hulk hogan

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tore off shirt at rnc // MSG BUT FLOWER BOA? WARDROBE MALFUNCTION?

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On Thursday, July 24, professional wrestling star Terry Gene Bollea, a.k.a. Hulk Hogan, died of heart failure at the age of 71. Hogan's death came a year after Hogan's appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he gave GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump a passionate endorsement.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega examines Hogan's support of the MAGA movement in an article published on July 28, arguing that his alliance with Trump was a major disappointment to non-MAGA Americans who admired the wrestler during the 1980s.

"Trump and Hulk's alliance irrevocably stained the cherished memories many Americans of a certain age have of Hulkamania," DeVega writes. "If our hero Hulk Hogan, whose theme song proclaimed himself a 'Real American' willing to 'fight for the rights of every man,' could embrace a person like Donald Trump — a villain who believes himself to be the real victim — how lost, then, are we Americans as a country and a people?"

DeVega adds, "This betrayal is at the heart of the boos and contempt many professional wrestling fans, and the larger public, came to feel toward Hulk. But the pairing makes perfect sense once you realize how much the two have in common."

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The Salon journalist describes Trump and Hogan as "fabulists with a documented history of telling obvious lies and abusing the truth."

"Being 'real Americans' and 'patriots' is central to both of their brands and popularity," DeVega explains. "Hulk Hogan, Trump and MAGA all embody the same anti-intellectual, demagogic, juvenile, adolescent male power fantasy: that big muscles, sheer will and violence can fix everything."

DeVega continues, "To that point, Trump, at 79, routinely shares images of himself online as Superman, a heavyweight professional wrestling champion, a Sith Lord from the 'Star Wars' film universe, Sylvester Stallone's human war machine character 'Rambo,' a mafia boss and, of course, a professional wrestler…. Rest in peace and power, Hulkster. For better or worse, this is the world you helped to create, and we are living in it. "

*Chauncey DeVega's full Salon article is available at this lin

mad sq garden comic ref pimps?

NEW YORK — Donald Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday opened with speakers who made racist, sexist and crass remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris and Puerto Ricans.

It concluded with speeches from Trump, his wife, Melania, and billionaire Elon Musk arguing that Trump's the hopeful, optimistic choice.

Why it matters:Crude comments at Trump rallies aren't new. But many speakers at the rally unleashed rhetoric unprecedented in modern American history so close to an election.

And while the spectacle thrilled his supporters who were there for about seven hours, Democrats believe the divisive rhetoric will alienate swing voters as the candidates make their closing arguments.

Zoom in:Businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris "and her pimp handlers will destroy our country."

Trump's childhood friend David Rem called Harris "the anti-Christ"; former wrestler Hulk Hogan used a crude gesture while insinuating that Harris had slept her way to the top.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe said: "I don't know if you know this but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico."

Other speakers talked about "f**king illegals" and called Hillary Clinton a "sick son of a bitch."

Trump told the crowdthat the U.S. "is now an occupied country," again described Democrats as the "enemy from within" and exaggerated claims about a "savage" Venezuelan gang in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colo.

The big picture: Several Democrats and even some Republicans told Axios they think the rally will wind up hurting Trump.

They said Sunday's spectacle satisfied his wish to have a rally at the iconic New York arena.

But they said it will remind voters — including those in swing states such as Pennsylvania, where 3.8% of the residents are of Puerto Rican descent — of the dark and race-baiting rhetoric that repelled them four years ago.

That belief is premised on the assumption that the more voters hear Trump, the less they'll like him. That won't become clear until the election.

Trump's campaign argued that the ubiquitous media coverage of the New York event made it a strategic victory regardless of the headlines.

Top Trump aide Jason Millertriumphantly posted a photoon X of 11 TV outlets carrying Trump's speech.

Even some Democrats fear that Trump continuing to suck up the media oxygen is making it more difficult for Harris to introduce herself to voters who say they don't know enough about her.

Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez tried to clean up after Hinchcliffe, saying his joke about Puerto Ricans "does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign."

Trump's teamhas been brimming with a confidence that some Republicans fear is hubris.

On Sunday, the campaign announced that Trump would have a rally in New Mexico in the final week before the Nov. 5 election.
A Republican hasn't won New Mexico in a presidential election since George W. Bush won the state in 2004.

Between the lines:During the rally, Harris was visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in northern Philadelphia — providing a split screen to the scene at Trump's rally that was highlighted by Harris' campaign.

While visiting Freddy & Tony's Restaurant, Harris pledged to help fix Puerto Rico's electrical grid and create a "Puerto Rican Opportunity Economy Task Force."

The bottom line: In the campaign's final week, Harris is betting that enough voters will be repulsed by Trump and his supporters' behavior to vote for her.

Go deeper:GOP lawmakers slam "classless" Trump rally Puerto Rico joke |

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Jesse Watters asks Hulk Hogan what role he would play in a potential Trump administration 10/31/24 MMA

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/business/media/gawker-bankruptcy-sale.html?_r=0

Gawker Media, the irreverent company that pioneered the wry tone and take-no-prisoners approach that came to embody a certain style of web journalism, put itself up for sale on Friday in an acknowledgment that its future as an independent news organization was in doubt.

Gawker said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and would conduct a sale through an auction. The company is under significant financial pressure from a $140 million legal judgment in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit by the former wrestler Hulk Hogan and facing a determined foe in the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who is funding legal cases against it.

Ziff Davis, a digital media company, has submitted an opening bid, which a person briefed on Gawker’s plans said was in the range of $90 million to $100 million. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sale process. Gawker expects a sale to close by the end of the summer.

But even as Gawker took stock of its next steps, it remained, in typical fashion, defiant.

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Gawker’s sites published posts assuring readers they were not going anywhere.

But even as Gawker took stock of its next steps, it remained, in typical fashion, defiant.

“Even with his billions, Thiel will not silence our writers,” Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and chief executive, said on Twitter. “Our sites will thrive — under new ownership — and we’ll win in court.” (Mr. Denton, through a spokesman, declined further comment.)

Since its founding in 2002, Gawker has espoused a conversational tone that came to be mimicked across the internet and on social platforms like Twitter. Gawker and its affiliated sites — including the sports-focused Deadspin and Jezebel, which is aimed at women — have relentlessly and gleefully chronicled the lives of the powerful, and often delivered attention-grabbing, exclusive stories, some of them too over-the-edge for other publications. The company was also an incubator of talent: Employees went on to found websites like The Awl and work at publications like The New Yorker and Time.

Gawker also had many detractors, who said it often went too far and published items with little news value that aimed to embarrass individuals. But over the last year Gawker.com has been going through something of a cultural transformation. Mr. Denton has vowed to make the site nicer and Gawker has shifted to politics and away from coverage of the New York media world and celebrity gossip.

The decision to file for bankruptcy and put itself up for sale is the latest development for a company that has faced a seemingly unending barrage of bad news in the last year. There was the maelstrom last summer after Gawker published, and then removed, an article about a married male media executive who sought to hire a gay escort. That decision led to the resignations of two top editors. More recently, there was the lawsuit by Mr.Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, which has roiled the company and raised questions about its path forward.

Hulk Hogan Awarded $115 Million in Privacy Suit Against Gawker MARCH 18, 2016

“It really was an incredibly bad year,” said Hamilton Nolan, a writer who has worked at Gawker for eight years. “I think they’ll study this in journalism schools one day as being the single worst year in media company history.”

In Gawker’s new offices in Manhattan on Friday, the mood was somber. Around noon, Mr. Denton and Heather Dietrick, the company’s president and general counsel, held a meeting to inform employees of the company’s plans and provide reassurance that Gawker would operate as usual during the sale process.

“They emphasized that the future is uncertain, but for now we’re going to keep doing what we do, and that was useful for people to hear,” said Alex Pareene, the editor in chief of Gawker.

Employees said that few people had known before the meeting of the company’s decision to file for bankruptcy. A keg of beer was brought in and pizzas were ordered.

“It was not a raucous or even particularly depressing affair,” Mr. Pareene said. “We’ve had more depressing meetings and we’ve had more argumentative meetings.”

...

Filing for Chapter 11stays claims from creditors, including court judgments — meaning Gawker will not need to begin paying the $140 million that was awarded in March to Mr. Bollea.

It also allows companies more time and more control as they reorganize themselves. In its bankruptcy filing, Gawker listed $50 million to $100 million in assets and $100 million to $500 million in liabilities. The company still plans to appeal the case.

Also on Friday, a judge in Pinellas County Circuit Court in Florida granted Gawker’s request for a stay of the judgment against it in the lawsuit, pending an appeal. That decision essentially became redundant once Gawker filed for bankruptcy.

Weeks earlier, Mr. Thiel acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he was financially supporting Mr. Bollea’s lawsuit, as well as other lawsuits against the organization. Mr. Thiel, a founder of PayPal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook, was outed as being gay by one of Gawker’s blogs, the now-defunct Valleywag, nearly a decade ago. He said that Gawker published articles that “ruined people’s lives for no reason” and prompted his decision to finance cases against the company.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Mr. Thiel said of his supporting Gawker’s legal opponents. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullyingpeople even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

A spokesman for Mr. Thiel did not return a request for comment on Friday. Gawker is also exploring at least one lawsuit against Mr. Thiel, according to the person briefed on Gawker’s plans.

The offer by Ziff Davis, whose online properties include IGN, Geek.com and AskMen.com, is what is known as a “stalking-horse bid,” essentially setting a floor in a court-supervised auction. Money from a sale would be held aside to cover creditor claims, including any damages after the appeals process.

In an internal memo obtained by The New York Times, Ziff Davis’s chief executive, Vivek Shah, said that under the terms of a potential agreement, the company would acquire Gawker Media’s properties but none of its liabilities. When discussing its plans for Gawker Media, he referred to the benefits of having all of the company’s sites, but conspicuously omitted any mention of Gawker.com.

He said the auction would most likely take place at the end of July. Other bidders, which will probably include other media publishers, are expected, particularly with the threat of assuming legal claims removed with the bankruptcy filing.

In January, Gawker sold a minority stake in the company to the investment company Columbus Nova Technology Partners, partly in preparation for the lawsuit by Mr. Bollea.

Mr. Bollea sued Gawker Media in 2012 over Gawker.com’s publication of a black-and-white tape that showed Mr. Bollea having sex with a woman who was at the time the wife of a friend of his.

In March, after a two-week trial, a Florida jury awarded $115 million in damages to Mr. Bollea. A jury later awarded $25 million more in punitive damages, bringing the total to $140 million.

On Friday, some Gawker employees remained hopeful that a new owner might mean a fresh start, but there was also perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that Gawker as everyone knew it could soon be a thing of the past.

“There’s not going to be the magical happy ending to the story,” Mr. Nolan said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the worst ending to the story, but we’re not just going to go back to everything being how it was.”

Michael J. de la Merced, Nick Wingfield, John Koblin, Nick Madigan and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 11, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition