My wife has always loved Rachel Maddow up until the last 48 hours where she curses her name. My wife and I have been married now for 18 years and together for 22. College sweethearts and always progressive liberals.( Both of us voted for Al Sharpton over Hillary in New York Primary) We now have two boys 8 & 10 years old so as you can see we waited a while before having children and kept our young sans kids life for a healthy amount of time. After 20 plus years together and much compromise and aging I eventually left my childhood behind and became dare I say it an adult. Sure I still belong to 3 Fantasy baseball leagues and forget to put the seat up and then down on occasion. But overall I have turned into a fairly mature adult. Then Came Rachel Maddow's January 19th show and that is when all Mayhem broke loose.
My boys Sam and Jake probably get more than their fair share of MSNBC news shows and pundits. But Wednesday night Rachel opened Pandoras Box. She did a story ( I could not find the video link) comparing "The Million Dollar Man " Ted Dibiasse and his message to that of Mitt Romney and his combatant Hulk Hogan and his representation of the little guy. I will have to say this was not only entertaining but the analogy was point perfect. Both my boys were mesmerized by the rhetoric spewed by these combatants and they wanted and needed more. Well now it is more than 24 hours later and too much time has been spent on YouTube following the WWF from the late 80's to the early 90's.
Now I am from Boston originally and grew up with the WWF . I can remember laying in bed with my father on Sunday mornings watching the tail end of Gorilla Monsoons career wind to and end and the rising of Bruno Sammartino and then Bob Backland. My favorite and my fathers early on was Chief Jay Strongbo ! And I continued watching for years till I met my wife at college and beyond. I tried to get her into it at the time and she begrudgingly watched but eventually through some hen pecking and guilt my fan dome ceased.
But my boys need to see and know more. We watched together in utter glee Hulk versus Dibiasse. And when the Million Dollar Man could not defeat the Hulkster he took his massive amounts of money and bought Andre the Giant to take care of Hulk only to have the Hulkster impressively slam the giant in one infamous match. But the boys wanted more and we moved onto Hulk and Macho Man Randy Savage's tumultuous relationship. Originally enemies the Macho Man was having a match with the Honkey Tonk Man only to be ambushed by the other members of the Hart Foundation. While taking this unfair beating in the middle of the ring the Macho Mans girlfriend and manager The ever beautiful Miss Elizabeth ran back to the locker rooms and retrieved Hulk Hogan hoping he would rescue her boyfriend. Hulk no friend of Savages obliged and saved the Macho Man at which point the two shook hands in the middle of the ring. The two men went on to become tag team partners but eventually jealousy over the beautiful Elizabeth turned the two men on each other again.
After too many hours or watching these matches on Youtube and many high fives and oohs and Ahhs my oldest son turned to me and asked " Dad is this really a Soap Opera " ?? I had to answer " Yes son, just like these Primaries ". Then my little one said " why does Mommy look so grumpy ?" NO Comment !