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| Glenn Jacobs |
Earlier this week, Knox County, Tennessee Mayor Glenn Jacobs sent out the following tweets about 'all-ages drag shows.'
You see before Jacobs was a mayor, he worked as a professional wrestler at a company called World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). For those who don't know, pro wrestling is an entertainment genre which is a cross between a sports game and a soap opera. In it, the physical fights, called wrestling matches, are staged and are the result of intricate storylines called "angles." The wrestlers themselves are actors playing characters, It's been a popular attraction for many decades, bringing men, women, and children to arenas around the world.
The WWE is probably the most well-known wrestling company. But one can't actually call it "kid-friendly." Over the years, the WWE has had such characters as
Val Venis - a former porn star
Rikishi - An overweight wrestler wearing a thong, which he hikes up in his rear before rubbing his buttckeeks in his opponent's face - a move called "The Stinkface."
The Godfather - a pimp who comes to the matches with his stable of prostitute (called "hoes")
Jake "the snake" Roberts - a man who carries a python (yes a python) to his matches and drapes it on his opponents after he wins.
And the storylines from the WWE aren't kid-friendly either. They can be as simple as two wrestlers ruining their friendship in match over a championship, as intricate as a tag team turning on each other during a wrestling match, or as mind-bogglingly idiotic as a 77-year-old woman having a sexual relationship with a 20-something black man and giving birth to a hand.(yes, I said a hand.)
Those were three actual plotlines in the WWE at one time or another. Including the one about the hand.
Jacobs himself has portrayed three different characters over the years. The most successful one was Kane, the half- brother of another WWE wrestler named The Undertaker, who everyone thought died in a fire years ago. I told you the storylines were intricate.
In addition, Jacobs was the central figure in a few controversial storylines including
One in which he rapes a female wrestler and gets her pregnant
Another in which he wrestled the WWE's owner's son and ties a car battery to the young man's testicles
Then there was the Katie Vick storyline which involved necrophilia (sex with a corpse). And I really don't want to talk about that one but you can read about it at this link.
All of this leads me to ask a question. What is it about drag queens and drag shows which bring out hypocritical sanctimony in some people?
I'd like someone to tell me. Seriously.
