Someone's in the Kitchen With Maria

On the eve of First Lady Maria Shriver's women's conference in Long Beach, which is expected to draw more than 10,000 women and feature the Dalai Lama along with Martha Stewart, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke recently about his negotiating strategy with Shriver and others.

"You know it is the same thing, I can go to my wife and I can go and say, ‘Look, I have some friends coming over from Austria and I expect you to make the best wiener schnitzels they’ve ever eaten. This is absolutely a must.’ She most likely will burn that and they will all choke to death. That’s what she would do.

"But if I say to Maria, ‘I have some friends coming over from Austria, and the Austrians claim that Americans don’t know how to make wiener schnitzel. Let’s show them. I know you make the best wiener schnitzels in town. Better than my mother ever made. It is unbelievable. You make those wiener schnitzels, and it's going to be a winner.’ Now my wife is going to kick in and go and do everything she can because it’s a different approach."

This is Schwarzenegger being ironic or just funny. Nobody tells Maria Shriver to get in the kitchen and make some food.

UPDATE: Julia Rosen with the anti-Schwarzenegger Alliance for a Better California says this proves that Schwarzenegger is "all about Arnold walking into a room, assessing the situation and figuring out how he can walk out of it a winner."