Back in February, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) those beefy, olied up guys in speedo who like to rassle and grope each other got into a a bit of hot water when when John Cena did a lame rap attack against Dwayne “The Rock”Johnson during a broadcast by calling him a “fruity pebble” and throwing out a “Brokeback” reference.
Well enter stage right GLAAD, (because WWE has good cable ratings) who contacted WWE and would be “working together to spread an anti-bullying message to the masses, and WWE has invited us to conduct seminars for their writing staff.” Which is really all wrestling is after all.
GLAAD was first made aware of the incidents by several of its members following the February 21 broadcast of WWE Raw, which featured wrestler John Cena responding to taunts made by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson with a rap song making fun of Johnson’s film roles. The next incident occurred on the show a week later (Feb. 28), when Cena was challenging another wrestler known as “The Miz” while in the ring with him, and he insinuated that the Miz and his wrestling partner might secretly be a couple
WWE released the following apology statement to that effect:.
WWE takes this issue very seriously, and has already spoken with our talent about these incidents. We are taking steps and working with GLAAD to ensure that our fans know that WWE is against bullying or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We strongly value our fans in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and apologize to them for these incidents.
As well the WWE should. because nice chunck of thier audience is gay teen boys and men who go through alot of tissues while watching thier show.
So now GLAAD is holding “sensitivity” seminars with WWE’s “writers” and ehm, “talent” . But I do wish that GLAAD would actually earn their donations and go after the rampant homophobia that is being broardcast on the radio and television via News outlets who continue to use religious hate groups as “experts” against gays using lies and made-up and information. But that would be GLAAD would actually have to work. And after all the WWE does reach an impressionalble audience and maybe they’ll have access to the locker room and get some good guilt sponsorship dollars out of this in the end.
So here we are less than two weeks after the John Cena incident and what happnes?
WWE announcer Michael Cole sends a public Twitter message to colleague Josh Mathews calling him a: “faggot.” Cole has 24,627 followers on Twitter. Josh Mathews has 43,920. And the Wrestling Twitterverse is going mad.
TMZ who originally caught the tweet reported that WWE responded immediately.
A rep for the WWE tells TMZ, “WWE has alerted GLAAD to the situation and spoken to Michael Cole about his post. He has removed it and apologized for using hateful language. Michael will be included in the training session being done by GLAAD. WWE takes this very seriously and is against discrimination of any kind based on sexual orientation, gender, race, religion or other A rep for GLAAD could not be reached for comment.
Cole, of course says it was not meant as it was taken . How else is calling someone your “character” has been feuding with a “faggot” to be taken? As a compliment? A love note?
And as for GLAAD of course a rep could’t be reached. It is the weekend and we all know that LGBT defamation only occurs during paid working hours between Monday and Friday and besides Barrios needs 2-3 days to get the properly worded press realease together as not to offend anyone at the WWE.
So now we wait with bated breath for GLAAD’s press release about this incident. Which will probably be soft and mushy intead of strong and forceful as it should. GLAAD should look at this no differently and demand the same action that would used against Cole if he used the word “nigger”. But they won’t.
I know that.
You know that.
WWE knows that.
EVERYONE knows that.
