R Truth is the PCMR Hero for the Week!

My hero for the week.

Mr. Truth is a professional wrestler, a "heel" who recently displayed his inherent badness by lighting a cigarette during a match and then blowing smoke in the face of his opponent. TMZ has the video. If you click over and watch it -- sorry I can't embed -- you can actually hear people screaming, "Think of the children!" People are so cliche sometimes.

TMZ also has a reaction from an anti-smoking anti-choice bluenosing scold called Patrick Reynolds, who whined,

"For him to smoke in front of [children] is irresponsible. At best, it's thoughtless, and at worst, if he calculated appealing to kids by posing as a bad-boy outlaw, it's evil."

I'm not a kid, but I must say that I find Mr. Truth extremely appealing. Mostly, I find him so appealing because he irritated Mr. Reynolds, who is, as the British say, a c*nt.

Why did I use a Britishism to describe Mr. Reynolds? It turns out that the wrestling match was actually filmed in England. And it's illegal to smoke in public buildings over there.

R-Truth's smoking angle did not air on RAW in the United Kingdom last night as the UK does not allow the glorification of smoking on national televsion. It may have also been a smart edit by WWE as you are not allowed to smoke in a public building and R-Truth was in effect breaking the law hence the "this is illegal" chant from the fans.

It's mostly illegal to smoke indoors in the United States as well, although it's not illegal everywhere, and some places are actually repealing their bans.

Anyway, because I haven't watched much wrestling in awhile, I wasn't up on the story of R Truth and his opponent in the match, John Morrison. Apparently they're former tag team partners, and:

The Shaman of Sexy derided his former tag team partner for his smoking habit and challenged him for his position in the title match at Extreme Rules, which he won.

This is why I called Mr. Reynolds a "c*nt" earlier in this post. He didn't bother to check the context -- all he saw was someone smoking, and he went into rant mode. Professional wrestling is art. It is entertainment. They have storylines and characters, like any scripted television programs. The smoking was part of the storyline. R Truth is a heel. He smokes.

Professional wrestling has always done a very good job of co-opting the popular mood of its fans, and crafting storylines that reflect the culture. When I was a kid, Iran held Americans hostage for over a year, and one of the worst heels was a man called "The Iron Sheik." He was from Iran. It took a real American, the steroided up Hulk Hogan, to smack the crap out of him and reassert American dominance. Hogan pushed the ideal of taking your vitamins, saying your prayers etc:



Later, another of my favorite heels was Ted DiBiase, the Million Dollar Man. He was a callous, fabulously wealthy businessman who, as he was being introduced to wrestling fans, would pull people out of the crowd and offer them money to perform simple but humiliating tasks. Just before these shlubs could complete those tasks, he would do something nefarious to stop them. My favorite:



"When you don't do the job right, you don't get paid."

This was in the late 1980s, when the wealthy were looked upon with suspicion and resentment. Remember those days?

Today, the worst thing you can do, worse even than kicking a basketball away from an adorable child, is to light up a cigarette indoors. That's practically like attempted murder to some people. I'm not kidding. Look at this:

The WWE was simply capitalizing on peoples' fears of second hand smoke. They were doing so in a manner that was so clever that an unsophisticated thinker like Mr. Reynolds couldn't grasp it. So he lashed out, irrationally. He is a c*nt.

R Truth is a hero -- my hero for the week. Congratulations, Mr. Truth. Your prize is this post.

Murdering cigarette pic source.