slept "since a reporter from the Los Angeles Times called at my door and asked me about it." So in 2003, the Times was looking into the Tousignant love-child story, but sat on it. The Daily Mail splashed it for the whole world to see, but no one—most notably Maria Shriver—seemed to pay much attention.

Fast forward eight years: Today's Times story, which doesn't name Tousignant, describes her as a "longtime member of [the Schwarzeneggers'] household staff" who retired in January after 20 years. The Daily Mail described Tousignant as having worked with Schwarzenegger for 11 years as of October 2003. The Times story originally reported that the anonymous child bore the same distinctive name as one of Schwarzenegger's film characters (that detail has apparently been scrubbed from the current version online); "Tanner" was the name of Schwarzenegger's character in Total Recall. (Even more odd, his brother is named Connor, which is the name of the name of the hero in the Terminator series.) UPDATE: Mark Barabak, one of the Times reporters on the story, insists to me that there was no detail about the son's name in the original story. Since I've got only my memory to go by, I'll defer to him.

In other words, circumstantial evidence—as well as common sense—indicates that the illegitimate son that Schwarzenegger admitted having fathered this morning is the same one he was reported to have fathered in 2003: Tanner Tousignant. According to public databases, Tanner and his mother reside at the same address in Brea, Calif.

Tanner, for his part, says he is not Schwarzenegger's son. Reached by Gawker via Facebook, he wrote: "im not his son.... don't waist your time. it was just a stupid story made up 8 years ago."

UPDATE: I should point out that there is, aside from Tanner's statement, other countervailing evidence. The Daily Mail story indicates that Maria Shriver "arranged for" Tammy Tousignant to be "sacked" at some point in the late 1990s, and clearly the woman Schwarzenegger admitted to fathering a child with continued working for the family until January 2011. But the Daily Mail also says Tousignant began working for Schwarzenegger in her "late 20s" and worked for him for 11 years. When the story was published in 2003, Tousignan was 38 years old; that would put the start of their working relationship at some point after she turned 25 in 1990. Which would make it impossible for her to have worked for Schwarzenegger for 11 years and be sacked in the late 1990s. In any case, obviously if Tousignant did stay on for Schwarzenegger through last January, he would have to have convinced Shriver that the Daily Mail story was false. One could imagine a number of scenarios that may have changed her mind recently—like a Schwarzenegger confidant who knew the truth coming forward, first to her, and later to the Times. Speculation, obviously. But it seems seems strange to think that Shriver would believe the rumors about Tousignant enough to actually get her fired, even if those rumors, and the Daily Mail story, were false, and then break up her marriage over a different child fathered out of wedlock.

Is This Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child? Tanner played both baseball and football for Brea Olinda High School. According to his Facebook page, he graduated last year and currently attends Orange Coast College. The Daily Mail described him as "a handsome boy with a wide, toothy smile" and a "remarkable resemblance to Arnold Schwarzeneger," but we can't find any photos that definitively show his face. His MySpace page has some group shots that may or may not include him, as well as several photos of him geared up for football. His MaxPreps.com baseball profile says he played second base, but show only photos with his back turned to the camera. His Facebook profile photo shows a distant figure holding what appears to be a skateboard. The profile also says he's a fan of Jersey Shore and Bob Marley.

Is This Arnold Schwarzenegger's Love Child? Tammy Tousignant's Facebook profile shows no public information about her; her Twitter account indicates that she now runs a photography business and has this undated photo. (Among Tousignant's 34 Twitter followers: Maria Shriver.) It's worth noting that Tousignant vigorously denied to the Mail in 2003 that Tanner was Schwarzenegger's child. She also denied it to the Times yesterday. Until the Times informed her that Schwarzenegger had admitted paternity, at which point she declined further comment.