Trying to Imagine What You Can't Imagine

Dear Wrestling,

I really want to understand why someone with good sense and a conscience would go work for Vince McMahon.

I am coming to the conclusion that I cannot understand this--that who I am, how I'm built, it is not possible for me to understand this.

My hope, tiny and flickering as it is, is that by trying to work this out I either do understand, or I save other people who can't understand a lot of time and anger.

So. Today's iteration of this infinite and perpetual quandary is brought to you by [checks] less than 12 minutes and 42 seconds of Jimmy Jacobs interview on Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling.

That's how much I was able to catch before I had to go to work, and just that was enough that I fumed the whole way there.

This, to me, is the bottom line of the calculus of Working For Vince McMahon: he is the ultimate arbiter of EVERYTHING on those shows, right? So every bra and panty match, every racist promo, every dollop of xenophobia, all of the shit, is just as much his brand as the good stuff, agreed?

Jimmy says in that 12 minutes that sometimes saying the lines isn't about doing good work, it's about trust. Even if it's a shitty line, you go out and you say it because then Vince knows he can trust you.

Wrestlers and the wrestler-adjacent seem to love little more than telling fans, "You have no idea what you're talking about, what it's like, how the business works", etc. Obvious corollary: they do know, understand, etc. They'll never ever tell us, apparently, because...?

But we are told we must understand that we understand nothing.

So. A wrestler going to work for him KNOWS that they will be expected to obey the whims and unchecked worst impulses of a man who thought the treatment of Bull Nakano by commentary was good entertainment. A man who thought that the birth of a hand by an elderly woman was...god, who even knows--worth putting on television, at any rate. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia--if he says, "Insinuate that being a housewife is shameful and repugnant", you say "Yes--and Bobby Lashley's sisters!".


I didn't grow up with a childhood dream. I didn't even grow up thinking I'd live past 18, and I never knew why--I just couldn't imagine a future. So I don't have any clue the power a childhood dream can have. I literally cannot imagine wanting something so much when I'm twelve, that I'm eager to put up with this kind of behavior as an adult.

I also grew up lower middle class, and became dirt poor as an adolescent and an adult. Contrary to what you might expect, this actually had the effect of making me...kind of money-averse, to be honest. I don't trust it, and I definitely don't trust those who have it. I don't trust jobs that gain a lot of it--they seem to pretty much all involve taking advantage of other humans in some way, often while being taken advantage of yourself. I do not understand the pull of being promised (the tiny chance of making) large amounts of money.

I was discussing this all with my husband, who trained as a sociologist. We came up with a metaphor that I think I can make work and unsurprisingly, it's also one about accepting being told to inflict suffering on other humans: being a soldier.

If you sign up to join the US armed forces, you know you are signing up with organizations that inflict suffering, that enforce coups, that have committed genocide, have ravaged villages. You are *hoping* you are part of the force that liberated concentration camps, protected different villages, helped free trapped people...but you don't know, and it won't be up to you.

It's still hard. I still don't accept it. But if I think of the phrase, "Soldier, shut up and soldier", I feel I have at least a small sense of it.

He might turn you into Red Skull...but there's also a chance to be Captain America. It's not the choice I would ever make, but it's one I can at least understand.

Love,
Tam