Hulk Hogan has bankrupted Gawker. The question, “ WHATCHA GONNA DO BROTHER, WHEN HULK HOGAN AND HIS HULKAMANIACS RUN A $150 MILLION LAWSUIT ALL OVER YOU?!?!?,” has been answered. What does that mean for a free press however? What is a free press? What is a press? What is free? What is is, and what is what? I think I covered all my bases, unless I put “is” first, so that I’m like, “Is what a free press?”
I don’t know what it is, but we got it. We have a free press, free speech, freedom of assembly and religion. Those are the four things we are guaranteed as citizens of the USA. That is AMENDMENT UNO to the Constitution, written on the very shroud they buried Jesus Christ in. After the two hundred rich white dudes got together and hashed out a document that created the foundations of a brand new government from scratch, an ocean away from the really rich white dudes that didn’t let them have and do shit, the first thing that came up was AMENDMENT UNO. Next was AMENDMENT DOS. And here we are to this day caught up in the first two amendments of our constitution. Can anybody tell me what the Third Amendment is? Anyone? I’m sure we’ll all Google it later.
So back to Hulk Hogan. He just leg dropped Gawker media with the help of Peter Thiel. I hope you read that article because I’m going to be nowhere near as informative. What I like about the article is that it doesn’t have anything to do with whether you agreed with what Gawker did, release the sex tape of the Hulkster fucking his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife, NAME. You know what they say, if you truly love someone, you’ll let them go fuck Hulk Hogan on camera and bring a new media empire to its knees. If you watch the footage from the trial, one could argue that Hogan fucked Gawker Media on camera as well to the sweet tune of $150 million. Take that AMENDMENT UNO.
But dude, it’s wrong to release sex tapes right? Isn’t that a violation of privacy? What about outing people for being gay? What about libel, defamation, and all that? Aren’t there laws protecting people from that kind of stuff? Well apparently in Florida there is and they side with Hulkamania as the collectively say, "NOT COOL, BROTHER!"
The part that’s easily overlooked is the money backing Hogan that allowed him to launch the legal salvo at Nick Denton’s company. It comes down to money. Money can shut down the press. Sure it’s stupid, but freedom of speech is a slippery slope. If you start saying you can’t say this or that, or print this or that, soon it’ll be whatever is deemed “unAmerican” or “terrorist sympathizing,” so on and so forth. Freedom of expression has to be all or nothing, because it’s the gray area that will collapse the whole thing out from under us.
This is precisely why most other countries have no freedom of speech, press, assembly, or religion. "Why don’t you just hand the people the nukes?", someone from an autocratic dictatorship might say. "Why make it so tough on yourselves? Let me get this straight you let them say whatever they want, print whatever they want, gather wherever they want, and worship whoever they want? and the very next thing is you let them have guns? Are you just asking to be overthrown? What the fuck kind of leadership is that?"
That’s why we’re the fucking wild card. That’s why there’s this crazy mix of people, cultures, beliefs, mixing and churning in a primordial soup of humanity. That’s why jazz, rock and roll, stand up comedy all come out of America. The individuality and expression implicit in those forms, they abhor restriction. They yearn to be free because we all do. Like George Carlin said-
...which is exactly why we can all relate because who doesn’t want more slaves? Or at least the freedom to have as many as possible. And if you are a slave, that’s a no-brainer in the freedom department.
Freedom is huge in America and it’s one of those exports that means well, but seems to cause destruction wherever it’s imported, much like crystal meth. Yeah, that's it, freedom is the crystal meth of ideas for people around the world, because most of the world is still run by aristocrats. These were not people who owned slaves, these were the people who owned the countries you take slaves from and then put them in. The tradition of having Amendments UNO and DOS is uniquely American, so when those values take hold in another country, bad shit can go down. Case in point- the French Revolution. The French are always into American stuff. Look at hip-hop, jazz, and Jerry Lewis. Well freedom was another thing. After the American Revolution went down, the dregs of France were like, “Oh shit the English monarchy got it’s ass handed to them by a bunch of rednecks across the pond. Why don’t we rise up agains these stinky perfumed motherfuckers and chop their heads off? Tell me to eat cake you uppity mannequin? How about I shove some cake down your gaping neck hole after we give it ten whacks with a guillotine?"
You know it only goes CHOP in the movie right? In real life, decapitations are a lot of work, so the guillotine if it’s been used a few times is basically a heavy dull blade whacking the shit out of your neck until it falls off.
Hulkamania took on Amendment UNO, and it looks like the people have decreed the Hulkster the winner. Perhaps it’s because of the incredible power of empathy that Floridians possess to see themselves possibly in a position like Hogan one day. Could it be like John Steinbeck once said that we are a nation of temporarily embarrassed sex tape celebrities? But the Hulkster? Embarrassed? That was the case he put forward and after the great people of Florida saw him giving Bubba the Love Sponge's wife the ol' Third Python, they seemed inclined to agree that he should be mortified. Or could it have been the racism? You know how Floridians are real partial about their racism.
