Cruz offer to ‘Hellboy’ accidentally brilliant
Complain all you want that the 116th Congress — and the U.S. Senate in particular — is the place where practical and useful public policy ideas go to die, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is at least trying, even as I use the term as an adjective as much as a verb.
Given the general uselessness of the institution itself, once called the world’s greatest deliberative body but mostly just an empty bureaucratic well where voters in Wyoming can count on 67 times as much influence as the average Californian, Mr. Cruz proposed a complete branding overhaul of the august body Monday in an acerbic Twitter exchange with movie star/action hero Ron Perlman of “Hellboy” Fame, who is now 70. Because Twitter. “Listen Hellboy,” Mr. Cruz wrote, “You talk good game when you’ve got Hollywood makeup & stuntmen. But I’ll bet $10k – to the nonpolitical charity of your choice – that you couldn’t last 5 min in the wrestling ring w/@Jim_Jordan w/o getting pinned. You up for it? Or does your publicist say too risky?”
This might look like just another intemperate burst of brain flatulence from the Texas senator, and it might be just an early attempt to secure the senator’s legacy as something other than the guy whose wife Donald Trump called a dog and whose father Mr. Trump suggested was part of the Kennedy assassination and still somehow found comfort as one of the president’s most obsequious lickspittles, but I’m going to think of it, for now, as nothing short of brilliant.
Just let this idea breathe for a few minutes. You take the Senate, formerly the intellectual engine of effective legislative leadership but now immobilized as a hopelessly polarized caricature of itself, you remove all those desks nobody ever sits at, and you make it the arena/ studio for SWE — Senate Wrestling Entertainment. Unwittingly, Mr. Cruz has already set himself up as the founding commissioner and head matchmaker, but I’d love to help with the second part.
I’ve got ideas I think worthy of the commissioner’s bold format, which I guess is that you take a sitting U.S. Senator who was minding his or her own business and put him or her into a wrestling ring with a Hollywood action hero, the older the better.
I’m feeling Bob Casey vs. Jackie Chan. Like so many movies on the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime, the U.S. Senate desperately needs Jackie Chan.
I’m feeling Mitch McConnell vs. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dianne Feinstein vs. Samuel L. Jackson, Mitt Romney vs. Steven Seagal, Bernie “The Animal” Sanders vs. Chow Yun-Fat, Susan “The Uncommitted” Collins vs. Ving Rhames and Rand Paul vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The pay-per-view gross would be staggering. Unprecedented.
Sure, these are not precisely what Mr. Cruz had in mind, but the fact is, his original concept, brilliant on its face, was deeply flawed. You don’t want to put Ohio representative and former Ohio State wrestling coach Jim Jordan (not a Senator) in the ring against Hellboy — or anyone else — though there might be some interest in a matchup of Jordan and Michael DiSabato.
Mr. DiSabato, a college wrestler, was among the whistleblowers from some 16 sports at Ohio State who outed former team doctor Richard Strauss, who killed himself in 2005. An internal OSU investigation identified 177 sexual assault victims, but Mr. DiSabato was the whistleblower who claimed Mr. Jordan knew about the abuse and failed to inform university authorities.
Mr. Jordan denies this, but he’s got to be thrilled that Mr. Cruz put “wrestling” and “Jordan” in a tweet to more than three million followers to start his Monday. Mr. Perlman’s profane replies went out to another million and retweets were gaining on 50,000. That a good start to your week, Jim?
This is why South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (don’t miss his Summer Slam collision vs. Liam Neeson) once said from the podium at the Washington Press Club, “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody can convict you.”
To be fair, Mr. Cruz didn’t start the Twitter war that broke open Monday morning. Mr. Perlman was poking Florida congressman Matt Gaetz for some tweets about soccer’s policy on kneeling during the national anthem, Mr. Gaetz fired back, Mr. Perlman countered with an insult to Mr. Jordan’s appearance, and suddenly it was a situation that called for Ted Cruz.
Some feel it was an especially embarrassing kerfuffle in the Senate’s fairly embarrassing history, but settling Twitter feuds through wresting might be, sadly, an idea that’s time has come.
No one would ever have suggested a spirited round of “Jeopardy!” for such disputes, particularly should they involve the president, who couldn’t go 10 blocks in the “Cash Cab.”
With Ted’s inspired idea, Donald Trump would be wrestling every night.