Dave Meltzer stuff

[fxnj]

A large proponent of Trump's rise has been the "alt-right," a movement fueled by middle class white males who feel left behind by the left's SJW rhetoric and being vilified as "oppressors." So I would say frivolous word debates about things like if it's ok to continue the centuries old practice of calling bad works of art "abortions" or of it's ok for Dave to talk about old timers' usage of naughty words without calling them Satan for it has played a pretty direct role in fueling Trump's rise.

[WingedEagle]

Also people being pissed about political correctness is often a shield about them being pissed off they are being called out on being a bigot or racist or whate whatever.

 

These conversation killers are great at killing conversations. And this one surely needed to die.

[joeg]

I don't know Meltzer personally. I haven't subscribed to his news letter in a number of years. Some of you do know him personally, many of you are subscribers. One this as a neutral outside observer, is that he always has struck me as a guy with foot in mouth disease. I'm not saying he's racist, I'm saying he regularly says stupid uninformed shit which he has to backtrack later or says stupid shit which is later contradicted by other statements he makes. Its just this time he opened his mouth and commented on race relations not whether or not Mistico and Pedro were draws. You say something stupid and informed about wrestling , which he does, a bunch of nerds get their panties in a bunch. Your a white guy who writes something stupid and informed shit about the n bomb in print, then you are goingg to receive a South Park style public shaming.

[Microstatistics]

A large proponent of Trump's rise has been the "alt-right," a movement fueled by middle class white males who feel left behind by the left's SJW rhetoric and being vilified as "oppressors." So I would say frivolous word debates about things like if it's ok to continue the centuries old practice of calling bad works of art "abortions" or of it's ok for Dave to talk about old timers' usage of naughty words without calling them Satan for it has played a pretty direct role in fueling Trump's rise.

 

On the internet atleast, the anti-SJW and anti-feminist crowd out number the so called SJWs by a huge huge margin. The anti-PC culture is far more prevalent than the PC culture. I don't think such a huge backlash to some possibly unreasonable demands is justified.

[Johnny Sorrow]

There's a huge difference between those of us who hate PC culture because of it's rampant self important stupidity and its censorism attempts towards comedy and arts and the whole "I can't hear or read anything that may make me uncomfortable because I can never be challenged or offended" bulllshit that limits education and discussion ...and ridiculous racist, homophobic, mysoginistic fucking zilches wearing Trump hats screaming about "PC won't let me call someone a faggot!"

[overbooked]

The problem with people crying "Political correctness!" is they are often working on the principle that they can say what they like with impunity. That, and they don't like their own prejudices being pointed out. It is no good advocating free speech and then complaining when someone uses their free speech to criticise yours. You can say what you want, but you have to live with other people calling you on it, and in the case of a journalist like Meltzer, you should be ready to defend or apologise for your choice of language.

 

Language does have a wider impact. Normalising offensive language helps normalise offensive thinking and offensive behaviour. Political correctness, when done properly, is more about holding people to account for what they say, of ensuring they can't just say what they like without any consequences. It is also a call for some decency and humanity. This is less about policing language and deleting words, more about us all being considerate, empathetic human beings.

 

Back to Meltzer and pro wrestling, I think language is particularly important because wrestling has such a problematic history full of racism, sexism and homophobia. Even now, pretty horrendous anecdotes and stories are laughed at and laughed off (countless "ring rat" stories), overtly racist or homophobic figures in the industry are forgiven or condoned ("Well, he wasn't racist to other wrestlers, so the KKK stuff is OK") and more. I think any wrestling writer, especially a professional one, should at least have that context in mind and be ready to explain any questionable language.

[El-P]

There's a huge difference between those of us who hate PC culture because of it's rampant self important stupidity and its censorism attempts towards comedy and arts and the whole "I can't hear or read anything that may make me uncomfortable because I can never be challenged or offended" bulllshit that limits education and discussion ...and ridiculous racist, homophobic, mysoginistic fucking zilches wearing Trump hats screaming about "PC won't let me call someone a faggot!"

 

Une fois n'est pas coutume : I TOTALLY agree with this. Couldn't have said it better.

[ChuckScumm]

There's a huge difference between those of us who hate PC culture because of it's rampant self important stupidity and its censorism attempts towards comedy and arts and the whole "I can't hear or read anything that may make me uncomfortable because I can never be challenged or offended" bulllshit that limits education and discussion ...and ridiculous racist, homophobic, mysoginistic fucking zilches wearing Trump hats screaming about "PC won't let me call someone a faggot!"

 

I

[Strummer]

[sek69]

 

There's a huge difference between those of us who hate PC culture because of it's rampant self important stupidity and its censorism attempts towards comedy and arts and the whole "I can't hear or read anything that may make me uncomfortable because I can never be challenged or offended" bulllshit that limits education and discussion ...and ridiculous racist, homophobic, mysoginistic fucking zilches wearing Trump hats screaming about "PC won't let me call someone a faggot!"

 

I

 

 

 

I agree as well, but the latter often tries to insist they're the former.

 

 

Also, and this kind of fits in with the discussion, Dave brought up that TJP is apparently getting heat from indy geeks because of how WWE used him being homeless as part of his backstory. The quote he mentioned was "what makes him special when a lot of guys were homeless?" which might be the most petty thing I've heard in an industry partly built on petty bullshit.

[pol]

More importantly, wrestling is a work.

[NintendoLogic]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Dave really hates Sheamus for some reason. A few weeks ago on the F4W board, he said that Chris Hero was ten times the worker Sheamus is. And in his write-up of the Raw Foley/Sheamus/Cesaro segment in the current Observer, he wrote that Foley "said they were two of the greatest superstars he’s ever seen. He said that about Sheamus. I mean, there’s a limit of how far you can stretch credibility before it snaps." I don't remember Dave being this negative on him in the past, so I wonder if there's some kind of backstory here.

[Strummer]

Dave has been pretty hard on Smackdown as well. Pretty much everyone has gone on about how good the show has been but Dave is having none of it. I mean he's not as tough on it as he is on Raw but he's not holding back at all

[Ricky Jackson]

I can't remember what he wrote in previous weeks, but he called the latest Smackdown "a very good show"

[Jmare007]

Yeah, I heard the last WOR and he was praising how great the Miz/Dolph segment was. It was Alvarez how say he hated it and had a little back and forth with Dave about it.

[Loss]

I would say the two guys whose greatness he'll never acknowledge are Miz and Sheamus. Just a blind spot. I don't think it's something personal or anything like that. His mind is just made up.

[BrianB]

Dave definitely has a blindspot for the two. Moreso for the Miz imo. Miz has become very good. His character work is arguably the best in the company atm, and his in-ring has improved significantly from years ago, where you could deservedly criticize him. Plus, he's over and get's booed.

 

Sheamus? Sheamus is a better worker than Dave gives him credit for. But Sheamus isn't that over. People barely care about him anymore. Everytime he's put into the main event it mostly doesn't work. The matches might be good, but it's hard for me to care or for most fans to care. I think fans are just done with Sheamus because he's also got the stink of being a HHH friend, a constant foil to Daniel Bryan, and his character has been very bad in the past especially as a babyface. His character is better now, but, imo, that's like saying Corporate Kane is a better character than Demon Kane, or vice-versa. I'm probably still more interested to see beat into the ground loser Dolph Ziggler than Sheamus.

[DMJ]

I'd agree. With Sheamus, you can look as recently as last year and say he was getting pushed above how over he was.

 

With Miz, you have maybe the most consistent heat magnet in the company but the dude hasn't even sniffed a main event push since 2011. It's absurd that he wasn't at least put up against Ambrose during Ambrose's meh title reign this summer. Miz would have been a great opponent and would've made Ambrose seem more popular than he is, an area that was woefully exposed by how little anyone cared about Dean's SummerSlam match and how much AJ was cheered in their match last month.

[sek69]

I'd think it's possible that Miz was probably buried to Dave by his sources at the time he debuted since everyone seemed to hate him for being a reality TV star. When your first impression to something is negative (fair or not) it's sometimes hard to overcome it.

[Loss]

I know Dave's version of the Miz story that got him kicked out of the locker room years ago always seemed exaggerated to a point that it had no credibility, so that's probably true.

[Strummer]

I can't remember what he wrote in previous weeks, but he called the latest Smackdown "a very good show"

 

He was more kind to this weeks show but the previous 2 or 3 weeks was unnecessarily rough on the program and seemed to be nitpicking to a degree.

[hammerva]

Alvarez's point about Ziggler is correct. It is hard to really get excited for a person who has lost for most of the year and has been treated like a loser by the commentators. The problem is that you know that most of his opinion is less about that and more that anything tied to Miz is considered automatic death for them. I would love to know the personal issues between Miz and Meltzer/Alvarez because it is way past being objective years ago

 

Of course it is hard to take any opinion of him seriously because there is a 90% chance that his only knowledge of the feud is from video clips, vines, and reading recaps that is provided to him.

[BigBadMick]

How bad is Alvarez really? I get the impression he's a big enough fan of modern US but there seems to be gaping holes in his pre-1996 knowledge.

[sek69]

It's not so much that he's bad, it's just that he gets fixated on things that sometimes get annoying. There was a time where his Miz hate was defensible, but his run with Maryse has been so great that continuing to dislike the guy just comes off as contrarian.

 

Also there was a great bit of underrated Dave comedy where they joke about God working for ROH (referring to Silas Young's promo at the PPV) and he just deadpans "well if God worked for them they'd probably have a better TV deal".

[Bix]

There's a huge difference between those of us who hate PC culture because of it's rampant self important stupidity and its censorism attempts towards comedy and arts and the whole "I can't hear or read anything that may make me uncomfortable because I can never be challenged or offended" bulllshit that limits education and discussion ...and ridiculous racist, homophobic, mysoginistic fucking zilches wearing Trump hats screaming about "PC won't let me call someone a faggot!"

1. The former is largely a strawman that doesn't exist. Generally speaking, most of the examples of that I've seen have been exaggerated or distorted. For example the response to the Yale Halloween costume letter story from last year usually came as a result of tellings that misrepresented what happened.

2. What's "censorism?"

 

Also, people tend to look at these issues in a vacuum when they're not taking place in one. Trigger warnings are largely about acknowledging that a significantly bigger portion of the population than we like to admit has been sexually assaulted, and are way more prominent online than they are alleged to be in academia. And even online, they're largely limited to feminist blogs and other sites where they know it's appreciated by the audience.

 

What do you see as "PC culture" and how does it relate to calling out someone who repeatedly defends"non-racists" who used the n-word because it was the "official business term" for black wrestlers, in an era where they were seen as more than other wrestlers, no less? Remember, what got this started was Brandon Howard asking Dave why he's so insistent about hating the terms "mark" (which was an "official business term," after all) and "IWC" but explains away use of the n-word. Which is a perfectly legitimate question.