"I have a nightmare..."
Last night, I tuned into wrestling for the first time in a while. I saw in the dirt sheets that it would be coming from my hometown of Toronto. So, I wanted to see how the crowd was going to be.
The show opened with the famous Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech. One would think this was a good thing, celebrating the life of a famous civil rights leader. But that would not be the case. Soon after showing this opening, they showed what has to be considered as one of the most racist angles in professional wrestling.
Wrestling has put on their hip waders and walked into the dirty mess of mistreatment of Arab-Americans. They have two men come out and spout hateful things so that the crowd will grow to hate Arab-Americans. I know what you're thinking: there was hatred before there was professional wrestling, and there will be hatred long after wrestling has disappeared.
But throwing more fuel on the fire doesn't help in this case.
In the past two years, fans have had to endure angles on the following: necrophilia, xenophobia (the French, Canadians, Japanese), baby killing, murder by concrete, the mentally challenged...the list goes on. And now this Arab-American angle. If it's been done, they've done it. And what has the result been?
Well, for a start, lower ratings. Much lower than they were five years ago.
It's too bad there's no real competition. If there was, maybe these soap opera stories would end and the real stories would be told in the ring. The Benoit-Jericho match was proof that you don't need to kill a baby or insult someone's country in order to have a 5 star match. Too bad they couldn't have this one as the main event. They had to go with the baby-killer angle instead.
Maybe I should have watched American Chopper instead...
The show opened with the famous Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech. One would think this was a good thing, celebrating the life of a famous civil rights leader. But that would not be the case. Soon after showing this opening, they showed what has to be considered as one of the most racist angles in professional wrestling.
Wrestling has put on their hip waders and walked into the dirty mess of mistreatment of Arab-Americans. They have two men come out and spout hateful things so that the crowd will grow to hate Arab-Americans. I know what you're thinking: there was hatred before there was professional wrestling, and there will be hatred long after wrestling has disappeared.
But throwing more fuel on the fire doesn't help in this case.
In the past two years, fans have had to endure angles on the following: necrophilia, xenophobia (the French, Canadians, Japanese), baby killing, murder by concrete, the mentally challenged...the list goes on. And now this Arab-American angle. If it's been done, they've done it. And what has the result been?
Well, for a start, lower ratings. Much lower than they were five years ago.
It's too bad there's no real competition. If there was, maybe these soap opera stories would end and the real stories would be told in the ring. The Benoit-Jericho match was proof that you don't need to kill a baby or insult someone's country in order to have a 5 star match. Too bad they couldn't have this one as the main event. They had to go with the baby-killer angle instead.
Maybe I should have watched American Chopper instead...
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