And this, dear readers, is why you roll the dice with your sanity whenever you watch professional “wrestling.” Perhaps the quotation marks are around the wrong word. Maybe they should be around the word professional. Or around both words, as in “professional wrestling.” There hasn’t been any wrestling in professional wrestling since the days when the likes of the late, great Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino were in the ring.
What we do have in professional wrestling today is a lot of entertainment, goofy stuff for equally goofy audiences, but I mean that only in a good way. We should thank the World Wrestling Entertainment organization for changing its name from the World Wrestling Federation. The adjustment was only truth in advertising. Now, if we could only get the organization to drop the word “wrestling.”
As part of the entertainment in one of the WWE’s weekly broadcasts, someone thought it would make a great storyline to have “wrestler” John Cena and the Rock have a feud. The Rock is also known as Dwayne Johnson.
In earlier times, he was a WWE champion before he launched a movie career. In the past few weeks, he’s resurfaced in the WWE, when viewers were told he would be the guest host for next month’s WrestleMania show.
As part of the feud, Cena and Johnson exchanged diatribes. At one point, Cena chided Johnson for playing a fairy — the literal kind — in one of his movies. “Just don’t go racing to Witch Mountain, Rock, ’cause your mountain is Brokeback,” Cena said.
Not exactly a quote that will leave you reeling with peals of laughter, I’ll grant you. (The funniest line ever uttered in the WWE is the one Jerry “The King” Lawler made after wrestler Findlay kicked a midget — oops, I mean “little person” — in the face. “There’s something fundamentally wrong with what we just saw,” Lawler quipped.)
Cena — or the guys who wrote his rap for the storyline — was trying to say that Johnson isn’t really a tough guy because he’s gay.
Of course, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation would have no truck with such talk. The organization protested, and WWE honchos couldn’t cave in quickly enough. They issued this apology:
“WWE takes this issue very seriously, and has already spoken with our talent about these incidents. We are taking steps and working with GLAAD to ensure that our fans know that WWE is against bullying or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We strongly value our fans in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and apologize to them for these incidents.”
Oh, somebody please waterboard me now! Just who was “bullied” by Cena’s remark? Johnson? Haven’t heard from him. Gays? The remark wasn’t directed at them. And who was “discriminated against” here?
When the WWE ran a storyline that featured a rapping, street-talking, grille-wearing black duo prone to stealing and then selling various items, no one complained about the ruthless anti-black stereotyping that went on. The tag team’s name?
Cryme Tyme.
As an African American who sometimes watches WWE programming strictly for its entertainment value, I could have been just as offended as GLAAD members were by Cena’s remarks, if indeed I were looking to be offended. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching the WWE, it’s that I really shouldn’t take it seriously.
The Cryme Tyme shtick was meant to be funny. Cena’s remark about Johnson was meant to be funny. (The Cryme Tyme shtick was funnier.)
Anybody remember funny? Clearly some members of GLAAD — and the WWE — don’t.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
