[updated]
I made this video in response to the Post Most feature in The Washington Post called, “RELENTLESS WRESTLER: Jim Jordan is an unyielding combatant, whether grappling on the mat or in the halls of Congress.”
It’s quite a ride.
[Trigger alert—lots of wrestling metaphors.]
I received the Post Most notification in my email a little after noon today and the headline and lede stopped me in my tracks.
RELENTLESS WRESTLER: Jim Jordan is an unyielding combatant, whether grappling on the mat or in the halls of Congress
I’m a collector of bad headlines, so I’m fairly inured to this kind of thing but the awfulness of this one took me by surprise. I had no intention of reading the whole thing—the first sentence reinforced the notion that this was just going to be all downhill from there.
HIS WRESTLERS AT OHIO STATE called him Jimmy and idolized him as an Olympic-level legend in their ancient sport.
Out of curiosity I scrolled down to see what the point of the whole thing was—and I kept scrolling and scrolling—past countless paragraphs and dozens of images until I realized that this was a massive undertaking. 11,000 words.
It read at first like a puff piece. The Ohio State sexual abuse scandal, which Jordan has denied knowing anything about despite his being an assistant wrestling coach at the time, isn’t mentioned until paragraph 7.
In the approximately 6,000 words that tell the story of Jim Jordan’s rural Ohio boyhood, brilliant wrestling career, and rise to political power, the tone is admiring—sometimes almost as awe-struck as some of the wrestlers in his charge. The piece is shot-through with words like “relentless,” “unyielding,” “aggressive,” “fighter,” and “warrior.”
Jordan’s involvement in the planning of the insurrection and his vote against certifying the 2020 election—as well as his continuing refusal to acknowledge the 2020 election wasn’t stolen—are mentioned in passing.
But it’s hard to discuss those things in wrestler metaphors, I guess. And this article apparently has an agenda which is to keep the wrestling analogy floating at any cost. It’s quite stunning. So, whatever.
Luckily, we get right back to those:
“Whether on the mats or in the halls of Congress, Jordan’s dial is turned to the same setting: relentless aggression.”
We learn that things were really starting to take off for Jordan but
“Then along came the ghost of wrestling past,” as if this were some kind of Dickensian fairy tale instead a true account of horrific and wide-spread sexual abuse of students that was ignored by dozens of people in positions of authority.
Some of the victims acknowledge that they don’t blame Jordan for failing to do anything at the time—part of that was the result of the culture around such matters in the 80s and part of it was the fact that Jordan was an assistant coach. Many more powerful people in the University knew and did nothing. The problem is that when the accusations became public, Jim Jordan was near the height of his political powers. Donald’s staunchest ally and sycophant in Congress—the personal pit bull who, on Donald’s orders, led attacks against Robert Mueller, Jeff Sessions, and essentially anybody who either didn’t support Donald 100% or, worse, sought to hold him accountable—the two of them spoke several times a week.
Jordan’s office issued a blanket denial, and [wrestling analogy alert]:
“He went on the offensive with the same ferocity he has shown attacking Trump’s critics. Calling the timing of the wrestlers’ disclosures “suspect,” Jordan challenged the credibility of his former pupils and pounced on their vulnerabilities. His proxies suggested that those who criticized Jordan were part of a conspiracy — even though most of the wrestlers had once looked up to Jordan and shared his conservative political views.”
Donald, with the bully-pulpit of the Oval Office at his disposal, called the wrestlers liars saying, “I don’t believe them at all.”
What is the point of this piece? I don’t know. I do not know who can write 11,000 words about Jim Jordan and come to the conclusion that he and his tactics are anything to be admired.
“It all starts and ends with wrestling,” we’re told, from Jacob wrestling with god in the Old testament to the great myths about Hercules wrestling monsters to the origins of Olympic wrestling in ancient Greece,
all the way to the present and . . . Donald Trump and Jim fucking Jordan.
Today's Unexpected Rant