Journalism has outlived Hulk Hogan:
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:49 AM
To update an old saying, Never piss off people who buy pixels by the barrel…
Without Hulk Hogan, Peter Thiel would not have been so effective in media-suppression
Without Peter Thiel, we wouldn't know today's Musk or JDV
Without Musk, we wouldn't have DOGE (and would still have Park Service, State Dept, NIH, etc)
So we note Hulk Hogan's passing, as we might Roy Cohn's.— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Chris Thompson, at Defector:
Terry Bollea died on Thursday. The former professional wrestler was 71 years old. According to his longtime manager, Bollea died at his home in Clearwater, Fla.; different reports say that paramedics responded at dawn to an emergency call reporting that Bollea was suffering from cardiac arrest. He’d had some sort of recent neck surgery, and was rumored to be in failing health. Bollea’s wife, Sky, recently batted away rumors that he was in a coma. Fellow washed-up wrestling luminary Jimmy Hart insisted Tuesday afternoon that Bollea was “doing phenomenal.” That turned out to be not the case…
Bollea eventually seated himself, unsurprisingly, as a champion of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. He also managed the neat trick of retaining enough general public goodwill from his early wrestling days that it has rarely been considered particularly controversial or damaging to one’s reputation to express ongoing affection for his Hulk Hogan character, despite all that has been learned about the performer. That is not to say that his shtick worked on everyone: At his final WWE appearance, at a Monday Night Raw event back in January, Bollea, in his Hogan character, was booed relentlessly by a Los Angeles crowd. But in a sign of his cultural resilience, and the broad mainstream acceptance of ideas and behaviors that a saner society might otherwise consider grounds for literal exile, he was then invited onto ESPN’s most popular show to talk about the experience with the network’s most prominent media personality.
It would certainly never occur to the writers and editors of Defector to use our platform to dance on a person’s grave. And so I will now bring this blog to a close.
Look, you can say a lot about Hogan's legacy: he was racist, he was terrible to his colleagues, he put himself above other people, he firmly believed in the supremacy of white people, he was a bad wrestler, his life was a net negative for society.
That's it. That's the post.— Imran Khan (@imrankhan.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Dave Zirin, at the Nation — “Hulk Hogan Was a Racist, Liar, and Scab”:
… Now that Hulk Hogan has died at 71, the media, top wrestling honchos, and particularly the Trump administration are verbosely mourning this leather-skinned mass of steroids and bile stuffed in spandex. The media is treating Hogan’s death like they are in on a bit. They praise “Hulk Hogan” for being an American hero while ignoring that Terry Bollea led an ugly, amoral life; that he was accused of abuse by both one of his wives and a daughter; that he was broadly loathed by generations of wrestlers; and that his final act involved shilling full-time for Donald Trump. Hulk Hogan was a racist scab and a liar, which his prime-time appearance at Trump’s Republican National Convention a natural fit.
It is gratifying, however, that last Thursday is, in addition to the day of Hogan’s death, the 10th anniversary of the National Enquirer’s publishing audio of Hogan going on an n-word-laden tirade. The coincidence is serendipitous, allowing the legions he harmed to remind people that many mourning this man are mourning a myth. His racism also matters because it dovetails with years of complaints made by Black wrestlers about both his treatment of them and his role as WWF co-owner Vince McMahon’s right-hand man, making sure they never got a shot at his top spot. (In fairness, many white and brown wrestlers have made the same claim.)
Then, as Hogan has himself admitted following years of accusations, he informed on his coworkers, telling Vince McMahon about a secret unionization push led by Jesse “The Body” Ventura. When one considers the shocking number of wrestlers who prematurely died in the 1980s and ’90s because of depression and addiction, both results of being hellaciously overworked, a union could have saved lives.
But Hogan’s harm can be counted in more ways than just what took place behind the curtain. He sold what was left of his soul to Palantir founder and sweaty, ham-faced fascist Peter Thiel who bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker. With Thiel’s help, Hogan crushed an audacious Internet journalism outlet that I guarantee would have published the Epstein lists by now. That we lost Deadspin because of Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan will never not make me apoplectic…
The Hulk Hogan of 2025 embodied all that is wrong with this country. He should be remembered as a living expression of our national decay: a hero exposed as a fraud, a fraud exposed as a coward, and a coward who cried with joy upon finding an authoritarian who told him that his sins were, in fact, virtues.
J.V. Last, never known for his conciseness, has an interesting argument at the Bulwark — “How Hulk Hogan Made ‘Real America'”:
… It would be an exaggeration to say that Hogan is responsible for what America is today. But not much of one. Hogan, like his friends Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, was both a symptom and a cause of what we have become…
Hogan and his partner, Vince McMahon, brought the structures and mores of professional wrestling to American society. Their innovations changed our culture and politics to a degree that’s rarely appreciated…
In wrestling, every match, promo, and story line is designed to put someone “over”—meaning, to help them get a reaction from the audience. Getting over is the goal of every wrestler. Because once the audience reacts, you can draw money from them.
Here it is important to understand that being over is value-neutral. The crowd can love you or hate you. What matters isn’t the polarity but the valence. Wrestling wants intense reactions. No one does anything in wrestling without first gaming out how the crowd will react. What would be the point?
In that way, wrestling is the purest form of populist entertainment and the rest of American culture has followed its lead.
Edgelords on Twitter. Aspiring influencers. Cable news heads. Republican primary candidates. Their every action is guided by the desire to get over with the audience because America is now an attention economy.
Professional wrestling taught people how to thrive in this new world.
The other important precept that Hogan and wrestling introduced to the country is kayfabe—the pretense that unreality is, in fact, real.
Kayfabe exists because wrestlers have, from the beginning, viewed their audience not as consumers or fans, but as marks. And for generations, it was important that wrestlers make certain that the marks believed that the heels and faces hated one another. That’s why good-guy wrestlers could never appear in public with bad-guy wrestlers out of character. They had to maintain kayfabe, for the sake of the marks…
Hulk Hogan taught us that that the world is made up of sharps and marks. And whatever the sharps do to the marks, the marks deserve it. There is no code; no truth; no honor; no shame. There is only the constant, grinding, unquenchable imperative to get over with the audience. Whatever it takes.
We live in Hulk Hogan’s America now.
71, based on the pile of steroids that man took for a long ass time, is pretty good tbh. That stuff takes years off your life.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:57 AM
===
Ozzy Osbourne dies:
"Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne."
Hulk Hogan dies:
"Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne."
— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 9:04 AM
War for Ukraine Day 1,247: Battlefield Assessments
SpaceUnit
Whatever.
Azhrie139
“Journalism has outlived Hulk Hogan” Okay sure, but don’t jinx it.
Shalimar
Last time I saw a Peter Thiel media appearance, he looked dead too.
Jackie
He’s dead. Good. Are they waiting for FFOTUS to get back to the States before burying him? I’m sure his family wants him to deliver Hogan’s eulogy. <rolling eyes>
NotMax
Who’ll be the first fourth-tier MAGAcaster to state he was offed by the deep state?
m.j.
“I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.”
Hungry Joe
Christopher Hitchens, on the death of Jerry Falwell: “If they gave him an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.”
Et tu, Hulk-o.
Bupalos
@Jackie: Honestly I think Trump’s eulogy for Hulk Hogan would be can’t miss teevee. That’s really interesting.
That’s what we’re fighting here. I can’t right-off think of the combo I’d want to hear on the left.
Bupalos
I’d like to take a minute and appreciate that Ukraine IN THE MIDST OF A FUCKING EXISTENTIAL WAR THEY EXPERIENCE 24/7 had the stones and intelligence to just say no to a law that was a capitulation to elite corruption. And “just say no” means find the time to get out of the bomb shelter and present your body on the line to say no.
Like, can you devalue the modern 4th of July even more??! Another reason to hate Ukraine!
Bupalos
The reason we’re losing is that we don’t believe our line to the same degree they believe their line.
That’s mostly because our line is something we stopped actually bothering with a while ago. Just something you say. Not something you feel.
Chetan Murthy
@Jackie: I’m reminded that everybody is a hero in their own mind; nobody says to themselves “we’re evil”. So we can only judge people by the effects of their actions. He played a pivotal role in the destruction of the institutions of our Republic.
kwAwk
My thoughts for today is that Kayfabe is the perfect representation of the Trump administration. It’s also like somebody thought it was a good idea to make Veruca Salt the President. “I want a Nobel Prize daddy, and I want it now!” It’s tempting to call Trump stupid but he’s not a neurologically stupid person, he’s just so spoiled and lazy that he doesn’t think all that well. If the brain is a muscle, he’s skipped leg day and every other day. It seems like someone could sit him down and explain to him that the Nobel Peace Prize is a lot like getting an invitation to join Augusta National Golf Club. The more you ask for it the less likely they are to give it to you. Even a fake golfer like Trump should be able to understand that.
Kayfabe. It’s wild to me that the people on the right treat Trump like he’s such a brilliant business mind when in reality he’s not self made man or a brilliant businessman, he just plays one on TV. He’s every bit the self made business mogel that Paris HIlton is or Kim Kardashian. The fact that he tries so hard to pretend that he is a self made man, and to hide his nepobaby reality shows how guilty and embarrassed he is by it.
And he’s so bitter and angry. He’s had everything the world has to offer handed to him on a silver platter and yet he’s the most bitter and angry person you’ll see. It’s a pattern isn’t it? They whiniest most bitter victims in our society are those at the top. It is bizarre. Today’s idea is that I need to put together a coffee table book. It’s title will be “Money Can’t Buy You Happiness”. No text just pictures of people like Donald Trump, Peter Theil, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and that obnoxious cunt from In-n-Out Burger.
Bupalos
@Chetan Murthy: Pivotal? I think it was firmly bit-part here, but I’ll hear you out.
Marc
@Bupalos: I think of Hogan as more of a pawn in Thiel’s white supremacy game.
Marc
@Bupalos: I think of Hogan as more of a pawn in Thiel’s white supremacy game.
Marc
@Marc: sorry, the comment killed WordPress and it came through twice.
NotMax
@Marc
“Hulko just pawn in game of white.”
//
NotMax
@Marc
That’s the daily blog burp at 2 a.m. Eastern time.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Bupalos: we still believe our “line” as you put it. We believe in our country so very much we are in a sense stunned by this absolutely absurd assault.
Trying to make America worse every day in every possible way this Republican Party is set on doing.
On the other hand, you are correct. Ukrainians have done themselves proud and not just this week.
NobodySpecial
As I mentioned elsewhere on Reddit, I’m so old I remember when he couldn’t get over in the AWA because everyone hated him so much and he jumped ship.
I pray his coffin floats away in a decade, never to be found. Unless they can detect heartburn in sea snails.
matt
He’s dead, so he can stop taking a shit on America. Good for us.
Tony Jay
Terry Bollea died youngish? Probably scared and in pain? That’s delightful news to wake up to. I guess adopting the look of a meth-doused General Custer crossed with a string of swollen sausages really is bad for your health.
Will not be missed. Good riddance.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
What are your thoughts on Corbin’a new party?
Comparisons between the UK and US can be overdone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that happened here.
Baud
@Baud:
Corbin’a = Corbin’s
Rudi666
Hulk Hogan and Bubba the LS were (no)soul mates. These two were the real Prince of Darkness.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
That’s excellent imagery. Love it!
And congratulations on the formation of a new Party to the left of ‘Reform Lite’. I hope this Party and the UK Greens give Starmer’s ‘new moderate Reform’ Party a punch in the electoral gut.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
Who could have known?
Aussie Sheila
@rikyrah:
Good morning. It’s dinner time here, and I’m waiting for my Tasmanian salmon to bake . Salad and Brussel sprouts are done already.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
JFC! Who allows unpasteurised milk into the market? There is a real although probably remote possibility of the reintroduction of TB!
Christ almighty the US is mad.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Excellent point by Jamelle Bouie. I know there’s fierce competition, but to my mind, RFK fuckwit is the most dangerous appointment to Cabinet you have. His power to rain death and destruction to public health is unfathomable.
I also appreciate the insight Bouie makes about the link between his batshit pronouncements and eugenics thinking in general. What a fucking disaster.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Signed up for it yesterday and made a donation. Of course, despite the to-be-expected media framing it’s not actually ‘Corbyn’s’ party, he’s just agreed to help Zara Sultana get it off the ground.
It is, of course, much needed. The ‘yank it right and snap off the wheel’ turn of Der Starmerpartei has shattered the link between Labour and its traditional bastions of hard and soft support and, despite the eye-rolling delusions of Morgan McSweeney and the pro-Trump Blue Labour mob, they are not going to make up that loss by pandering to the Reform-curious ‘WWC’ vote.
All things being equal, I’d posit the newnewlabourinc vote cratering by the time of the next election and this new Party picking up most of the outflow, but this is the UK, where the Media created an entirely fictitious Labour Party to run against between 2016-2019 because the real one might have been popular enough to oust the Tories. So we’ll see.
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
I never could get my head around the appeal of Bollea’s ‘Hulk Hogan’ personae. Screwing a balding, chinless head onto a bloated Stretch Armstrong doll and covering the whole thing in olive oil always just screamed “I have deeper problems” to me.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Exciting times. I look forward to your reports.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
You and me both. I just don’t get the ‘ Hulk Hogan ‘ cult. I suspect though it’s centred on dumbfucks that think roided up loudmouths means ‘real men’. In other words mouth breathing fuckwits.
Once again congratulations on the formation of a real democratic socialist Party. I’m very sure that it and the UK Greens will give ‘new Reform Labour’ a run for their money. Particularly in urban UK.
Here’s hoping!
Princess
When public people die, it is entirely appropriate for the public to make public evaluations of their lives. Good to see critical appraisals of Hogan normalized here.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I forgot about the UK greens. What keeps them from joining forces with the new party? Seems like their agendas would align.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
I’m about 20,000 words into a dinky little opinion piece about Starmer’s Party and the reasons for its massive unpopularity, but they keep on doing more awful stuff so I’m feeling pretty Sisyphus about the whole thing.
But I persevere. For which I apologise in advance.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
It’s terrible. The results of this dishonest crank’s nonsense is simply unthinkable.
It conforms my belief he’s the most dangerous appointment to Cabinet since I don’t know when. He will be responsible for many deaths and much disease. When the reckoning comes, he needs to be near the front of the line.
Princess
I’m half expecting the Trump government to encourage smoking. That’s the easiest way to make sure people don’t live too long. Watch for it.
ETA: Ah, I see it begins. politico.com/news/2025/06/10/rfk-smoking-maha-tobacco-cigarettes-00394863
bluefoot
@Baud: I despise that guy so much. He is actively choosing to create so much needless human suffering and death. Why people like RFKjr want to harm people,destroy our scientific and health care infrastructure and weaken the country is beyond my ability to fathom.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
I dunno. But it’s FPTP in the UK like the US. However there are more Parties in the UK than in the US. Strategic voting, where Parties agree to ‘stand down’ in an electorate in order to facilitate another like Party winning is a common tactic in such systems where many parties are permitted, unlike the US where it appears an ‘official two Party system’ is almost Constitutional. It assisted in UK Labour winning a stonking majority despite not having a numerical majority or anywhere near it. I suspect that the UK Greens and the new democratic socialist Party may agree to an electoral alliance that assist the Left against the Right and the ‘New Reform Lite’ UK Labour Party.
Personally, I prefer a multi party system where the electorate is able to rank their preferences on the ballot.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Their agenda’s align on some issues, not so much on others. What would be best, I think, is a Red/Green/Gold alliance where the new party, the greens and the Lib Dems co-ordinate to vote tactically and edge out the right wing parties, of which Starmer’s Party are most definitely one.
But first, the whole thing has to be created, staffed and funded. I’m doing my bit by allocating a large chunk of my future lottery win, but getting the timescales to align is proving a problem.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
I’m hoping for your Lottery win! 🏆
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
£131 million on Tuesday. That would fund a decently sized progressive party, a proper social media recruitment/outreach program, my increasingly megalomaniacal lifestyle choices and the zombie-cyborg army of baby pandas riding baby elephants I’ve always dreamed of (after cheese).
Only the ungood need fear this.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay:
I welcome the pandas riding baby elephants. It’s far more feasible than the alternative! My fingers are crossed for your lottery win. Nevertheless, in the unfortunate event it doesn’t happen, I’m convinced the general centre left and left disgust with ‘new reform Labour’ will mean money and boots on the ground sufficient to get it off the ground. After that it’s the slog that is the lot of every Party and its partisan members.
The very best to you and all who have worked to get it off the ground.
Baud
I’d make a drag queen reference here, but this story is extremely disturbing, more so than usual.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
I made the mistake of clicking through. I stopped real quick. JFC.
Give us a break. I know people can be arseholes, but that is just unfuckingbelievable.
Betty Cracker
@bluefoot: I’m increasingly convinced RFK Jr. is a serial killer who has bamboozled his way into a position where he can “legally” murder millions of people. His own cousin told us what a sick and destructive fuckwad he has always been.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
Agree. Whether he knows it or not matters little. He will be indeed the greatest serial killer in US history. On that basis he should be first to front Madame La Guillotine when the time comes.
And it will come.
I just hope US Democrats remember this travesty hard enough to make a repeat physically impossible. I know I would
I’m implacably opposed to the death penalty, but there are instances where its judicious use is important ‘pour descourager les autres’. Like Nuremberg.
bjacques
@Tony Jay:
Dying young(ish) and in pain? There’s a song for that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYSJ6E1rR8&list=RDKrYSJ6E1rR8&start_radio=1
lowtechcyclist
@Aussie Sheila:
This ain’t Green Lantern. It takes a lot more than remembering hard enough. Given our Constitution, there’s no way to make the necessary structural changes in a house this divided. That’s the problem we face.
Deputinize America
@Betty Cracker:
Sirhan Sirhan didn’t kill as many people and he’s still in prison.
Aussie Sheila
@lowtechcyclist:
Structural changes meaning Constitutional changes are hard. Non Constitutional changes that are structural are less so. Maybe concentrate on those, rather than the impossibility of Constitutional reform atm.
Deputinize America
@Aussie Sheila:
Our shitty constitution is the reason why I call Jefferson, et al “The Founding Fuckwads”.
The thing collapsed of its own contradictions and a genuinely awful Supreme Court in 1861, and has been barely lashed together ever since.
Rusty
@Aussie Sheila: What the right figured out is you can have effective constitutional change by controlling the Supreme Court. Now we on the left need to do the same with expanding the court and setting term limits. It will be impossible to reasonably govern from the left with the current make up and form of SCOTUS.
p.a.
@Aussie Sheila: That’s what Heritage 🤮 and Fed Society 🤮 did, but it took a generational effort that was ideologically and financially consistent over time to provide the judicial cover that enables totes UNCONSTITUTIONAL structural change to become… IDK… extra-constitutional, supra-constitutional?
Princess
From what I gather, there’s a solid cord of people who voted for Trump *only* because they supported RFK.
chemiclord
@Bupalos: I’d say it’s more that if you got ten people on the left to discuss the line, you’d leave that discussion with twenty-five opinions on where the line should be, and all of them would be non-negotiable to the people who presented them.
brendancalling
Hulk Hogan may be dead, but I made a delicious sweet lassi, and added a little mint from my backyard. So delicious and refreshing.
Aussie Sheila
@Rusty:
Now you’re talking. Congress absolutely controls the numbers on the USSC. Do whatever has to be done to reduce its power to be the US Supreme Guardian Council. It’s amazing that a Constitutional Republic has willingly handed effective veto control over the legislature and the Executive when the Executive differs politically from the Court.
It’s a right old anti democratic pickle and it needs to be solved. After all, the US isn’t the only polity with a written Constitution. But it appears to be the only one that anoints its highest Court with priestly powers.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@lowtechcyclist: Send him to the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity. Don’t let our justice system handle it, let international courts do it. Ditto for Stephen Miller and Cheeto Benito himself.
lowtechcyclist
@Aussie Sheila:
Well sure, but since they can all be undone, they won’t make anything ‘physically impossible’ regardless of what you meant by that.
sab
@Princess: These people are why I always where an N95 mask in the organic grocery store.
sab
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: The US isn’t a signatory nation to the International Court, so does it even have jurisdiction for what US people do in the US?
Trump on the other hand likes to travel.
Aussie Sheila
@lowtechcyclist:
Well I dunno. Somethings can be third railed. Like SS and Medicare for instance. They can be attacked of course, but at the political peril of the attacker.
lowtechcyclist
@Aussie Sheila:
Your hand-waving is duly noted.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: That’s my understanding as well, after the fact. Before the election, I didn’t fully comprehend the pull of woo.
Elizabelle
Death shows great comic timing again.
Takes Ozzy Osborne, who turns out to have been a kind person in real life.** “The Prince of Darkness” for show. Millions around the world mourn.
And then takes Hulk Hogan. Who seems to have been a hollow shell. A catspaw for Peter Thiel. Crickets.
** With some terrible episodes when he was under the influence. But a kind person otherwise.
chemiclord
@Betty Cracker:
There are a metric fuckton of people in this country who want to believe there is some sort of virtue in living a “natural” lifestyle that is “one with the Earth.” Those people see the closest thing to a kindred spirit in RFK Jr., who makes something similar to the mouth noises they want to hear, but refuse to accept there is a dark and sinister uncurrent to “natural living” because the generational memory of “natural living” has been lost.
Geminid
@Princess:
@Betty Cracker: When RFK Jr. joined the Trump campaign there was some discussion of whether he would help or hurt Trump. I suspect Trump’s campaign managers considered the question seriously before they determined to go ahead and bring him in.
I think they knew they had a numbers problem. They were confident they could get to 46 or 47% of the popular vote but they needed a couple more percent to win. RFK Jr. could help reel in a big chunk of that two percent.
They may also have privately polled RFK Junior’s favorability and determined that antipathy towards him fell mostly among voters they would lose anyway– people like those here.
This of course is speculation; it’s possible Wiles and LaCivita just flipped a coin. But whether there was a lot of deliberation or just a little, they made the right choice and it may have won them the election.
Ben Cisco
lokiyesverysadanyway.gif
Lacuna Synecdoche
@bluefoot:
I suspect the reason is that powerful people eventually hit a point where the only way to accumulate more power is to make everyone else weaker.
Of course, RFK, Jr. was never that powerful, but he likes to mimic the powerfule, serve them, and suck up to them.
BCHS Class of 1980
As a longtime fan of ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption with Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, I saw something I considered a subtle shot at the late Mr. Bollea. At the end of each episode they do a segment with quick hits on sports items. When a prominent figure in sports dies, they almost always start the report with “Melancholy trails to…” They didn’t do that with Hulk; they merely noted his death, his importance to pro wrestling and some of the crap he did. Very subtle unless one knows the show.
Martin
@Baud: The raw milk resurgence is really the product of one guy – Mark McAfee, and it was obviously just a money grab. When you sell milk to a pasteurizer on the market you get about $1.50/gal. But if you sell raw milk, people pay $10/gal. You’ll need a bottling setup and a retail storefront but that’s still a HUGE difference in revenue.
Problem is if you’ve seen his farm in Fresno or any of the others, they’re enormous feedlot farms – there is shit EVERYWHERE. There’s no universe in which you can do that without infecting people. Maybe if the US still had small herd, pasture fed cows you could make a safe raw milk industry, but not out of any dairy in CA.
He’s pretty unhappy with RFK though for not being even more of a crank.
Martin
@chemiclord: I think you deny that there is a pretty big in-between group of people that were a little more sympathetic to some of RFKs messages. I have an organic farm near my house that is very popular and in most of the stores where I live the organic produce section is larger than the non-organic (high incomes generally don’t care about the price differences). There is a real effort to avoid heavily processed foods because of the warnings from scientists that they are linked to obesity and diabetes. CA voters have repeatedly voted for farm animal treatment ballots. And these generally aren’t things that anyone going into the FDA or Ag Sec jobs does much about. Even under Dems the latter is still mostly a booster for US corn exports. So I think there is a bigger interest from the left in maybe not putting the former gov of Iowa into those jobs and instead steer the industry toward healthier things, remove some of the additives that we know are harmful, maybe remove some more for good measure, and seek other ways to make food affordable.
You don’t need to go so far as ‘being one with the earth’ to see consensus growing in the scientific literature that these things should be removed from our food and then want a government official to remove those things from our food. And we kind of don’t ever get that.
And one of RFK Jrs messages was for fewer factory farms and smaller farms which a lot on the left think would be good policy. I think it would be helpful to look at the stuff people actually said they liked about some of his ideas (which from what I saw wasn’t that much of the crank stuff like vaccines and raw milk and fluoridation but the more sensible things a lot of which boiled down to ‘help farmers and small businesses’) Dems might do well to defend rather than ostracize that group of people who I would argue should be reliable Dems. Like, opposing consolidation and over-industrialization of the food system seems like a natural Democratic position that maybe we shouldn’t demonize? Go find some Dem that cares about the non-crank stuff that RFK was running on and try and put them behind a camera now and then to lash the crank stuff to RFK and reclaim the other stuff for Dems.
It certainly doesn’t help to project from the left that a not small share of the CA and OR democratic party (don’t have a sense for other states) are cranks.