Michael Ryan writes…
I am not going to try and convince you of the merits of professional wrestling. Speaking as someone who writes about it and for it and helps promote shows in Montreal, it can frequently be a sordid world where the talent is ruthlessly taken advantage of by the promoters putting on the shows, much like the rest of show business in fact except without even the fig-leaf of union protection that writers and performers like you have.
And this is why you are wrong about Jesse Ventura, specifically about this: "The man's first claim to fame was in professional wrestling, an occupation where you can't utter five sentences without lying in at least two of them.
OK, yes technically this is correct, the same way that it is true of any actor. Unless you would like to suggest that June Foray is in fact a flying squirrel? Would you have said the same thing about Norm MacDonald?
Jesse Ventura played a role on camera. His famous line was "Win if you can; Lose if you must; But always Cheat!" But that character was not him.
(Sure wrestling had a huge advantage of other show business professions that the suspension of disbelief is easier if people believe from the outset that what they are watching is real, an advantage that wrestling no longer has. And you may not necessarily believe this, but wrestling is a story-telling art form. Like any such art form it can be brilliant or wretched.)
From all that I have heard from wrestlers of that time period, Jesse Ventura was a gentleman backstage. Opinionated with an ego like any star, he nonetheless was one of the few wrestlers to stand up to promoters famously with Vince McMahon to argue for the protection of all wrestlers not just the well-paid stars. That the promoters should provide health care and other benefits for the wrestlers and that they should allow the wrestlers to form a union. Rare among his peers, he said this publicly and openly while he was a star and in fact Vince fired him from the WWF as a result. (He landed another gig with WCW soon after.) Unfortunately, wrestlers are as hard to organize as cats and no one has ever been successful at organizing a wrestler's union, but no one ever risked as much when they were a star to try and bring one about.
Having once produced a special for CBS with a cast of pro wrestlers (and Vince McMahon as exec producer), I know a fair amount about that world…and all you say about working conditions is true. All you say about Mr. Ventura's rabble-rousing to improve them is also probably true. But when I wrote about wrestlers lying, I was referring to one key part of their job and it's where your analogy to June Foray or Norm MacDonald doesn't work.
There is no one alive who thinks June is really a flying squirrel and if you ever asked her, she'd tell you that every line she utters that suggests that is fiction. On the other mitt, there are actually people on this planet who think that the outcome of most pro wrestling matches is not predetermined…or at least think the games are a lot less scripted than they are. And whenever I've seen someone ask Jesse Ventura if his old wrestling matches were rigged or planned or fixed, he changes the subject, attacks the questioner, and generally fudges the truth as baldly as any politician he condemns for the same kind of tap-dancing.
Now, granted: Lying about whether a wrestling match was rigged is nowhere near the same sin as lying about C.I.A. intelligence or the circumstances of war. And I suppose a case could be made that since Jesse's wrestling days are behind him, he's just trying to not piss on his old livelihood and perhaps disminish it for those still working in those salt mines. My point was just that his old job afforded plenty of practice at avoiding the truth and fighting dirty…two skills that come in handy when one runs for elected office.
I like Jesse in a way. I don't always agree with him and I don't feel qualified to say if he was as poor a governor as the polls in Minnesota would seem to indicate. But I like that he's not out there parroting Talking Points or hedging his views to protect his political options. I also think it's great to have a few loud Libertarians out there, especially of the kind that don't compromise their views of the Constitution for the sake of personal expediency or gain. He adds a lot more to the public debate than any dozen Democrats or Republicans…even when I think he's wrong. I just think that back in his wrasslin' days, he did an awful lot of fibbing.