(This article is crossposted from the author's blog at LowGenius.Net)
In order to understand this analogy fully, a bit of background is in order. First, understanding the history of the word "mark" and then understanding the basic history of professional wrestling as an "exhibition" (or as those who aren't really familiar with it say, "fake") sport. Then we'll look at how Fox and their ilk use the same tactics on their viewers to short-circuit the democratic process.
A "mark" is old-school carnie-speak for someone whose money is easily taken. In the old days, a carnie running a con would note to himself when he had a sucker, and a kid with the carnival would tag the sucker (without the sucker noticing) with a little chalk mark on his back, so that other carnies knew that this was a guy worth working to fleece because he had money and he was too stupid to hold on to it.
A "mark" is what those of us who are, or have been, in the wrestling business call the fans who really, truly believe that what they see in the ring is a legitimate competitive fight.
It's not.
It wasn't when I was a kid.
It wasn't when YOU were a kid, and it wasn't when your MOM was a kid, and it wasn't when HER mom was a kid, and when Peter Caulder went to see the fighting men at the carnival in Boston in 1809 with his father Moses...those fights weren't real either.
It's an exhibition with a predetermined outcome, the purpose of which is to fleece the marks. I hesitate to use the word "fake" but it'll do for now.
It's almost exactly the same thing.
See, what we call pro wrestling now was originally a carnie con game that worked something like this: Carnie comes to town, set up a ring, strongman. Strongman says "I can whip anyone, you just pay a quarter to try and take me, if you can last 5 minutes you get the pot." First guy - the ringer - pays his money and wins. Then a bunch of other guys line up and pay their money - and lose.
Originally you'd have them all pay up front before the first (second) fight, but over time the carnies realized that if done right, you'd get even MORE people to pay to fight if they SAW their friends losing, because they'd be pissed off and want to defend their friends. Thus was born the rudimentary concept of what we now call the "heel."
So in this case, you've got Beck in the ring, with Breitbart in his corner as a "second." Beck is hard-up for an opponent. He's had a couple of ringers in and the crowd just isn't lining up, they don't know or care about the guys he's beating, and they're not trying to get a match with him.
So Beck (or whomever, Breitbart or Coulter or anyone of that ilk) sees a big, dopey-looking guy standing more or less alone in the crowd and calls him out. "Hey, you big dummy, I bet you can't take me!" And the crowd, who maybe knows this target but not well, starts encouraging him and getting him all pumped up to get in the ring. "Come on, Jeb, you can beat this guy! G'wan, I'll put the fifty cents up for ya myself AND bet a dollar on you!" Maybe Beck the Strongman has someone in the crowd to play this part, even, just in case it doesn't fall together.
Now, Beck has no idea if he can beat this guy, but he doesn't have to. What Beck is gonna do is let this guy kick his butt for a few minutes and then distract the crowd while his second, Brietbard sneaks a foreign object into ACORN's boot. After the setup, Beck turns back around and the next time ACORN attacks, Beck drops like a rock. ACORN wins the match (in this case, they've been registering lots of poor folks and minorities, accomplishing their goal which is antithetical to the republican right's cause)...but then here's Breitbart screaming "check his boots, check his boots" and suddenly there's the object - rollof quarters, brass knucks, whatever. It wasn't a fair fight, right? ACORN cheated, they're dirty, and now Beck is back up and he's screaming and Breitbart's screaming and they're making all this noise about how terrible ACORN is. The crowd hates ACORN now, and Beck may have lost the fight...but he's destroyed ACORN. ACORN will not only never fight again, even some of his friends think he's a cheating bastard.
And that, my friends, is an nutshell overview of how Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, the entirety of Fox News...that's how they do business. They lie, they cheat, and they misdirect us into thinking it's actually the other guy - and that's easy because the "other guy" is usually poor, or gay, or an ethnic minority, or politically liberal, or any combination of these, and their audiences are largely affluent, ostensibly heterosexual, white people who are afraid of seeing their way of life changed or taken away by "them," whoever "them" happens to be this week.
And we buy in. Day after day, week after week, we buy in to the point that nowadays when I turn on Fox, I find myself not just laughing or even offended, but frightened of these people. They live in a different world than the rest of us. They believe...they believe it's all real, they believe ACORN really had something in their shoe, they believe Beck is a hero done wrong.
Once upon a time, a casual friend who was also in the wrestling business in a different part of the world used to say, "We are all marks."
Fox News proves him right every. single. day. And if that doesn't piss you off, you need to stop taking tranquilizers...and stop being a mark.