How the Culture of the WWE Took Over US Politics

Throughout my career, the Sunday evening work session has become a ritual. I sit down at about four o'clock and start prepping for the week ahead. For atmosphere, I usually have some combination of Law & Order, soccer, or wrestling in the background. Wrestling is actually perfect for productivity. You can focus on your task and mostly tune it out. The crowd and announcers will signal you to tune in for the chair shot, occasional shooting star press, or the finishing move. WrestleMania XXXIX happened last week at SoFi Stadium in LA, so it was my background this weekend. 

Wrestling is theater. It’s a scripted soap opera (in tights) with feats of athleticism and risks that defy common sense. But for a person with my worldview, enjoying the product is complicated. You could build an encyclopedia of the racist and xenophobic gimmicks that have been used over the years (see below). Women’s bodies are habitually objectified. The people in charge of the two major promotions (AEW and WWE) are billionaires of questionable character, both born into wealth.

It goes deeper than that. If you look at their biographies, Donald Trump and Vince McMahon’s resumes are largely indistinguishable up until about 2015. Both inherited businesses from their fathers: Trump a real estate empire, McMahon the then WWF. Both spent much of their careers awash is scandal. McMahon was indicted in federal court in 1994, charged with providing steroids to wrestlers. He was forced to resign as chairman of WWE in 2022, after it came to light that he, like Trump, paid hush money to a mistress. Their lives are intertwined in other ways. Trump made several appearances in the WWE and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013 and McMahon’s wife served as a member of Trump’s Whitehouse, as administrator of the Small Business Administration. 

They are basically the same dude and I find both loathsome. I wouldn’t want someone of their character as a colleague at work or representing me in public office. 

Despite this I enjoy wrestling and can largely ignore its excesses because I understand it’s all an act. Everything is scripted, the animosity is a pantomime. The audience is mostly in on the joke. But increasingly, I find myself using the language of wrestling to describe our unfortunate period of American politics. 

When I see conservative culture warriors attacking teachers or the LGBTQ+ community, I see heels generating cheap heat. A heel in wrestling parlance is a villain in a storyline and heat is the negative response they desire from the crowd—bad guys want crowds to boo them—they want to be hated. The “own the libs” aesthetic of the modern GOP is indistinguishable from a heel wrestling promo. Earning the scorn of the establishment, helps them get more over, the wrestling term for gaining popularity, with their base. Why else would we have politicians wearing AR15 pins into congress days after school shootings? It’s heel nonsense, meant to spark outrage.

The more we revile them, the more their supporters revere them.  

The clip above is a masterclass in cheap heat, Elias earning deafening boos insulting a crowd in Seattle on Monday Night Raw in 2018.

The word kayfabe refers to the illusion that wrestling is real, unscripted—that it’s a competitive sport. When we puncture that veneer and address the sport as the scripted drama, we call it breaking kayfabe. The feigned outrages that rise up in our politics everyday feel like kayfabe. Look at events this week in Tennessee: two Black Democratic legislators were expelled from the House for breaking rules on decorum while participating in a protest against gun violence. Rep. Andrew Farmer, who has a voice that is simultaneously reminiscent of Foghorn Leghorn and a plantation owner, condemned their actions in this video.

Farmer, maintaining kayfabe, pretended to be outraged by the protest, treating it as an unprecedented breach of decorum. Rep. Justin Pearson, one of the expelled members, rightly called out the expulsion as what it was—a racially motivated power grab, overturning the will of voters in Memphis. Pearson’s response was a shoot, an unscripted breaking of kayfabe, bringing real life elements into the storyline. Pearson highlighted the hypocrisy of the GOP majority, expelling him while keeping people in the chamber accused of grave misconduct. 

I’m already dreading the ever expanding 2024 campaign that is taking shape right now. Collectively we face a number of overlapping crises and find ourselves in serious times but have a deeply unserious political culture.

But for better or worse, I am an institutionalist. I believe in democratic institutions and that government can help solve problems and make society better. But I find myself caring less and less about US national politics as it becomes more and more like pro-wrestling.

I have more to say about wrestling and politics, in particular about how progressive politicians should embrace the populist message of Dusty Rhodes’s Hard Times promo. But that will have to wait until next week.

Why I Kneel: Freedom of Expression Includes the Right to Protest

Like many Americans, military service is a tradition in my family. My mother, father, step-father, older brother and both of my uncles all served in the US military. My parents served in wartime. My father in Korea, my step-father in Vietnam and my mother served in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield and Storm.

I am a veteran, but I am not a hero. I served in the US Air Force Reserves from 1997 until 2003. I joined during peacetime for the college money, served with distinction, earning several commendations, but left the service in 2003 because I liked the idea of finishing college more than I liked the idea of going to fight in a war that I didn’t believe in.

I love my country, but I went to the James Baldwin School of Patriotism. Baldwin wrote, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” I am a patriot, not a nationalist. I love my country, but I see her flaws.

On Saturday, before the Seattle Sounders play the Whitecaps, I will be kneeling during the US National Anthem in Section 122. This is not a political act. This is a cry for help.

Every year I stand before my government class and we read and discuss the Founding documents of our nation: Jefferson’s Declaration, Madison’s Constitution, and Marshall’s early verdicts. Over the last few years the gap between the freedoms and equality enshrined in those documents and the reality my students face--particularly my students of color--has become increasingly apparent.

I understand why many people are upset about the protests, but I do not think there are “right” and “wrong” times to protest injustice. I believe and I teach my students that society isn’t improved by stifling dissent, but by engaging dissenters in dialogue. We’ve seen time after time in US history that periods where national unity is called for often mask harm to marginalized communities: the Alien Act of 1918 and the Sedition Act during World War I, the Japanese Internment during World War II and the Jim Crow South afterwards, and the fivefold rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes after 9/11.

What middle class white America does not grasp is the absolute dread that people of color, particularly those in poverty, have of law enforcement.

So far this year US police have killed 816 people (as of 9/14/16). In 2015, the number was 1,207. Many of these people were armed or “resisting arrest." But the penalty for resisting arrest is not summary execution by an agent of the state. Some of these incidents were captured on video and viewed by millions. But the vast, vast majority happened with little to no coverage from social media and the national press.

This is what these protests are about.

The protests started by Kaepernick, continued by Rapinoe and coming soon to GA, are an attempt to gain the attention of the apolitical, unaffected and unconcerned. Aside from the President, the most visible Blacks in America are professional athletes. Kaepernick is not fighting for himself--he is fighting for the voiceless. As a society, we have allowed the normalization of use of force by officers of the law upon some of the most vulnerable members of our population. These protests are an attempt to get the nation’s attention on the biggest possible stage.

Herculez Gomez was recently asked about the protests in the Seattle Times. He responded that “If you were to have asked me this 10 years ago, it would have been very different. I would’ve told you about me getting pulled over at 16, being asked to show my license and registration, reaching in the glove compartment for it and all of a sudden getting a handgun in my face — because the cop was scared I was reaching for something else.” This resonates with me. Herc and I are roughly the same age. I have family in law enforcement. My most terrifying encounters with law enforcement are now decades old. I imagine, if I didn’t have frequent contact with young people, I might feel as he does. But as a teacher in a low income, urban school these issues have an immediacy for me. Everyday at Lincoln, I teach sixteen year-old Hercs and Colins and after listening to them day-after-day, year-after-year, I can’t remain neutral. I won’t.

When Muhammad Ali passed away in June, I wrote a piece criticizing athletes of the “$10 million endorsement era,” particularly Michael Jordan, for their silence on issues of justice. Many of the same people who praised Ali in his twilight years and after his death have contempt for Kaepernick and Rapinoe; the cognitive dissonance is stupefying. I applaud Kaepernick, someone I have reviled for half a decade, for taking a stand. I commend Rapinoe for joining him and keeping the conversation going. I will be kneeling during the anthem in the Brougham End and at Husky Stadium this weekend. If you want me to stand up during the anthem, stand with me.

Stand with me in advocating for reforms to policing like those proposed by Campaign Zero.

Stand with me in favor of body cameras.

Stand with me against militarization of police.

Stand with me against stop and frisk.

Stand with me against use of force laws that prevent officers who kill unarmed citizens from facing charges.

Stand with me against civil asset forfeiture.

Stand with me against mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders.

If you want me to stand up, stand with me.

This post was originally published on the Seattle Sounders fan blog, Sounder at Heart

Ali: Más Grande de Todos los Tiempos

Friday night I sat at the foot of my bed, cellphone in hand, staring at Twitter, crying like a child over the death of one of my heroes. My wife repeatedly checked in with me, but I couldn’t explain why I was so upset. I get it now: the death of Muhammad Ali represents the end of an era for much of black America.

To black men of certain age, the age of my father and my uncles, Ali was the pinnacle: he was elegant and eloquent; he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee; he was unapologetically pro-black; he was the best in the ring (back when boxing mattered); he was unafraid to speak his mind to condescending, incredulous TV personalities and audiences; and he was willing to sacrifice personal fame and fortune for his anti-war and anti-racist principles.

I am not old enough to have watched Ali in his prime, but I was raised on his legend. My father, born in Laurel, Mississippi, in 1930 and my uncles born in the mid-30s in Arkansas, loved Ali, and they taught me to, as well. I, like many brothers of my vintage, was raised on a healthy diet of Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem and Maya Angelou. Sadly, only two of them remain with us. 2016 has been a hard year of deaths. It seems that everyone I knew when I was young is old. Everyone who was old, is now dead.

Ali’s death is especially poignant because we need truth-tellers right now. In the era of $100 million endorsement deals and social media consultants, athletes have become PR trained automatons. No athlete today would or could take the stands he did. If they dared, they’d be crucified by the alleged journalists, like the clowns on First Take. Watching YouTube interviews of Ali (as I have much of today) I am reminded of Orwell: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Muhammad Ali’s truths about the Vietnam War, about racial injustice in America, about the colonization of Africa, were revolutionary, for his time and for ours.

I believe if you have a platform, dammit use it. In this moment, when a nativist, dog-whistle blowing, reactionary right, is ascendant in American politics, we need Alis in sports and in the black community.

I think it’s why I love Michael Bennett from the Seahawks so much.

I think it’s why I have grown to love Bey; we need more “Formation.”

I know it’s why I love Kendrick, but can’t mess with Kanye. Kendrick Lamar uses his platform to talk about police brutality, critique consumerism and to discuss economic inequality. Kanye usually uses his platform to talk about Kanye.

It's why I have zero time for apolitical figures like MJ. Michael Jordan is a counter-revolutionary. I have never owned and will never buy a pair of Jordans. Kareem nailed it in 2015, in an interview with NPR: Jordan has consistently chosen “commerce over conscience” and refused speak out on matters of justice, racial or otherwise, because “Republicans buy sneakers too.”

Ali used his platform. Few ever spoke so much truth to so much entrenched power.

It kills me, my oldest students were born in 1997. They were born a year after Ali lit the Olympic Torch in the Atlanta Summer Games. By that time, Ali had battled Parkinson’s for twelve years. I may have missed Ali’s prime, but they have only seen him in a diminished state. I imagine it’d be like only knowing MJ as a sneaker-pimp or from the Crying Jordan memes, or only knowing Curtis Mayfield after the accident that paralyzed him. You know of, but you don't really know.

At some point God just stopped making men like Muhammad Ali. Today I mourn the Greatest, but I also mourn for anyone who has grown up only knowing him as a shell of his former self.

Bomaye Ali.