June 11, 2004

Springtime For Bradshaw

A professional wrestler has been fired from his commentary gig on CNBC after giving a Nazi salute during a match. Yes, you read that correctly.

John “Bradshaw” Layfield, a longtime WWE wrestler who has also carved out a lucrative second career as an investment guru on both Fox News Channel and CNBC, was fighting a match in Germany recently when, in order to get the crowd worked up for his villain character, he began using Nazi mannerisms, including the “Heil Hitler” salute. This is, apparently, a big no-no- and is even punishable by law in Germany, although Layfield was not arrested or detained.

What kind of world are we living in, when a fake wrestler who pretends to be a Nazi can’t dispense real stock tips on a real news network? But then, if he’d been pretending to be a communist, I guess the idea of dispensing stock tips would’ve been even more incongruous.

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 11, 2004 02:54 AM
Comments

CNBC needs to learn that Layfield is an actor, in a cartoonish medium, but an actor nonetheless. Firing him for playing a bad guy is stupid, no one actually believes that the WWE is endorsing Nazism.

Posted by: Bill McCabe at June 11, 2004 06:37 AM

He did it in Germany, he broke German law, which takes these things very seriously. The German government is intensely aware of its own recent history, and it does not want to unnecessarily offend American public opoinion -- or opinion in Israel. Some things are never a joke, ever.

Posted by: Michael at June 11, 2004 11:05 AM
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