The End of the Ric Flair Era
For most of my adult life, I have only claimed two celebrities as heroes - Pat Buchanan and Ric Flair. It’s never been a secret that I’m a huge pro wrestling fan and in admiring the world’s greatest pro wrestler, I suppose Flair’s character has always been the perfect extension of my own shallow male fantasies. What red-blooded American male would not want to jet-set across the country, donning custom suits, eating gourmet food, drinking fine wines and enjoying even finer women? The clichéd concepts of the “world as your oyster” and having your cake and eating it too, were reflected perfectly and persistently by the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Oh, and how did Flair earn his reputation and achieve his god-like, superstar status? He beat the crap out of any man who dared cross his path. Yep. Sign me up.
Of course, while the kid in me still admires Flair’s cartoon-caricature of lavish living, the seemingly unsustainable concept of “unlimited growth” is a fantasy many Americans have long considered their birthright. Writes my other hero, Pat Buchanan, “For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt-all are at record levels… Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall… We are going to have to learn to live again without our means. The party’s over.”
Comments
Ric Flair is a regional celebrity, like NASCAR drivers and megachurch ministers. The people here are mostly blue staters and won’t remember him.
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Megachurches are mostly an urban and West Coast phenomenon. A ride through the rural South and Southern Appalachia is marked by their complete absence. NASCAR, meanwhile, has become a national sensation. Check the birthplaces and bios of the majority of drivers.
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WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
Are we now entering the Dusty Rhodes era?
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Mr. Ramus,
who you callin’ blue stater?
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Some of us, are not even from America, but I definitely know about American wrestling and Ric Flair. It is big oversees as well and is a great export success for America.
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We are like Ric Flair if Ric Flair made long, humorless speeches about how the rights of men and equality of all people everywhere compelled him to beat up his opponent. Roman and Mongol soldiers at least got land, money and women for conquering and maintaining their empires. There are probably some Americans who are somehow getting those out of our wars, too. But our actual soldiers have to risk their lives for nothing but ideology, burger flipper pay and credit hours at their state university.
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