When news broke a few days ago that former California governor and former-er movie megastar and bodybuilding legend Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver had separated, it didn’t take a crystal ball to foretell what was gonna come next. And sure enough, a few days later, news broke that Schwarzenegger hadn’t just cheated on his wife, but had in fact fathered a child with a former “staffer”, which is what rich people call the people they hire to do all the shit that regular people usually have to do themselves. Schwarzenegger had apparently been able to keep the birth of this love child secret for “over a decade” and the staffer, who herself was married, had continued to work for Schwarzenegger until recently. The hunt is now on to ascertain the identity of not only this anonymous staffer but the child, with the early leader in the sweepstakes being the only semi-reliable Gawker, who claims that the staffer in question is Schwarzenegger’s former stewardess Tammy Tousignant and that her son Tanner, currently a college student in Southern California, is the child of Tousignant and Schwarzenegger. These claims are mainly based on a story that first surfaced in 2003 about Schwarzenegger’s alleged affair with Tousignant, which they quote:
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.
There is also, however, some speculation that the more recent revelations about a Schwarzenegger lovechild are in addition to Tanner Tousignant, which would mean two illegitimate Schwarzenegger children running around out there. Two, that we know of, at least. Has anyone checked down in Rio?
