The Union of Politics and Professional Wrestling: New at Reason

Could Ric Flair’s catchphrase “to be the man you gotta beat the man” one day be a political slogan?

A. Barton Hinkle writes:

How fitting it is that professional wrestling is turning to partisan politics at the same time partisan politics has descended to professional wrestling.

Last week attention focused on Daniel Harnsberger, a Richmond real-estate agent who wrestles as The Progressive Liberal. It’s a great schtick, and Harnsberger has fun with it. “I know how you stupid Trump voters think,” he says in one video. “Allow me to illustrate: ‘Dur-dur-dur, I love coal. Dur-dur-dur, I love mountains.'”

This makes Harnsberger a natural “heel,” as they say in the business: the bad guy in a match, who squares off against the good guy, known as the “face.” Generalizations are dangerous, but it’s probably fair to say a Venn diagram of the pro-wrestling-fan demographic and the progressive-liberal demographic shows little overlap.

Thing is, Harnsberger really is a progressive liberal. When he says Bernie Sanders would make a great secretary of state and Donald Trump is a con man, he means it.

Hence Harnsberger is acting out a role, but not entirely. He is an entertainer, but he is also making a point.

The same holds true for a lot of people. It certainly holds true of cable news networks, which mimic the pro-wrestling format by having, or at least strongly implying, a good side and a bad side. On Fox, Trump is the face and liberals are the heel. On MSNBC, the roles are reversed. But the script reads much the same.

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