The Cancellation of Jim Cornette

[Loss]

In modern times, Cornette would cut a promo about how Arn Anderson "jerked the curtain at Center Stage" and would be called a midcard loser and that would be considered a really good wrestling promo.

[sek69]

So I guess Corny must have called Penelope Ford a slut at some point, since Miro went on a Twitter rant basically threatening to beat his ass over it. 

I know that's just feeding into what he and his fans want, but Mike Tyson said it best when he said social media has got people too used to being disrespectful and not getting punched in the mouth for it. 

[MoS]

Like the world's worst Vader-Inoki. Hell, the world's worst Vader-Monsoon

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, sek69 said:

So I guess Corny must have called Penelope Ford a slut at some point, since Miro went on a Twitter rant basically threatening to beat his ass over it. 

Not that I'm advocating violence, but I kinda wish he would.

Is the Penelope Ford character even presented as a slut in any way? Not that I've seen.

It's just more misogynistic crap from a career coward who knows no one will actually drill him in the mouth for anything he says. 

[Dale Wolfe]

Never knew the Cornette character was meant to be gay. Some real revelations in this thread eh

[El-P]

Really now people ? You're watching those early Cornette stuff and you never got it was not-too-subtle hints at him being gay, with the usual rampant homophobic stuff of the days ? Wow. I mean, I would not have guessed it watching him later on, but the early stuff is as clear as day. Plus the joke name on Barnett. Oh my boys...

Anyway, honest question. How *less* listeners would Cornette's podcast do if he went back to only talk about old-school wrestling and never addressed AEW (nor WWE) again ?

[joeg]

I think I never picked up on it because a lot of insults thrown at Cornette in Mid South and Crockett like "sissy", "punk", etc were insults I associated more with insults and euphemisms for somebody who was weak, cowardly, entitled, or effeminate. Which were the character traits he regularly showed. Anytime a babyface insinuated Cornette was gay I just thought that was a wisecrack about a guy who was less masculine than most. I never actually thought the Jim Cornette character was somebody who liked to company of other men. If anything I thought Cornette was "gay" in the way a 12 year old will loosely toss the word around to describe something not masculine or annoying. Maybe I didn't pick up on it as a kid because by the time I was seeing Cornette on TV in the early 90s those references had been dropped? Or maybe it could be that I've never known any gay man to talk or behave like Jim Cornette did? I dunno, I just never picked up on it. 

Also I thought his legal, Christian name was James Cornette, so how is it a joke on Barnett? 

 

 

[Dale Wolfe]

There's so many casual insults in television and film from the 80s that are basically just homophobic slurs it just seems commonplace, however fucked up that is

I don't think his character or behaviour seems stereotypically gay at all, though, nor do I think that interview is an allusion to being gay, more a wind up tbh

If anything I just think Cornette has always been an antagonistic troll, and pretty good at it, just look at how long this thread is. I can't stand his podcast and haven't listened in years though so this is based on nothing really

[joeg]

3 minutes ago, Dale Wolfe said:

There's so many casual insults in television and film from the 80s that are basically just homophobic slurs it just seems commonplace, however fucked up that is

I don't think his character or behaviour seems stereotypically gay at all, though, nor do I think that interview is an allusion to being gay, more a wind up tbh

If anything I just think Cornette has always been an antagonistic troll, and pretty good at it, just look at how long this thread is. I can't stand his podcast and haven't listened in years though so this is based on nothing really

I think you summed it up perfectly. Cornette is an antagonistic troll and great at it. And casual homophobic slurs are commonplace in 80s TV and movies. I never dug any deeper than that into it. 

[Loss]

34 minutes ago, joeg said:

Also I thought his legal, Christian name was James Cornette, so how is it a joke on Barnett? 

The middle initial was added that isn't even his real middle initial. "James E. Cornette" was taken from "James E. Barnett".

The Cornette character was more of a mama's boy than someone who was probably in the closet, but they wanted fans to wonder if he was gay if that might make them angrier. It was never a sledgehammer thing, which is what we're used to in wrestling now. It was very subtle and left open to interpretation. I think they just wanted fans to ask the question.

[joeg]

3 minutes ago, Loss said:

The middle initial was added that isn't even his real middle initial. "James E. Cornette" was taken from "James E. Barnett".

The Cornette character was more of a mama's boy than someone who was probably in the closet, but they wanted fans to wonder if he was gay if that might make them angrier. It was never a sledgehammer thing, which is what we're used to in wrestling now. It was very subtle and left open to interpretation. I think they just wanted fans to ask the question.

Oh ok...huh, that makes a lot of sense. 

[El-P]

Sissy = effeminate = gay. The insult was homophobic and misogynistic at the same time. It was subtle but not that subtle either.

[Loss]

It was subtle for the time. Jim Cornette wasn't Adrian Street, although the brilliance there was that he had Miss Linda with him and clearly wasn't gay. It's possible he was bisexual (more likely pansexual, and even more likely just into some kinky shit), but fans went there because they didn't know how else to make sense of Adrian Street. I say "brilliance" because I suspect they knew the only way small-minded fans would be able to process him was to chant homophobic slurs at him. Asking bigger questions would make them too uncomfortable.

[El-P]

Oh yeah, totally agree about Adrian Street. That was the whole trick about Goldust too to an extent. Damn, Goldust could have been so much more than he ended up being with a much more progressive mind (speaking about Vince here, not Dustin) behind the gimmick (and a different audience than the 1996 one).

[NotJayTabb]

8 hours ago, C.S. said:

Not that I'm advocating violence, but I kinda wish he would.

Is the Penelope Ford character even presented as a slut in any way? Not that I've seen.

It's just more misogynistic crap from a career coward who knows no one will actually drill him in the mouth for anything he says. 

I'd go as far as to say that Ford's only storyline/character trait is that she's Kip Sabian's wife who has only been shown to be monogamous. Cornette's recent tweet seems to suggest that he's using her former relationship with Janela as his justification.

On the other hand, Miro needs to be smarter than this. He's obviously not going to beat up Cornette, he's not going to get Cornette cancelled as his fanbase aren't going to give a shit. All he's done is amplified Cornette's original comments and made sure that the inevitable rebuttal clip will garner a huge number of views. I guarantee Cornette saw Miro's tweet and rubbed his hands with glee

[Mad Dog]

2 hours ago, Loss said:

It was subtle for the time. Jim Cornette wasn't Adrian Street, although the brilliance there was that he had Miss Linda with him and clearly wasn't gay. It's possible he was bisexual (more likely pansexual, and even more likely just into some kinky shit), but fans went there because they didn't know how else to make sense of Adrian Street. I say "brilliance" because I suspect they knew the only way small-minded fans would be able to process him was to chant homophobic slurs at him. Asking bigger questions would make them too uncomfortable.

What I kind of like going back to Street is, like you said, he wasn't gay, he was probably bi or into kinky shit. But his character knew people thought he was gay so he would play into that if it got him an advantage. I always like how before the bell he would prance around and play up an effeminate gay sterotype and then the second the bell rang that was gone and he was just on guys like a wild animal. 

[Manatee]

Obviously Cornette is a misogynist and fuck him for calling Penelope a slut. Penelope's comeback was to kink shame Cornette and call his wife a slut so fuck her too. It feels like the AEW contingent isn't all that concerned about misogyny, they just want to cancel Cornette because he criticizes them.

[Coffey]

I was under the impression - from what I have read, mind you, I have not heard it - that what Cornette was saying was making a reference to the couple of Kip & Penelope on AEW as being similar to like a middle school boy and his slutty girlfriend. Which I guess that is the same thing as saying she's slutty but with all the other nonsense Cornette has spewed, this one seems pretty inconsequential & I'm surprised it sparked the outrage it did.

I'm more surprised that people on AEW keep engaging with him. What will Penelope, Kip or Miro get from calling Cornette out on Twitter or Twitch? It's just going to drag them down to his level & make them look worse by association. It's a bad look for them & for AEW. They should all just ignore him, in my opinion. Everyone that is still actively involved within pro wrestling should. After the NWA debacle, just let Cornette be the angry old man that rants to his cult. A comparison that I'm sure he'll hate, he can be the Tucker Carlson to his audience of Fox News viewers & the rest of the people will just ignore that channel. Even if Cornette says that he's working or playing a character or whatever the fuck, I find it almost ironic that he has basically become the pro wrestling equivalent to what he claims to despise in politics. He is the hateful, close-minded, stuck-in-the-past bigot.

[sek69]

Cornette is the annoying kid in class who doesn't pose any real harm but gets under everyone's skin to the point they want to slap him. Of course the better play is to just ignore him and move on, but I can't imagine being someone he's targeted on a regular basis not wanting to throttle the piss out of him. 

I really can't blame anyone in AEW for lashing out to be honest, dude's probably making bank by taking cheap shots at the company and making homophobic comments at their champion on a regular basis. The onus shouldn't be on the target to keep a stiff upper lip and take the abuse, the person dealing  the abuse needs to be told to STFU. 

We've seen countless examples of the "just ignore it" mindset just leading to the toxic person just gaining more influence, since people see garbage being spewed unchecked and think there must be some merit behind it.

[Robert S]

3 hours ago, Manatee said:

Obviously Cornette is a misogynist and fuck him for calling Penelope a slut. Penelope's comeback was to kink shame Cornette and call his wife a slut so fuck her too. It feels like the AEW contingent isn't all that concerned about misogyny, they just want to cancel Cornette because he criticizes them.

Considering what professional wrestlers do for a living, is it that surprising that a lot of them lack the intelligence to get the concept of moral highground?

[NintendoLogic]

55 minutes ago, sek69 said:

Cornette is the annoying kid in class who doesn't pose any real harm but gets under everyone's skin to the point they want to slap him. Of course the better play is to just ignore him and move on, but I can't imagine being someone he's targeted on a regular basis not wanting to throttle the piss out of him. 

I really can't blame anyone in AEW for lashing out to be honest, dude's probably making bank by taking cheap shots at the company and making homophobic comments at their champion on a regular basis. The onus shouldn't be on the target to keep a stiff upper lip and take the abuse, the person dealing  the abuse needs to be told to STFU. 

We've seen countless examples of the "just ignore it" mindset just leading to the toxic person just gaining more influence, since people see garbage being spewed unchecked and think there must be some merit behind it.

I agree that Cornette can't simply be ignored because being targeted by him surely opens the floodgates of harassment from the worst of his followers. But you have to take the high road when engaging him. If you get down in the gutter with him, he'll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

[Alucard]

On 3/13/2021 at 1:03 AM, joeg said:

Damn... I don't remember those one liners at all. Its crazy to see the zingers that were ok for TV in the 80s. I think when The Network moves over to Peacock in a week or two I need to re watch some Crockett from 85-86.    

unfortunately, the Network won't have the classic TV/PPV library when it moves to Peacock until August.

[CarpetCrawler]

8 hours ago, sek69 said:

We've seen countless examples of the "just ignore it" mindset just leading to the toxic person just gaining more influence, since people see garbage being spewed unchecked and think there must be some merit behind it.

Bingo.  Not saying anything makes them think it's OK to keep doing it because you won't do anything about it.  That's what always blew my mind about school bully logic from adults.  We all saw bullying in our lifetimes in school, and I even worked in a school system for a brief period of time.  I've never seen a bully actually stop bullying someone because they ignored it.

With Cornette it's lose-lose.  If you ignore him he keeps going and his followerbase keeps going because they see it as a win because you won't confront him about it so they think they've "got" you.  If you engage they see it as a win because you're engaging him and giving him attention.  That's why some people just openly last out at him now.  At least when he refuses to go away again they can get the small satisfaction of dunking on him.  It's the Piers Morgan effect.

[El-P]

Yes, the fact Cornette has so many braindead followers turns his shit into online bullying, pretty much, so it's hard to "just ignore it" when a bunch of low-lives are calling your friend a slut because an old fossil is boo-boo because he doesn't like Kenny Omega and has to lash out, preferably using misogynic/homophobic and sometime even racist terms. 

[Big Pete]

Jim Cornette: I don't know why Penelope was wearing white. She ought to be fucking wearing magenta with purple stripes. I understand that she's had more dicks in her than a urinal at Madison Square Garden. But I'm not -

Brian Last (quickly interjecting): Hey! Just stop it.

Jim Cornette (laughing it off): No it's just an old joke - I don't know anything about her personal life.

Brian Last: She looked pretty good in that dress you can't take that away from her.

Jim Cornette: She's attractive! I wish she'd just become a model so we could just see pictures of her and not see her on a Pro Wrestling program.

Taken from Jim's critique of the wedding angle.