Regarding the Hulk Hogan mess, and what it means to our culture. · 7:23pm Jul 24th, 2015
I woke up today to the news that WWE has severed their ties to Hulk Hogan over a scandal that was about to break. After considering it for a while, I decided I wanted to chime in on the topic and discuss Hogan, racism, and why this whole thing is a pile of crap.
This post will have none of my usual attempts at humor, so if that's what you're looking for, I advise tuning out now. If this topic is relevant to you, click below to see more.
Everyone gone now? Good.
So as of last night, all Hulk Hogan merchandise has been removed from the online store, all mentions of him have been removed from their website, his listing on their Hall of Fame page has been expunged, he's been kicked off the show he was featured on, and the active wrestler who's been using Hulk's identity as a gimmick has dropped it. He's been erased from their history as thoroughly as they could manage. It's just like what they did with Chris Benoit.
Don't remember Chris Benoit? For those of you who've never heard of him, he was a Canadian wrestler who was a big star before he went nuts, killed his wife and child, and committed suicide.
All day long, I've been seeing news articles about Hogan's comments, Hogan's apology, Hogan's firing (or resignation?) from WWE, Hogan this, Hogan that, Hogan sucks...
So what did Hulk Hogan do that warrants such attention and harsh treatment? He was caught on tape eight years ago, unaware that he was being recorded, saying that he's a little bit racist and using the dreaded N-word. The content of that recording has now been partially revealed, and the response has been overly extreme. Here's why:
These statements were not made publicly. They were made in private to a single person. Hulk Hogan never gave any outward sign of racism, and he always treated black fans exactly the same as his white fans. No one he's worked with in a professional capacity has ever accused him of racist behavior, either. (As far as I've been able to find, at least.)
What we have here isn't a case of a vile, hateful bastard advocating harm to people based on a difference in skin color. It's just a guy who has an internal bias that he overcame to the point of it never showing in his public life. He stated in the video that he thinks everyone is at least a little racist, and whether you agree or disagree with that, it means that he doesn't see white people as being superior to other races. He just thinks every race has an inherent mistrust of others.
Hulk Hogan is not a terrible person for this. Sure, he's committed more than his fair share of wrongs in his life, and he's not someone I would want my hypothetical children to model their lives after, but in this case, he's not the villain. If anything, the degree to which he's overcome his prejudices makes him admirable.
Now, I admit that we may not have the complete picture yet, as all that's been released is an incomplete transcript of an unreleased recording. However, we can only judge based on what we can observe. And even if it's later revealed that he was genuinely hateful, this still would not be the sort of racism we should be concerned about. We have legitimate problems in the US regarding racism in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. There are racial biases in the media, which stirs up hatred and division among Americans for the sake of ratings. Xenophobia is rampant.
That's the racism we should care about, not these useless distractions.
Agree? Disagree? Have something to add? Think I'm an ignorant jackass or the long-awaited hero who will lead the world to a golden age of kittens that never become cats, video game movies that don't suck, and the freedom to snark with impunity? Let me know in the comments. Just keep it respectful, please.
I think you're the hero kittens deserve.
Man, I must have been busy today. I haven't heard a thing about this.
Hogan has been in positions of power for a very long time, but I've never really heard any noise about him holding down anyone racially. He's been roundly accused of holding down new talent in general, but that's fairly common of most top level wrestlers. Spot protection happens everywhere.
Brand protection is a strange thing. If WWE didn't throw the book at him, they'd take serious heat. I'm sure they'll take serious heat for doing it, as well. The curious thing is that Vince has never really cared what the outside world thought anyway, so I'm curious as to why he would now. His company is public. That's a big factor. It could really affect his wealth, but given all the slimy crap WWE has done in the past, Hulk Hogan displaying some racism seems like a drop in the bucket.
I have to wonder if they were looking for a way to get out of a contractual deal with Hogan and this just happened to be a really good excuse. Hogan and Vince have had a fairly stormy relationship, so Vince might be looking for a way to stick it to him for some reason. Most contracts have clauses saying that you must uphold the values of the company and not do anything embarrassing, yadda yadda.
Taking him out of the Hall of Fame seems crazy, though. Did they literally totally remove him, or is his page just gone? If he's gone, that's insane. Hogan is one of the biggest wrestlers of all time. I understand getting rid of Benoit, but Hogan? That's just going to just make your Hall of Fame look lame.
In the end, I guess I'd have to hear it to really know. If it's just a causal one-off remark, that seems amazingly knee-jerk. If he goes off for fifteen minutes, that's another story and potentially much more damaging for WWE. I won't really know until I have time to track it down.
3266043
Aw thanks, Syeekie bby.
3266087
I don't think Vince was looking to stick it to him at all. It's just that ever since WWE went public, they've been terrified of controversy.
And as for the Hall of Fame question, I really can't say. The page is gone, but I have no idea if all the physical materials at their offices have been taken down.
Hear hear
And yet it is somehow socially acceptable to fling the worst of curses and names at this individual while ruining his life and any chance he has for making a living for something he said eight years ago. It would be interesting and informative to look over Mr. Hogan's charitable contributions as well as his public appearances for worthy causes and compare them against the most vile of his critics. I would bet cash money that the comparison would be severely one-sided.
I just don't see why anyone even cares about what Hulk Hogan said eight years ago. He's an entertainer. It really isn't a big deal.
Oh, and incidentally:
There's actually no good evidence of systematic racism in the modern US criminal justice system. Blacks are arrested and imprisoned at a massively higher rate than whites are, but blacks commit crimes at a massively higher rate per-capita as well. Once you take into account the fact that blacks are responsible for 50% of homicides, 55% of robberies, and 28% of crimes overall, while comprising only 13% of the population, it becomes impossible to actually detect any real bias in the data - you would expect for people who commit crimes more often to get in trouble with the law more often. From what limited data we have from a few cities on the resisting arrest rate, blacks appear to resist arrest about twice as often as whites do - and, consequently, die while being arrested about twice as often as whites do, which is pretty much what you'd expect. Though it isn't terribly surprising that they resist arrest more often as well, even beyond cultural antipathy towards the police, as I'd imagine that robbers and murderers are probably more likely to resist arrest than average, and they make up a higher proportion of black criminals than criminals of other racial groups.
That's not to say there aren't racists in the law enforcement system, but whatever presence they have is insufficient to really register nationally, and/or is offset by other factors.
Let his name be blotted from the scrolls, let his likeness be stricken from the temples....
'Cause there are only absolute heroes or absolute villains in the world, and nothing in-between, right?
3266146
Yes, it is true that a disproportionate amount of crime is committed by black people. That can't be disputed. However, it also can't be disputed that blacks are convicted at a much higher rate than whites charged with the same crimes, and their average sentences are considerably more severe.
I honestly don't get how someone can be held accountable for what they've said over eight years ago. A lot can happen in eight years. Heck, people can change their opinion in just a few months.
From what I remember of Hulk Hogan (just from his reality show and Comedy Central Roasts), I've never seen an inkling of racism from him. I don't really understand how you can label someone a racist when being an actual racist means you're upfront about it. You don't see any Neo-Nazi deny their racist tendencies. If someone says they aren't racist to the public eye, there's a good chance they aren't one.
Anyway, this entire fiasco just goes to show how much the media loves to villainize a guy for even the most minor of offenses. It's amazing how quickly everyone would beat Hulk Hogan up for one racist comment while ignoring his countless contributions to charities and using his name to support charitable contributions.
Just goes to show, huh?
Well, there goes Axel's career, unless they just give him some dead wrestler to copy.
Never was a fan of the way WWE tries to erase people from existence. Look at most of major league sports. A guy might get fired, but they don't pretend that he never existed. Hell, the NFL will still acknowledge OJ being statistically one of the best RBs in history. At least with Benoit it was over something huge. With Hogan, not so much. Even if they are a public company, Vince need to refind his giant grapefruits.
As for the Hall of Fame, there's people in there that have done worse.
I'll leave off on a happy note:
pbs.twimg.com/media/CKte9jaWEAAKg4k.jpg
3266215
We sentence repeat offenders more harshly than we do first time offenders, as they obviously haven't changed their ways. Some states, such as California, have "Three Strikes, You're Out" laws, which are going to add to that even more.
In Florida in 2003, blacks were 29% more likely to reoffend than whites were, all other things being equal. But not all other things are equal, so it is actually worse than that. Another study by Boulger et. al. found that the black recidivism rate in Indiana was as high as 40%. This obviously is going to drive up the average sentence given, and result in people going to jail for lesser offenses because they aren't first-time offenders.
Various studies on this have failed to substantiate the idea that blacks are unfairly singled out for long jail sentences; race is not predictive once other factors have been taken into account, such as the nature and number of charges, the severity of the crime, amount of evidence, ect. Black judges and white judges give just as long of sentences to black defendants.
For example, Rehavi and Starr found in 2012 that amongst 58,000 federal criminal cases, blacks received an average sentence of 60 months vs 38 months for whites, but it was "almost completely explained by three factors: the original arrest offense, the defendant’s criminal history, and the prosecutor’s initial choice of charges."
As far as conviction rates go: if you're talking about "if you are arrested and charged with a crime, what are the odds that you'll be convicted of said crime?", as far as I know, good national data on that question does not exist. PolitiFact says the same thing, and I've not found anything that says otherwise. That doesn't mean that blacks aren't, but there's no evidence that it is true. I found mention of a 1991 study by RAND which suggested that being black was not a good predictor of success or failure at trial, once other factors (amount of evidence, eyewitness testimony, ect.) was taken into account. A 1993 DoJ study suggested that the rate of prosecution of blacks and whites was not very different - 69% of white defendants were prosecuted, as opposed to 66% of black defendants. A 1996 analysis of 55,000 big-city felony cases by Lerner found that black defendants were convicted at a lower rate than whites in 12 of the 14 federally designated felony categories, though I couldn't find the original study so I'm not sure if that is statistically significant data.
There have been a few small-scale studies on other related matters, such as this one, which took 700 cases from two counties in Florida with a ~5% black population (they chose these two counties, incidentally, because they happened to record the racial data of jurors) in an attempt to determine whether the racial composition of juries made a difference on conviction rates. The study's authors suggest that there are statistically significant differences in the conviction rates of various racial compositions of juries, that blacks were more likely to convict whites and less likely to convict blacks, and whites were more likely to convict blacks and less likely to convict whites, but looking at the sample sizes and doing some calculations, that's actually kind of questionable; the sample sizes are not very large, and as it turns out, the 95% confidence interval for black and white defendants for all-white juries both overlap the average conviction rate of 74%, as do all of the others.
Blacks tend to be poorer than whites, which would suggest that disparities in representation should show up in that data if it was a large difference, but according to state data from 1990 to 1998, people who were represented by private lawyers had the same overall conviction rate as those represented by public defenders in state courts. (Note that in federal courts, which make up only a relatively small percentage of overall trials, those who had public defenders were more likely to be convicted, 88% to 77%. However, that may be an artifact of the fact that a lot of federal cases are immigration offenses, and I'd imagine illegal immigrants are probably much more likely than others to use public defenders due to being indigent). As blacks are somewhat more likely to have public defenders than whites are (77% vs 69%), this would suggest that, if the system was racist, public defenders would have a lower-than-expected success rate, but we don't really see that, which suggests that any overall disparity in conviction rates is too small to show up in that data.
I think you hit the nail right on the head. Given all the problems with race we've got already, this certainly seems like a perfect case of a "mountain out of a molehill".
3266486
The Tour De France has a suspicious gap in their list of winners, which definitely doesn't correspond to when Lance Armstrong won. I've always thought it was a bit silly; they seem to avoid mentioning him as much as possible in their broadcasts and news releases now.
The really sad thing is that a ton of people were probably all doping; I'd guess that none of the winners between Jan Ullrich and Alberto Contador (both known dopers) did so without the use of performance enhancing substances, and it wouldn't surprise me if no one has won in decades without them. Greg LeMond is a big anti-doping advocate, and actually got into a (very public) argument with Armstrong about doping, but essentially everyone who has won since he did has been at least accused, and a number actually found out.
3266558
I'm sorry, TD, but you've priced me out of further debate. That got too long too fast, and I don't have the time to put in the effort required to keep up with you. Too much going on.
3266913
Fair enough.
3266913
And the Snow Job informal fallacy wins again!
3267180
Statistics on arrests and convictions of black Americans is irrelevant to the discussion of racism in law enforcement? How? Smells like confirmation bias to me.
As far as Hogan goes, this sort of thing has become par for the course for public figures. Personally, I believe this sort of knee-jerk reactionism is going to satisfy a minority of loud whiners and piss off the majority of quiet observers. It's gonna turn on them harder than if they grabbed a tiger by the tail.
The company response is rather extreme, but I'd say not atypical. I think this particular case is more noticeable because of WWE being in the business that it is. Subway parting ways with Jared (who as far as I'm aware hasn't been formally charged with anything) is a similar corporate response (and I'm not weighing in on the validity of that debacle). One big difference there is that Subway wasn't selling Jared merchandise and Jared-focused entertainment, they just sell (excuses for) sandwiches.
Okay, enough serious stuff. So questions of the validity of the WWE's actions aside, I have to marvel at the utterly insane amount of power they just wielded. I'd hazard to say it approaches the major news outlets in terms of societal sway, let alone what they've demonstrated that they can do to one of their employees.
3267514
Never said that. The Snow Job fallacy is burying an opponent under an avalanche of words until they just can't waste any more effort on the discussion, whether or not any of the avalanche is pertinent to the topic.
But I will address your question.
If someone wants to argue that blacks get arrested and convicted more often because they commit more crimes, you have to realize that the statistics come from arrests and convictions, so the actual argument that they are making is that blacks get arrested and convicted more often because they get arrested and convicted more often, which is Circular Reasoning.
If, in a given area, blacks and whites commit the same number of crimes, but a racially biased police force most often lets whites off with a warning and most often arrests black for the same offenses, the crime statistics for that area will show that blacks in that area commit more crimes. So the presence of biased law enforcement officers would produce the very evidence that is being used to argue against bias. Without a lot of supporting evidence one way or another, crime statistics are just the "third kind of lie."
As for the idiocy of the reaction against Hogan, I agree with you.
3267591
Well, you could understand my confusion considering the link provided says the information is irrelevant whenever the Snow Job fallacy is applied:
As for your response, if we cannot rely on statistics or studies on arrests to determine racism in the police force, then we've removed most objective means of analysis. Then, the only reason we have to think the police force is racist is our own emotions and suspicions. As far as proving claims goes, anecdotal evidence is pretty poor in terms of extrapolating to the wider population.
Convictions, on the other hand, are a different story. Decisions are recorded whether they're for or against the defendant. That data should be useful assuming it's reliable.
I should also point out that TD was trying to show an absence of proof for racism suspicions rather than actually disprove it. That in itself is kind of insane, considering the burden of proof is usually on the person making the claim rather than the person trying to say they don't have the information necessary to prove it, but that's kind of what we've come to in terms of racism/sexism/yadda/yadda/yadda. When the options are either prejudice or not-prejudice, we generally default to prejudice.
3268270
My understanding is that "irrelevant facts" are ones not directly addressing the point in question, although they may be related. But informal fallacies are often hard to pin down. I tend to assume Snow Job is in play when I see a comment that is more than three screens high. I certainly don't have the time or inclination to plow through such a flood.
As for the statistical stuff... yeah, I wouldn't say we have to completely discount such statistics, but that they should be carefully examined along with a lot of other pertinent evidence. And yes, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." I've seen people claim that conviction statistics do show that blacks are often sentenced more harshly for similar crimes, than whites are, but it's not like a blanket claim that police/courts are or are not biased against blacks makes much sense. The US is comprised on many regional cultures, and they historically approach racial relations very differently. Reducing various "hot spots" to a general average isn't very useful.
Could be worse.
He could be starring in a movie where he plays a babysitter, but in reality is an undercover agent.
Now THAT would be a crime.
~Twi