I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Fourth of July. It was actually comfortable in the Boston area for the Fourth, which is highly unusual...the holiday usually brings some of our hottest weather with it.
Just to warn readers before I head into my latest harangue...there are Smackdown Spoilers contained within. You've been warned...
It's a shame when in the year 2005, WWE has to go to the lowest common denominator - playing the race card - in an attempt to get a decent performer over. Why in this day in age is this kind of angle necessary? Yes, I know some of you are saying "But it's WRESTLING - they've ALWAYS done racial angles!". That may be true, but isn't it time we grew up?
No, apparently not.
Just look at the WWE currently. Here are the various angles i'm talking about.
--Former WWE champion JBL. Here's a racist at heart who isn't afraid to goosestep and give the Hitler salute when in Germany who also happens to treat his Chief of Staff, Orlando Jordan, like a gopher and who isn't above playing the race card when Orlando has a big match where a loss could embarrass JBL...
--Three former WCW and ECW Superstars - Juventud Guerrera, Super Crazy, and Psicosis - make their debut on Smackdown, coming to the ring to decry stereotypes against Mexicans...dressed in landscaper overalls and riding lawn mowers, or as they called them, "mexican limousines". The following week, they say that most Mexicans aren't as good as they are, and that they are no longer Mexicans, but "Mexicools", thereby declaring their own offshoot of their race...
--Chavo Guerrero, traded to Raw, has an interview with Maria in which he blames the hispanic people for making it impossible for a hispanic performer like himself to get over with the fans, because, "we all know how Americans feel about hispanics!" Dressed in the most yuppie clothes he could possibly wear and no doubt giving Queer Eye's Carson Kressly nightmares, and sporting his new shiny chromedome, Chavo announces that he's renouncing his latino heritage and has legally changed his name to Kerwin White...which for the uninformed out there, the name Kerwin means "Black" in Old Gaelic, so Chavo Guerrero is now "Black White"....
--Visera has spent the past several weeks chasing ring announcer Lilian Garcia, who finally succumbs to the big man's charms, only to have him spurn Lilian's wedding proposal to have a chance to hang with the Godfather and his "Ho Train"...leaving poor Lillian heartbroken...and idiots like the Heartthrobs to play up the race card even further by saying he wasn't her type and that they'll make her forget all about Visera by the time they're finished with him...which, of course, they don't, but they seem totally obilvious to that fact...
--And in the longest-running, most spectacular use of the race card, Mohammad Hassan and Davari, who WWE has made a fact of life that they're heels because they're "Arab American", have been subjected to humilation after humilation because of that fact, culminating in Stone Cold Steve Austin calling them "Sand People" a few weeks ago on RAW. And any semblance of this being a legitimate angle involving the american people's perception of Arab Americans in a post 9/11 world, as WWE's Parents site claimed when the pair first made their debut, goes out the window this week on Smackdown when, after Davari gets pounded by the Undertaker in just 20 seconds, Hassan sends out a group of five men dressed in black clothes and black face masks - what one person attending Smackdown tapings called a "terror cell" - to put a beatdown on Taker and then carry Davari back to the locker room holding him above their heads in a fashion designed to signify that Davari has become a martyr for their cause.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there have been plenty other examples in recent weeks. But my whole point is this: Isn't it scary, in the year 2005, that the WWE creative team puts its collective heads together, and these are the BEST angles they can come up with for very talented non-caucasian performers? And the poor caucasian bastards who are forced to be the cause of the trouble?
Now, to be fair, there ARE people who seem to be immune to the race card; Eddie Guerrero and Rey Misterio, and also Booker T, on Smackdown, and Shelton Benjamin and Carlito Caribbean Cool on Raw. They haven't played up race with these characters, or if they have, it's not been overly obvious and hasn't lasted long, with the possible exception of Carlito's name, which isn't mentioned in full much anymore, now rather serving as his slogan, as in "Carlito? Now THATS Caribbean Cool!".
But seriously, with the way WWE Creative apparently does business, how much longer will it be before we see a return of Booker T's "GI Bro" character, or before Stephanie and company suddenly decide that Carlito, one of the WWE's most promising prospects for the future right now, needs to grease his hair down and come to the ring with a toothpick between his teeth?
Isn't it time we just GREW UP?
Message to Vince and Stephanie McMahon: Get your Creative act together. NOW. Because I'm FED UP with the racial stereotypes and racial motivated storylines. To use a "Network" metaphor, I'm MAD AS HELL and I'm not going to take it anymore! You people calling yourselves "creative" writers is a SLAP IN THE FACE to every truly good writer out there. You should be ashamed of peddling such garbage, and until such time as you decide to actually come up with something truly creative, i'm gonna be all over your ass about your lame angles, your racist storylines, and the general state of what you're doing. Because lately, it's SUCKED. Big Time. And It will be my distinct pleasure to tell you, and the rest of the internet community of wrestling fans, so. Constantly.
Don't say you weren't warned.....
