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.
SamInMpls says:
The saddest part: Even in his prime, Hogan wasn't capable of performing a standard suplex much less one off the top turnbuckle. Pro wrestling was what it was but until he came along, at least you could argue that the guy they called their champion was good at his job.
I've always thought of the rise of Hogan as indicative of the Reagan Era demise of standards that occurred across culture in the 80s both high and low. Without ripping off Bill Hicks completely, I'll just say that these demons have made the world a much less interesting place.
Emily says:
Dude, it's like (MC) Hammer and Nationwide Financial Services and/or Cash4Gold. Ridiculous. Selling your soul for a couple bucks is always shameful, not less if you have had millions previously.
And teabaggers? Puh.
daphne says:
that ungrammatical apostrophe in the video title says it all.
Bago says:
I just feel the need to share the fact that I had gin and tacos for dinner for the first time tonight. Yum.
Nate says:
Hogan Knows Best was a decently entertaining reality show.
Michael says:
OMG, that website is HORRIBLE!!
John says:
I think it's rather telling of the status of any "movement" when they start hiring former pro wrestlers to be their mouthpieces. Men whose entire careers were built off of being phony and playing it all up to be real as your representatives?
Yeah. Fitting statement.
Parrotlover77 says:
Seriously… MC Hammer? Hulk Hogan? Selling their souls? That's a bit dramatic, isn't it? At best, both were fly-by-night phenomenons. As is the case with such a fast rise to fame, they probably overspent their overnight fortunes. If doing a couple cheesey commercials pays the bills, more power to them. It's not exactly like Hulk Hogan had a reputation for only endorsing really good products that he's ruining.
jazzbumpa says:
Parrotlover –
The fact that Hogan's soul was already tainted does not in any way diminish the fact of it's sale. It only limited the buyer pool.
More power to them – any fuckin' thing for a buck, 'eh. This is beyond a cheesy commercial — it's an assault on what remains of the soul of a nation.
But, Ed – luring 11 year-old sex partners via AOL chat rooms is still worse. Priorities, Man.
JzB the all-in-order trombonist
jazzbumpa says:
Daphne –
OMG, I made an apostrophe faux pas.
JzB the easily amused trombonist
Parrotlover77 says:
jazzbumpa – I mean seriously… This is Hulk Hogan. I hardly see his job choice decisions and economic free will as an indicator of "what remains of the soul of a nation." This is the astroturfed tea baggers we're talking here! They were corporately sponsored to begin with.
I don't see our nation's self worth determined by its lowest moral examples. If that's the case, we're in bigger trouble than I ever imagined.
waldo says:
Hogan sold what little soul he had loooong ago. Remember when he'd pose like an olympian then give interminable speeches to the camera about his 'opponents' and what he was going to do to them?
Mickey Roarke in 'the Wrestler' had more credibility.
jon says:
This says nothing much new about Hulk Hogan (though I'll ditto that it's sad) and not much new about the Tea Party folk either. That they'd let a man shill a for-profit website at a "non-partisan" gathering is just more evidence of everything we already knew about those behind the Teabaggers.
Cletus Warhol says:
The Teabaggers, the Birthers, the "I Want My Country Back" town hall screechers, and the sundry other right wing cuckoo campaigns of recent years seem to me to be part of a phenomenon equivalent to a Backwoods Country Ass version of The Ghost Dance.
Just as Native American tribes resorted to nonstop dancing in a last ditch attempt to supplicate the Great Spirit into removing the threat of the White Man; marginalized elements of the Ignorant White Trash Bumpkin tribe (many of whom, ironically, are descendants of those directly responsible for the oppressions leading to the original Ghost Dance) are engaging in a desperate and continuous dance (more like plugging their ears and screaming LALALALALALA…) in the irrational hope that all these socialists, queers, and mud people will magically disappear and the illusory apartheid paradise they all seem to remember from their childhoods will return.
Their efforts will no doubt have the same results as those of their indigenous predecessors.
Desargues says:
Selling your soul implies you have one to begin with. Does he? Did he ever? When's the last time Hogan engaged in anything genuine, unphony, unfake? Isn't peddling inauthentic shit the very mark of soullessness? Plus, he went to live in Florida, fer chrissake! Does it get much more soulless than that?
Parrotlover: the lowlier life-forms in America may not be reflective of its worth, but they do drag down the average. The more of them, the worse for the rest.
Robert says:
I just read Mike Edison's sort-of autobiography "I Have Fun Everywhere I Go", in which (among other things) he recounts his career writing/editing a pro wrestling magazine. His respect for Hulk Hogan could be put in a flea's navel and you'd still have room for three caraway seeds and Glenn Beck's sanity.
(I _think_ I stole that from S.J. Perelman)