Wrestling Down to the Worst Common Denominator

I was doing a little channel surfing a couple of nights ago and after watching West Virginia dispatch Pittsburgh in the Big East Tournament, I came across the introduction of a Pro Wrestling match featuring a Middle Eastern stereotype in the form of (as I discovered later) Sheikh Abdul Bashir. Bashir walked down the runway of the runway in traditional Middle Eastern garb flexing his muscles and upon getting to the ring, he fell to his knees, stretched out his arms and looked heavenward, and then bowed prostrate in a exaggerated prayer towards Mecca. All of this, while the crowd booed lustily.

After vanquishing an adversary named Rhino, Bashir retrieved his headdress and disdainfully threw it over his fallen opponent lying facedown on the mat. He then continued to gesture mockingly to the crowd as they continued to hiss at him.

I found this sad. Not following Pro Wrestling in recent years - okay, I honestly never really did - I didn't realize until now that ugly sterotypes and thinly veiled racism depicted in Pro Wrestling hadn't died out in the 1980's. I grew up in the heyday of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), where predominantly white "good guy" wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Savage and Hillbilly Jim would beat the crap out of "bad guy" wrestlers such as the Iron Sheikh, Mr. Fuji and Abdullah The Butcher. In fairness, there was token diversity, such as the (African-American) Junkyard Dog and (half-Asian) Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat being good guys; and evil caucasian "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.

But largely it was painfully obvious, even to an 8-year old kid, that the WWF was shamelessly trying to exploit and even prey off of people's ignorance and distrust of racial minorities to get a little blood pumping and buzz in the crowd. There's nothing like hate-fueled bloodlust to drive people's passion for sport. If you were a laid-off autoworker in Detroit in the early 80's, it wasn't going to take much for you to hate Mr. Fuji. I wouldn't be surprised the WWF masters showed a video clip of him at the arena taking a sledgehammer to an American car just to rile people up. Or maybe they had the Iron Sheikh burn an American flag. It's pathetic.

Has society really progressed so little in 20 years in terms of racial sensitivity? Or maybe it's just the segment of the population that Pro Wrestling cynically exploits - those who are less educated and have less opportunity to actually meet an immigrant or person of color who shockingly isn't so evil after all. A quick Google search helped me find an article around just this topic: Does Pro Wrestling Breed Intolerance? It's a decent article, but isn't this a rhetorical question? They've been making money out of this for, apparently, the last 20 years.