Brooks Peterson

Monday, Jan. 18, 1999

Lines between wrestling and politics blur

   Unless you've been living in a cave for the past few months, it cannot have escaped your notice that American politics has turned into pro wrestling.
   Exhibit A, of course, is the stunning victory of retired pro wrestler Jesse Ventura in his wildly improbable bid for the governorship of Minnesota. Ventura, with his shaven pate and his still-more-than-faintly-menacing persona, laid a double clothesline on a couple of establishment stiffs. The rest is hysteria... er, history.
   But there's more to this - lots more - than the Ventura phenomenon.
   Fact is, American politics is becoming more and more a simulacrum of the squared circle: a battle ground on which liberally-oiled, steroid-enhanced mutants lay waste to each other with suplexes, headlocks, hammerlocks and Stone Cold Stunners.
   Unconvinced? Consider the drama unfolding before us on Capitol Hill. You got your Embattled President, tricked out in red-white-and-blue Spandex and braying defiance at his tormentors, Hank Hyde and his Legion of Doom. Due to the unavailability of The Big Boss Man, you got Big Bad Bill Rehnquist presiding over the no-holds-barred, no-disqualifications Steel Cage Impeachment Death Match. For color commentary and comic relief, you got the People's Pornographer, Larry Flynt, with his Naughty Republican of the Week.
   But don't kid yourself. This is not a one-way street. Even as politics is turning into pro wrestling (with a less muscular cast), pro wresting is turning into politics. In all likelihood, politics will survive. But I'm not so sure about pro wrestling.
   Now, from the outset, pro wrestling has been about showmanship. These days, nobody makes any apology for that. Indeed, the Rassling Establishment proudly claims to have invented a new genre in the murky territory between "pure" athletics and schlock entertainment: "sports entertainment."
   Fine. It brings in the rubes, and it provides gainful employment for some very large guys who might otherwise be reducing saloons to kindling and driving their fists through concrete walls.
   Of late, however, I have noted a disturbing development in the pro-wrestling cosmos:
   Too much filibustering, not enough head-busting.
   I mean, come on. Last Monday night's World Wrestling Federation "RAW is WAR" line-up was a case in point. I timed these guys: For a solid 20 minutes, rasslers, promoters and sundry other knuckle-draggers ranted and raved at each other over who would get a title shot, at whose expense, and under what circumstances.
   And we all know what that is, don't we? It's politics, bud.
   Oh, sure, the occasional hulk gets tossed out of the ring, the occasional Neanderthal endures the occasional vicious assault with a folding chair. (Anyone out there up for Folding Chair Control, by the way? Me neither. When folding chairs are outlawed, only outlaws will have folding chairs.)
   But mainly, it's just plain old politics - spiced, to be sure, with huge helpings of adolescent vulgarity, special effects and the occasional satanic ritual, but politics nonetheless.
   What it boils down to in the WWF these days is a power struggle between The Corporation, headed by the federation's reptilian and utterly shameless owner, Vince McMahon, and Everybody Else, consisting of... well... everybody else. Alliances are made and unmade, bargains are struck, deals are concluded, commitments are sealed, pals are betrayed, ambushes are plotted... Hey. You tell me: If this isn't practical politics at work, what is?
   Problem is, for all the effort they put into it, these guys are rank (in more than one sense) amateurs. Betrayal, double-cross, deception, shameless self-aggrandizement: The guys in Washington just do it so much better. Sure, Stone Cold Steve Austin could snap the neck of Bill Clinton or Henry Hyde like a dry twig - but out-politic 'em? Never happen.
   In a rationally ordered universe, each of us would do what he/she does best. The WWF should do likewise. "RAW is WAR?" These days, "RAW is BORE."
   (Brooks Peterson can be contacted by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@scripps.com.)