He's taken on everything from progressives to global warming. He's even gone toe-to-toe with former bosses of Fox News, but guess who's too scared to pull on Vince McMahon's cape.
Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck took on the WWE and backed down almost as quickly after calling the wrestling giant "stupid wrestling people" for featuring characters (or some would say caricatures) of the Tea Party movement.
Wrestler "Jack Swagger" and his manager "Zeb Colter" recently began a storyline with popular Mexican wrestler Alberto Del Rio. Colter's character is of a racist villain outraged with so many faces in the audience that "didn't look like his", promising to send them back where they came from. When Beck got wind of the Tea Party-esque bad guy, he accused the wrestling organization of having "demonized" the Tea Party. "I can take it from a lot of people," Beck exclaimed. "I can't take it from stupid wrestling people."
The WWE responded by sending announcer Michael Cole to Beck's Dallas studio for an impromtu interview. Bringing back memories of the height of WWE's Attitude era, when Degeneration X travelled to then-rival wrestling company WCW's offices and were thrown off the property. Not only did Beck decline a five minute on camera rebuttal of the characters, but promptly had Cole tossed off the premises. Of course, not without WWE capturing it all on camera, further antagonizing and embarrasing the talk show host.
Controversial storylines are nothing new to the WWE and the feud has certainly revitalized the popularity of Swagger, who recently returned to the WWE with a new hairstyle and new, meaner attitude enhanced by the conservative Tea Party element of Zeb Colter. The WWE has proven to be an equal opportunity offender, with complex political views that have proven to be a double edged sword. In 2012, CEO Linda McMahon lost her second bid for the Senate. The mainly self-financed candidacy cost a whopping $100 million, with her opponents using WWE footage against her to gain a victory. On Monday, she returned to the Huffington Post as a celebrity political blogger, granting an interview which also touched on the Swagger/Colter storyline.
With Wrestlemania 29 just 5 weeks away, there's still time (and financial incentives) for Beck to have a change of heart and lay the smackdown on the WWE...or go down for the count.
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