NPF: DIGNITY SMACKDOWN

Mike (who's now a columnist for the Atlantic Fuckin' Monthly, and is really starting to make me look like a great big loser in comparison) brought something legitimately life-changing to my attention. Hulk Hogan, erstwhile star of Santa With Muscles, Suburban Commando, and whatever else a person holding a paycheck offers him, is now Teabaggin'. As the spokesretard for GuaranteedLowerPropertyTax.com (sweet site, dudes) the alpha-Hulkamaniac is making appearances at events like this Orlando Teabagging on August 22. Be careful – this video is really painful. Prepare to watch a grown man who was already the punchline to a bad joke lure dignity behind a barn and finger it.

It may not be possible to ascribe a shark-jumping moment to a "movement" which from its very inception has so closely resembled Dadaist performance art, but this is the point at which even the teabaggers realize that everyone's laughing at them, right? Right?

It has to be difficult to deal with being washed up as a celebrity, but there is a way to do it gracefully. Musicians can just retire rather than accepting the gigs in Branson and at state fairs. Actors can quit the business rather than doing Lifetime movies and infomercials. Athletes can walk away from the game before they get carted off on a stretcher or kicked off the team. In light of this reality, I struggle to think of a less dignified post-fame outcome for Hogan. Just about anything would be better. Getting a facial tattoo and going Muslim. Getting arrested for luring 11 year-old sex partners via AOL chat rooms. Joining the 9/11 Truth Movement. Accidentally choking to death during autoerotic asphyxiation. Starring in a Tyler Perry movie. Cutting a rap album. Anything.

As a final insult, please note that "GuaranteedLowerPropertyTax.com" is far from an advocacy group for tax bitchers. It is a for-profit enterprise sending forth The Hulkster to drum up business. I realize that Joe the Unlicensed Plumber already covered this ground when he attempted to parlay his "fame" into a website which asked readers to pay a fee to "help vote the IRS out of business," but somehow Hogan gives decency a suplex off the top turnbuckle and manages to sink lower than a man who made Sarah Palin sound like Bertrand Russell.