Hulk Hogan got it right

In the midst of the global disasters specifically ravaging the underdeveloped world this September, not many of you knew that famous wrestler Hulk Hogan got into trouble. Hogan is the typical American hero, but heroes, once proclaimed are bound to find hecklers for every appearance and Hogan is no different. In fact, even wrestling where he made his mark, notoriety and fortune has of late rejected him, albeit for a different reason. But with Mexico being hit by two earthquakes in two weeks, Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria following each other in tow, nerves are pretty raw in America as they are across the globe.

Hogan got into trouble over a 140-character tweet that rankled his ever-whining compatriots, especially Floridans who were touched by Hurricane Irma. Energy, water and environmental agencies were struggling the whole of last week to restore power, potable water and clear the debris off the streets of Fort Myers and other parts of Florida. If you had access to cable television from that area and switched to global news channels, you won’t be shocked to know why Hogan was in the news for the wrong reasons.

While Floridans were whining over their down power line, Mexicans were showing the stuff that humanity is no longer known for – acts of communal kindness and unity in diversity. In the Dominican Republic, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit was hoping and praying that someone would send him a plane so that he could show up in New York to beg world leaders to whatever is left of human conscience to shift attention to the human tragedy in his home instead of bickering between Mr. Executive Order and his arch-foe The Rocket Man. When Hurricane Irma visited the Dominican Republic, it flattened its two airports, laid to waste 80% of the country’s buildings and left no hospital to take the injured. Not even the Prime Minister’s residence was spared. Now, that is a tragedy of immense proportions.

Before then, Hurricane Irma visited the island of Barbuda and lay waste the island in its entirety. Puerto Rico, a country said to be $70 million in debt had its entire infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes this year. The trouble was so bad that old colonisers like Britain and France had to rally humanitarian aid to save whatever was left of their infamous conquests while those who survived the first storm were praying that other raging storms would spare them. These are tragic situations in countries that have no capacity to rebuild, no insurance coverage and no social security systems to cushion the effect of the natural tragedies that hit them. In the last three weeks, footages of misery, horror and tragedy were so much that hell is already looking like it was created for those without the help they need to mitigate its fury. 

The way cable networks report these tragedies, drama must be a part of the curriculum in journalism schools as reporters no longer just report the news, they deliberately put themselves in harm’s way to bring the tragedy home to our screens.  So, while everybody in Florida was boarded up, American cable tv reporters were testing their weights against 150 kilometers per hour winds just to ‘humanise’ the story to its audience and of course increase station ratings. Reporters humanize the story more by focusing their camera lenses on victims. 

Compared to the islands earlier mentioned, even the wrecked part of Florida looks like paradise. A family whose home has been obliterated from the map could do with mold-infested beddings from Texas except that they have no roof to put it under. Hulk must have been switching channels while boarded up that after surveying and comparing Florida and Texas with Barbuda he summed up his disgust in a September 14 tweet that was subsequently taken down. This is what it said – “No water, no power, crybabies, everyone’s complaining. These people have no clue how bad it could be. Praying for those that got hit hard, lost homes, lives, businesses, lost everything. Thank you God for helping those with divine highly blessings, God speed only love HH”

Within minutes of the tweet going viral, Hogan was on the bad side of those that saw the tweet as an insult to his compatriots. After all, this is North America where political correctness means going with the flow and not having a different opinion. North American heroes have to walk on eggshells all the time. My good friend calls them Snowflakes because they think they have a right to their stupidity and anyone saying something to the contrary is peddling hate speech. 

Truth as one Naija pastor used to put it, is that if you have lost anything at all, God is perhaps the reason you have not lost everything. Methinks what Hogan was saying is for people who have escaped with their lives to wear their garment of gratitude as they think of those who have nothing left. If you ask me, that is fact – not poppycock.