Marshal McLuhan once said the medium is the message, and that was true in California this week as a new Hollywood blockbuster and two new campaign ads focused attention on the governor's race and public employees.

Like the storms that batter the north coast every winter, the governor rains furloughs and minimum-wage cuts on state workers every budget cycle. In Sacramento and elsewhere, state workers protested at the opening of "The Expendables," a routine but still top-grossing summer action flick made exceptional by the appearance of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a cameo role.

Workers showed up at movie theaters around the state to play on the movie's name and tell the governor and media that they are not expendable.

At the same time, a new radio ad from Meg Whitman's camp sought to link gubernatorial rival Jerry Brown to the City of Bell scandal. The ad claims that Brown's "mismanagement" of Oakland while mayor is just like the plundering of public monies by top Bell administrators. For all its targeting of Brown, however, the language of the ad sounds like an attack on public employees too, despite the fact that all the egregious examples in the ad are city officials--not city workers.

It's an example how the phrase "public employee" is used to turn the abuses of public employee managers into blame against public employee workers. A little fact checking by SF Gate quickly found that most of the factual claims in the ad are not in fact true.

More on California politics and labor at SEIU 1021's LiveWire blog here.