Speak Truth of the Dead

Friends it is not a good look when your supporters’ response to a list of your scandals includes “it’s only a word and people should get over it.” Because you can bet the people saying that are not the ones that word covers. Though they may have alt accounts they sometimes forget to swap over to that are people that word is about. There’s a lot of people who are genuinely grieving, and we at Media Magpies don’t want to diminish that. Your feelings are valid, and you’re entitled to them. However, we also believe in speaking the truth, and here is the truth.

We will not be following our typical obituary format, because we as writers have every reason to fear the precedent of acts for which that man was responsible. Oh, you’re never going to see someone’s sex tape on Magpies, and not just because our video outlet is the YouTube channel. We also wouldn’t out anyone against their will. We’re not necessarily defending Gawker’s actions. However, we also believe that the freedom of the press is one of our highest ideals, and taking money from a nationalist libertarian for the express purpose of shutting down a website that published things about you does not say good things about you.

We’re also not going to go out of our way to say good things about a vocal racist. He could “that’s not who I am” all he wanted, but if you say the things he did about black people, that’s who you are. You may believe everyone secretly believes it or that has said something like that at some point, but you are wrong. There are lots of people who don’t think that a black person is only an acceptable partner if they’re a star athlete worth millions, who don’t think of black people using racial slurs. If he said the word, it’s because the word is one he would say. That is on him, not the rest of the world.

We’re not going to support him for union-busting. The treatment of professional wrestlers is not acceptable. They deserve to be protected better, and the only way that’s going to happen is if they’re unionized. When Jesse Ventura wants to start a union, that’s an issue. Ratting people out to Vince McMahon was never going to be a good look regardless of what he was ratting them out for, but ratting out coworkers for wanting to be protected in their workplace is even worse. And then turning around and protecting McMahon during a trial for pushing steroids on his coworkers is also a bad look. Even when he admitted that he took steroids himself while at the same time pushing fitness.

We’re not going to defend abuse of power in the workplace. When the WCW signed him, they gave him creative control, and he used that to make certain that he was the very special boy. Another lawsuit; another bankrupted company. He didn’t want to lose, so he didn’t lose. (Yes, while we’re at it, professional wrestling really is fake.) The fans weren’t happy with the result. Other people within the organization weren’t happy with the result. But because he had creative control, he was able to sue over a promo that said mean things about him.

We’re not going to defend a liar. He never wrestled four hundred days in a year due to repeated crossing of the International Date Line. He didn’t miss the phone call that would have made him, not George Foreman, the face of the George Foreman Grill; the phone call was never placed. He wasn’t injured by the Undertaker—and if he was, it was in a way that maybe wouldn’t have happened if there had been a union. He wasn’t offered a role as bassist in Metallica. Nor was he offered a role as a bassist in the Rolling Stones. Elvis wasn’t a fan. Lie after lie, many of them utterly ridiculous. He claimed his character was making those claims, not him personally, but so what?

We’re not going to defend whatever the hell he had going on with his daughter. She was estranged from him in no small part because he slept with a friend of hers—his daughter was a teenager at the time, but it seems her friend was not. (Age gaps in relationships are a whole conversation we’re not having right now, but at least everyone was a consenting adult.) But he was present at a nude photo shoot his daughter did for PETA and allegedly took pictures there himself, and apparently he rubbed sunscreen into her backside while she was, shall we say, fully capable of doing it herself. So that’s gross. Between that, the racism, and oh, yeah, at least one documented use of a homophobic slur, no wonder she didn’t talk to him anymore.

There’s so much to not defend. Threatening to body-slam a sitting Vice President. “I’m promoting a beer” is not an excuse for the racial language he used about her at the time. Knocking Richard Belzer out with a front chin-lock. COVID conspiracism. Telling his son that the man his son paralyzed in a car accident must have done something to deserve it. Trying to push himself forward at the expense of others, including his coworkers and the screenwriters of the admittedly terrible movies he was in. He may have been a wrestling icon, but we’re not able to celebrate someone like that.