WWE: Media Reaction To Jack Swagger & Zeb Colter Angle Goes Into Overdrive

The latest reboot of the Jack Swagger character as an “Ultra-Patriot” heel has caused outraged within the political right in the US, with many outlets drawing attention to it. Fox News featured a segment on Tuesday covering the angle in WWE involving Jack Swagger and Zeb Colter in what they called WWE “mocking” the Tea Party movement in the United States. To watch the full Fox News segment, click here.

Alex Jones of InfoWars.com featured an article on his website Tuesday morning about the outrage on Twitter over this gimmick. It was focused on the anger all over the social media site Twitter for WWE for “demonizing the Tea Party” by portraying Swagger and Colter as “xenophobic racists.” That article is here.

This has prompted WWE to issue an official response about the angle. WWE’s Senior VP of Marketing and Communications Brian Flinn issued the following statement to The Hollywood Reporter in response.

“WWE has a long history of creating fictional characters that serve as either protagonists or antagonists, no different than other television shows or feature films. To create compelling and relevant content for our audience, it is important to incorporate current events into our storylines. WWE is creating drama centred on a topical subject that has varying points of view to develop a rivalry between two characters. This storyline in no way represents WWE’s political point of view. One should not confuse WWE’s storytelling with what WWE stands for, similar to other entertainment companies such as Warner Bros., Universal Studios or Viacom.”

In this day and age of a PG-WWE, with the many people rallying for a return to the “Attitude Era”, we should take heed. This is an “Attitude Era” angle. These “racism” and edgy overtones were common place hroughout the card during the late 90s with groups like The Nation of Domination, The Ministry of Darkness, and even D-X. The rule was the edgier the better; that is why the Right to Censor worked as a heel group in that time period.

The reaction to this angle is completely overblown, and it is clear that these pundits have no clue how this stuff works. Wrestling is based around stereotypes, so setting up the match with Alberto Del Rio and Jack Swagger for Wrestlemania around these lines is too easy to pass up. It is the definition of “cheap heat.” Besides we have seen a similar “Anti-Mexican” angle in post-Attitude WWE with JBL. That was just as bad, maybe even worse. In one segment, JBL literally kicked illegal immigrants who were camping out on the Mexican border back across the line! Try finding it on YouTube, it really is as bad as it sounds.

So my advice is to take it for what it is, a wrestling angle. People need to calm down.

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