Hogan v. Norris

If you ask me, there is no question but that Hulk Hogan could take Chuck Norris in a fight. Once Hogan slipped past those side kicks, it would be all over. There is also no question but that Hogan could kick Schwarzie's butt in an arm-wrestling match. And Hogan has already shown he can kick Stallone's butt (see Rocky III).

This is, of course, in response to one of my favorite headlines of the week: "Hulk Hogan Has Obama's Back."

There is this myth that liberals can’t be tough – that they are always pushovers, fearful of confrontation and ready to lay down and capitulate at the slightest physical threat. This, of course, is a load of crap.

There is a corresponding myth that liberals shouldn’t be in charge of the military, and that they even loathe the military, because of their fearful nature and penchant for shrinking from a fight. Equally crap. Utter and complete bullshit.

Where does the myth come from? Certainly FDR was no Milquetoast, nor JFK, nor MLK, Jr., nor Wes Clark, nor Madeline Albright, nor Hulk Hogan! I don’t see any of that in either Obama or Clinton.

I understand that the myth was born in the turbulence of the late-1960s and early 1970s, but I suspect the myth had much more to do with deliberate Republican distortions than on actual events. I’d illustrate that with a conversation I overheard recently between a family of tourists at a local coffee shop.

A guy in his early sixties was there with his teenage kids, and was commenting rather loudly to his kids on how different San Francisco was from Kansas, where they were from. He was blustering on about communism and homelessness and how he’d just round them all up – the typical bullshit that conservative types like to throw around to pretend that they have even the slightest clue as to what they are talking about (which they never do). It was clear, even from across the coffee shop, that his kids really, really disliked him, and were quite embarrassed.

He continued his rant, oblivious (as conservatives always are) to his kid’s discomfort, and started commenting about the whole Haight-Ashbury scene from the late sixties, and then said: "I was liberal back then too – free drugs, free sex, no draft . . . ."

Well, that’s not liberalism, that’s selfishness. And in his case, it laid bare his hypocrisy. As he went on to extol the great merits of the Bush Administration’s foray into Iraq, it was clear that he was against war when he might have been at risk, but was all for it if it was someone else’s neck on the line.

So, I submit to you that it was largely craven, conservative assholes who gave liberalism a bad name, and they were never liberal at all. George McGovern, the anti-war activist Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate, gave those craven conservatives real hell in a series of speeches in the late sixties and early seventies.

They paid him back in kind. It was none other than right-wing lickspittle Robert Novak (yeah, that Robert Novak) who ran an article on McGovern quoting an unnamed Democratic Senator as charging that "all McGovern is for is abortion, amnesty (for draft dodgers), and the legalization of pot."
So liberalism has been tainted with the Novak brush ever since. But it was a load of crap then, and it’s a load of crap now.

And cravenness has been a hallmark of Republicanism ever since. If there is one thing that all the Republicans I know have in common, it is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of terrorism, fear of death, fear of "others" . . . . But the Republicans had the cash, and were successful at painting liberals with the "fearful" brush, thanks to Novak and Nixon.

So, I’m happy to see the Hulkster strutt his liberal stuff. He was always my favorite 1980s wrestling superstar anyway.