Arnold Schwarzenegger fired Clint Eastwood

Not that you’ve been keeping up with California politics lately, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proved last week you can choose your friends and family by bouncing pal Clint Eastwood and brother-in-law Bobby Shriver off the state parks commission.

The L.A. Times reports both men, who were appointed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2001 and reappointed by the Governator in 2004, learned about their fate through governor aides, despite their respective relationships to Schwarzenegger.

“I think it was just somebody got a bee under their bonnet at the right moment, so there we are,” Eastwood said.

While the official reason is that Schwarzenegger wanted others to take a crack at the commission, but wor around the campfire is it was because both Eastwood and Shriver opposed an Arnie-backed plan to run a toll road right through Orange County’s San Onofre State Beach, a plan that was defeated by the California Coastal Commission in February.

“I guess he felt we were going to be guys who were going to be obstructionists for anything through state parks,” Eastwood says. Yes, you’d think parks commissioners would be against plans to pave marine estuaries (even though Dirty Harry himself had once argued for laws to be bent so he could build a golf course some years back — that, too, was defeated).

But there’s no hard feelings, especially after Schwarzenegger called and apologized for how the sitch was handled, Clint claims.

“I’m a grown person; I’m not a kid,” Eastwood says. “The parks is a voluntary job, and it’s just a job you do, when they need you. It was fun. . . . They make changes, and that’s their prerogative. It’s not like I need a day job.”

[Photo: Clint and Arnie in 2006. AP]