Are they upset at the Ugah-Boogah speaking Kamala the Ugandan Giant? Mr. Fuji - the inscrutably evil Asian Taskmaster? The Godfather, who is a pimp? Hispanic Gang Bangers? The Iron Sheik? Nope. They are pissed about this character - That's Dirty Dutch Mantel as Evil Manager and Tea Partier "Zeb Coulter" who spouts quasi-racist. anti-Immigrant, Pro America flabber-jabber in defense of his wrestler (the very Aryan and immensely Noggin'd) Jack Swagger. Alex Jones - It is interesting as what the WWE is really doing is coming up with an over-the-top villain in an effort to get Alberto Del Rio over as a babyface Hispanic wrestler. The problem is Del Rio is a natural heel and pretty hard to like. I could easily see Zeb Coulter getting cheers in a lot of Arenas regardless of how over the top his rhetoric gets. Not sure who that would be most embarrassing for. (btw - this character was done 20 years ago in the form of Col. DeBeers.)
Listen Jason McCullough! You eegggggg suuuuuckin daaawg if you think you got what it takes to tell me who is conservative or not, you better have eyes in the back of your head because I will take you out! Just like I took out the rest of these old whiskey drinkers. SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKIN'! Breitbart better?
Alberto is a natural heel and can make you hate him with a smile, but he has Robert Rodriguez, and that guy is immensely lovable! In all honesty, I fucking hate this angle. I like Swaggie, I like rooting against him, but Zeb's promos just kill my interest in him dead. I would rather listen to Swagger lisp his way through generic bad-guy trash talk. Zeb's racist rhetoric is so true to life that it makes me want to turn off the tv.
I just like that they are upset about a fictional character spouting slightly exaggerated versions of their actual talking points. Actually, Ann Coulter's real talking points are more incendiary than Zeb Coulter's. I've maintained for years that Ann Coulter is just exactly this, a wrestling "heel" who laughs all the way to the bank, so its nice to see things come full circle I guess.
True, I don't know why anyone thinks Del Rio is anything other than a heel (and I Love Rodriquez as well) and while Swagger is a legit badass he has one of the more punchable faces in the industry. I don't see how this angle is any worse than when they tried to make CM Punk a heel because he didn't drink or do drugs, while making drugged out mess Jeff Hardy into a white meat babyface (marketed directly at children and young girls). Or when LBJ played George W. Bush as a heel champion. But, if this gets us closer to the return of Managers in Wrestling I'm all for it. I just think its odd how freaked out these dudes get when they get parodied. But then, manufacturing outrage is something Right Wing Media (ok Jason?) has in common with Wrestling.
Hahaha, I think LBJ would have made a great wrestler, but the tights probably would have cut right into his bunghole.
Even his mugshot is punchable. Maybe they will punish him and try to get into the Right Wing's good graces by turning him into an Evil Gay Character. (holy moly - Adrian Adonis had an Action Figure. An Action Figure I want soooo much) Oh crap, I meant JBL...derp a derp.
While he was, indeed, the best, when Ingmar and I were towards the end of our watching rasslin' days, they were trying to make him a heel by virtue of OMG GAAAAAY
Shattered Dreams Funny thing about Goldie, he's really a West Texas Redneck (and Dusty Rhodes' legit son). I've heard him interviewed and he said he used to get the biggest pops out of doing the smallest things like shimmying his body against his opponent's and decided that was way easier than going over the top rope or trapping himself in the Tree of Woe every night. Wrestlers can be strange dudes but they aren't dumb.
I've always liked Goldie, and the occasional moments when they have the Rhodes boys interact on screen are damn good. Bring in their dad and it's always awesome. You only need to watch the first 3 minutes.
Mae Young Mae West Vince is a fucked up weird man with an infantile sense of humor, that wrestling has any popularity at at in spite of having him as its undisputed king is remarkable. They absolutely played him up as a sexually aggressive and sinister drag queen. Wrestling has tapped into homophobia and homoeroticism in equal measures since the beginning. The first superstar of the modern era was Gorgeous George - To my knowledge there has never been gay character who was a "face"*. The "gay" tag team of Chuck and Billy turned face by not getting gay-married and "coming out" as straight for instance. I suspect it is only a matter of time before a gay character is established as a babyface. I hope so anyway. *Orlando Jordan, who is openly bisexual in real life was teamed with the awesome Eric Young in TNA for awhile, but he never really had a babyface run after his bisexuality was used to get him over as a heel.
Ha, you goin down sucka's Glen Beck is on the case! http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2...acter_as_part_of_publicity_stunt_suckers.html Beck would be an awesome WWF character: "Tea Righteous man"
It was on the 1000th episode last year. It was a really good segment. One of the ladies was catching heat from the rest of the locker room for being unstable and she just was like, enough already, I'm crazy? This is the WWE, why is everyone picking on me? And she just opens the door into the hallway and Hacksaw Jim Duggan is there, carrying his 2x4 and letting his late 50's deflated man titties flop all around yelling down the hall at someone. He stomps off, followed immediately by Rowdy Roddy Piper and R-Truth trying to get R-Truth's invisible friend Little Jimmy to jump rope. Piper was just sort of laughing to himself and yell mumbling. It was capped off by Mae & Son just wandering around saying hi to everyone.
That's an intimidating security guard. It seems so weird, isn't wrestling sort of like nascar, a fairly right-wing audience?
It doesn't seem weird if you realize that the WWE gets what the GOP doesn't. Shitting on Latinos is bad business.
I'd be interested to see some poll work done, but I'd have to guess no, not nowadays. I wouldn't say that the audience is very political, and if pressed to take sides would tend towards moderate and left views. First of all, a lot of the audience are either kids or college age. Second, just an eyeball of the audience during an episode of Raw says that about 1/3 or more of the audience is black or hispanic. Third, the current top guy with adults (kids are all John Cena fans), CM Punk, is an avowed atheist, has a lot of tattoos, and has a lip piercing. A right-wing audience wouldn't have accepted him as much as the WWE audience has. I would say that the wrestling audience certainly used to skew to the right. WWE started being quite a bit more irreverent back when Stone Cold and The Rock ruled, because that turned out to be very popular, and while they've toned things down quite a bit since then, as late as 2006 they had a match where Vince McMahon and his son went up against HBK and God (represented by a spotlight), and Vince made the referee check to make sure God did not have any hidden foreign objects. Now, Vince was the bad guy in this match, but he also ended up winning, which isn't something that would have gone over very well with a 70s audience. It didn't cause much of an issue with the WWE audience of 2006, though.
The image of a right wing fan base is probably more rooted in the overt, gaudy, and unexamined Patriotism displayed by the WWF's biggest stars in the 80's. But things haven't been that simple for a long time. Kurt Angle was turned heel by the fans and he was a legit Olympic gold medal winner wrapped in a flag for instance. About the only person left who can get an old fashioned Patriotism Pop is "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, but that has always had more to do with Camp than ideology. Hoooooooooooooooooo!
The GOP should embrace the tactics taken by the WWE. You just know they'd get it wrong, though. Make the official uniform of the RNC this And bring on this guy as their head of PR
