Sometimes Heroes Lose Themselves

And You Lose Heroes

Mid-afternoon one day late last year, I walked out into my backyard, removed the cover from our fire pit and started stacking some dead roots we’d dug up while clearing out the pumpkin garden bed. I held up the torch I use to light my grill in my right hand and watched closely as the blue flame lit the end of a fire-starter tumbleweed I held in my left. After I carefully placed the ball of flame into the pile of kindling, the fire spread quickly. Knowing I didn’t have long before the dry fuel burnt out, I reached over my shoulder upon which I had draped a t-shirt, stretched it out as though to put it on display and laid it on top of the flames.

The shirt, dark gray and tri-blend woven, had the words HULKAMANIA EST. 1984 scrawled across the chest in yellow ink.

Hulk Hogan was my hero from as far back as I can remember. Since I, too, was established in 1984, it’s highly likely that I was exposed to him from the day I was born. I was a wrestling fan for the first 18 years of my life and I would be a certified, card-carrying Hulkamaniac for all 18 and nearly another 22 years after. While I was too young to remember watching him bodyslam 520-pound Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III, I definitely remember watching him and Randy Savage together as the Mega Powers and I still remember that gut-punch feeling I got when Savage turned on him in a jealous rage.

My Paps took me to the movies to see No Holds Barred starring Hogan and his new antagonist Zeus in 1989 and I remember watching him and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake defeat Zeus and Savage at SummerSlam. Through battles with Dino Bravo, Earthquake, the Ultimate Warrior, Sergeant Slaughter and more, I was there by my TV watching to make sure the immortal Hulkster came out on top, which he inevitably almost always did.

He was an icon of sports entertainment. In his prime, he was 6’7” and weighed in at 295 pounds. He was hopelessly patriotic, encouraged kids to eat their vitamins and say their prayers and was the perfect example of how the good guy always wins in the end. I held him on a pedestal from an early age and decided I wanted to not just be like him, but actually be him when I grew up. As an adult and someone who hadn’t even watched wrestling in years, I still admired him and wanted to embody those admirable traits he had possessed for so long.

I forgave him in 1994 when he testified to his illegal use of anabolic steroids and was not only forgiving but elated when he turned heel and joined the NWO as Hollywood Hulk Hogan at WCW’s Bash at the Beach 1996. I also always thought Richard Belzer had it coming when Hogan choked him out in 1985. In my eyes, even when he was a bad guy, he was a good guy. To me, he only did bad things when it was the right thing to do.

When his use of racist language came to light in 2015, however, it broke my heart. I have, and have always had, zero tolerance when it comes to that type of behavior and to see my idol say these things so casually was an arrow to the soul. It took me some time to forgive him for it, but after his public apologies and hearing how Black superstars the Rock, Booker T, Kamala, Virgil and Mark Henry expressed forgiveness, I allowed myself to do the same.

I was struggling hard to hold on to that one bastion of masculinity that always stood so firmly, so justly in my eyes. Over the hill and way past his prime, I still admired him but also recognized that he was no longer the Immortal One I once believed him to be, but merely a flawed human man who for a long time gave me strength. I still wore his t-shirt proudly.

And then, after all the forgiveness and struggle to view him merely as a broken man with flaws, he appeared before a small audience at Madison Square Garden for a pre-election rally for our current president. He’d been buddying up with the orange man in what I think was an attempt to sell his weird patriotic beer, and even for that I was understanding despite disliking his implied political stance. But on that fateful night, after struggling to perform his signature shirt-ripping, Hogan stated, “When I hear Kamala (Harris) speak … it sounds like a script from Hollywood with a really, really [hawk tuah reference] bad actress!”

That my childhood hero would not only say something so crass – not only about a woman for whom I have a great amount of respect, but any woman, especially in a position of authority – was the final straw for me.

I recently read a very interesting essay on What Did Spo Get Wrong This Time? about how masculinity is driven largely by a desire to innovate and conquer. It’s a concept as old as time itself but has evolved to an excruciating new reality in which every land has been explored and every meaningful war has been fought, leaving us to find the only remaining uncharted territory within ourselves.

This has caused a shift in the power dynamic between the sexes. With the decrease in kill-to-conquer masculinity, many men have struggled in the wake of modern feminism. Men were viewed as the stronger sex and were heralded for their virtue of sacrifice for god, for country and for family. But in the modern era, we’ve seen that not only can women also sacrifice for god, country and family (and for their damn selves!), but they do it really, really well – some might say better than men ever did. At the very least, they’re doing it just as well as these burly, chest-pounding men who for so long were dominant only because they were doing things women historically hadn’t been allowed to do.

So what do these men do? They gaslight and belittle, patronize and posture until they’ve reached a point where they no longer feel threatened. They call powerful women like Martha Stuart and Hillary Clinton bitches for being strong and otherwise embodying masculine ideals of leadership. They refer to any woman in any position of influence or power as a DEI hire. They call Michele Obama a transgender man and they insinuate the only way Kamala Harris could ever get to her position was through performing sexual favors.

As Spo points out, these powerful women aren’t necessarily looking to “take over.” They’re merely fighting for their rightful piece of the pie, collecting what they’ve earned. They, unlike modern men, have worthwhile battles to fight, and they’re doing so valiantly. Weak men believe this is a threat to their masculinity. Weak men harvest irrational thoughts to compensate for how lost they, themselves, are. Weak men seek to hold others down for fear of having their own weaknesses exposed.

The same man who body slammed a 500-pound giant is now a weak man in my eyes. I could go on living my life “separating the artist from the art” and wear my Hulkamania tee in honor of the old image of the Hulkster … but I also believe that you can tell a lot about a person by seeing with whom they associate. How could I ever stand for social justice and still admire this man? How could I tell our future child that this behavior is abhorrent while simultaneously promoting him through my wardrobe?

As much as it hurt to do, I watched every last thread of that t-shirt burn, turn to feathery gray ash and blow away, light as a feather, much like the integrity of the man whose namesake was once upon it.

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