Every now and then, the people in charge at my high school let us shed our constrictive uniforms for a little self-expression. So, “dress down days” became like manna for a starving student body dying to ditch the ties, skirts, and (sometimes) blazers in favor of whatever was fly in the early 2000s.
During one of said days during my junior year, my Ethics teacher dropped a jewel that took permanent residence in my brain. He took a tad bit of umbrage with a sophomore girl rocking a Playboy bunny t-shirt. He wasn’t against Hugh Hefner’s enterprise so much as he took issue with a 15-year-old advertising said enterprise. For him, even if she disagreed with the magazine or had no posing plans of her own, rocking the t-shirt was an endorsement. Therefore, this harmless piece of clothing she took the occasion to throw on gave Playboy, and its sometimes sordid history, tacit consent.
I understood that as a teenaged know-it-all but it didn’t really hit me until I became an adult know-it-all. That’s why it always feels like a kick in the gut whenever WWE trots Hulk Hogan out in public for his seemingly endless senior citizen farewell tours. Not only is he showing up for their ginormous Netflix Monday Night Rawbut it’s been officially announced he’ll have his brand plastered on Raw’s ring mat. So yeah, he’s permanently a part of weekly WWE programming until someone who writes very big checks says otherwise.
Given WWE’s history with this cat, it’s hard to see “otherwise” ever happening.
For a company that claims it’s for “everyone” and is painfully apolitical, its actions with the Hulkster tell a very different story. And it’s a sad one at that.
During what feels like a very brief period, Hogan was persona non grata in WWE. The man did admit on tape that he’s racist, so no longer selling “Hulk Rules” t-shirts felt like the least they could do. Three years later, the racism that ran through the pythons for God knows how many years seemingly dried up just enough for WWE to welcome him home with open arms and creased check books. They excused his thin explanations and apparently an even thinner apology that fell on at least a few deaf ears in the locker room.
Shockingly, Titus O’Neil wasn’t won over by the idea that if you say something foul, just make sure no one is recording you first. I don’t think I’m going out on even the thinnest limb when I say if he pulled that in front a majority Black locker room, Hogan wouldn’t get two seconds on WWE Speedmuch less Monday Night Raw.
It’s not surprising WWE got back in bed with a man who helped build them into the behemoth they are today, but it’s disappointing the company who touts out a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tribute every January would tell its fans the guy who is only sorry he got caught truly deserves the patience, forgiveness, and tolerance that Dr. King died for. Of all the things that Martin Luther King didn’t die for, helping that same cat shill his latest IPA venture sits at the top of that list.
And then there’s the politics. Look, I understand that the pendulum swings both ways on this one. The company that swears on a stack of Bibles its throughly apolitical has relationships with Hulk Hogan and Jesse Ventura. How the f ever, there’s a difference when the former backs a guy whose entire political ethos conflicts with everything Hogan supposedly stood for. As my guy Sean aptly inferred, “fight for the rights of every man” was a mantra, not just a lyric to a superhero theme song. He’s nakedly political in a way that traditionally made apolitical companies nervous. I don’t know WWE’s code of conduct (neither do they apparently) for its wrestlers, but the smart money says if any current wrestler made their political leanings that obvious, that person’s head would roll if only for a little bit of time.
Photo by Sacha Lecca/Rolling Stone via Getty Images
But I guess campaigning has a different ring to it when the McMahon matriarch and patriarch have too many ties to count to the once and future President of the United States. That, along with other institutional and societal biases, makes tacit consent feel like outright endorsement.
And for what? Hogan’s heyday was 40 years ago. WWE’s slavish devotion comes from an era that’s ancient history to its younger fans while cats my age probably feel more nostalgia for Steve Austin or The Rock. Even the man’s hometown had no love for him, and yet, like Gretchen Weiners trying to make “fetch” happen, WWE persists for what I can only assume are basketball reasons.
From the outside looking in, it appears that Hulk will always rule because there are enough people in Stamford, CT. who either agree with him or don’t care enough to raise more than an eyebrow or two. I’m not sure which is worse. What I do know is that my Ethics teacher would say that a company who uses a person with that much baggage in their advertising and events while making him a literal foundation of their weekly programming doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what they say they represent.
This isn’t WWE wearing a Playboy shirt so much as it’s them creating their own wing in the Playboy mansion but pretending they don’t even know the address.
