Total Physique Online

As web master of this site I have spent a lot of time honing my skills as a creative writer and just about as much time honing my skills as a copy and paste artist. That this sight contains the writings of others (with their permission, of course) is a fact I am rather proud of, because in the end this site is somewhat of a collaborative effort for which I cannot take full credit. And while I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to use the writings of others to improve the quality of this site, I am proudest of the things I have written because they come from the heart. This post in particular will be one of my most passionate entries in this blog. I hope you can glean something from it.

A few months ago Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving. Apparently Gibson showed a bit of his ass during the arrest and as expected, rather than focus on the drunk driving, the media chose to focus on Gibson’s ass because…gasp….among other things he used a racial slur. Egad! ~eyes rolling here~

For weeks Nancy Grace and her equally shallow and self-righteous horde of character assassins attacked poor Mel, labeling him a racist, a Jew-hater, a bigot and more. Never once did Grace and her crew of hypocrites blame the alcohol Gibson was imbibed with. Instead they blamed the man. They blamed his father for his lack of character. They attacked Gibson mercilessly for weeks on end, sighting questionable deeds and behavioral indiscretions of the distant past as proof positive that Mel Gibson was an evil, misogynistic, anti-Symetic, no-good-son-of-a-bitch.

Again, never once did Nancy Grace and her cronies offer even a shred of sympathy for Gibson. Never once did they excuse his behavior and instead attack the dangers of alcoholism. Nancy Grace, ratings whore that she is, was not content unless she personally saw to it that Gibson was crucified on the alter of political correctness.

Now look, before you misunderstand me I want you to know that I found Gibson’s behavior unfortunate and regrettable, as did most everyone. Yet, I found the behavior of Nancy Grace and others like her disgusting, Machiavellian and even sinister. Typical modern day media.

So, fast forward several months to the evening of June 25, 2007, when it was announced that professional wrestler Chris Benoit had murdered his wife and child before killing himself in an apparent murder-suicide. Within minutes, Nancy Grace and her buddies were at it again, each of them maneuvering into place to assume the podium of self-righteous posturing, handing down judgement upon Vince McMahon, professional wrestling and anabolic steroids. I was shocked, but I was not surprised. In predictable fashion most of the media could not wait to condemn anyone or anything but Chris Benoit, and Nancy Grace led the charge, taking first prize that night, and for several weeks thereafter.

In my opinion Nancy Grace has a habit of speaking authoritatively about things she knows very little about. While I confess to being no fan of hers, I like to think I am at least fair minded, even with people I am not particularly fond of. Yet as much as I would like to be able to say it, I simply cannot bring myself to say that I have ever seen Nancy Grace comport herself with any combination of professionalism, intelligence or fair-mindedness. She is usually lacking in one or all of those faculties. Often times she jumps to conclusions and frequently berates her guests. This failing of hers has never been on display more than it was the night of the Benoit tragedy. Those are harsh words, but that’s how I feel.

I won’t go into all of the ways in which Grace disgraced herself and her profession, but one such instance stands as a monument to her arrogance and her churlishness, and it bares repeating here.

At one point in Nancy’s show she was interviewing a couple of has-been wrestlers bent on finding a way to become famous off the death of Benoit and his family. One of her guests, a guy named Mark Mero, was on his high-horse, milking the tragedy for everything it was worth. As an aside, I could swear he was trying to flirt with Nancy in the process.

At one point, Mero starts talking about all these wrestlers who are now dead, at which point Grace and her producers simultaneously scroll a list of names across the TV screen. This is supposedly a list of dead wrestlers who died of steroid use. The list is rolled for all to see without any balanced commentary to put this list of deceased wrestlers in it’s proper perspective. One lone ex-wrestler who tried to bring some balance to the discussion was shouted down by Grace and Mero. All the while Grace is yammering in the background about the pervasiveness of steroids in the WWE, how Vince McMahon needs to be investigated and charged with this and that and how steroids were responsible for this cornucopia of dead wrestlers now being flashed across the ten TV screens of Nancy’s viewers. I was puzzled and a bit angry that something so misleading would be foisted onto CNN’s viewers.

Is it possible that Nancy Grace was actually a prosecutor in a former life, as she has so vociferously claimed at least ten times a night on her lousy show? Was she a good one? Because the display of deception, misconception and downright stupidity I saw that night leaves me no other choice but to conclude that Nancy Grace was a lousy prosecutor in her past life, but quite possibly a terrific lay. There is simply no other way to explain why she is no longer practicing law, yet has her mug plastered on TV every night.

The list of dead wrestlers that Nancy Grace flashed on her TV show that night contained names of wrestlers who died of freak accidents in the ring (Owen Hart), complications from giantism (Andre the Giant), wrestlers who were victims of random crime (Bruiser Brody) and wrestlers who were not even part of the WWE at the time of their deaths. Some of the wrestlers listed even died of cardiovascular disease, which can kill anyone who eats too much fatty foods. The bottom line is I could not find a single name on that list where the athletes death was conclusively shown to be as a result of steroid use. The level of journalistic irresponsibility and opportunism on display that night was, in my view, appalling.

It bothers me that Grace and others were assigning blame before blame could reasonably be assigned. Benoit and his family had only been dead a few hours before Nancy had decided steroids were to blame It also bothers me that Grace had not done her research before deciding to rush to air with a blanket condemnation of Vince McMahon and professional wrestling vis-a-vis steroids. Yet, what really bothers me in all of this is the blatant hypocrisy that fails to identify the real culprit in the Benoit case.

Just weeks earlier, Nancy Grace, with the aid of her buddies in the rest of the media, was attacking Mel Gibson’s character. She was attacking the person of Mel Gibson. I cannot recall her addressing the disease of alcoholism as the real culprit behind Gibson’s bizarre behavior. Not really. Yet, in the case of Benoit, where real personal injury and harm of the most heinous sort was caused, she blamed steroids? Do you see the inconsistency here? Do you see the hypocrisy? In the case of Gibson, his sins were a result of the fact that he was evil. In the case of Benoit, a murderer, Grace rushes to blame Vince McMahon, professional wrestling and steroids! What???

In the first place, Grace offered no evidence that Benoit even had steroids in his system at the time of his rampage. Moreover, it was obvious that she was blaming steroids without first looking at all of the research on anabolic steroids use. Furthermore, in my view she and her guests slandered the WWE and Vince McMahon by suggesting that McMahon was to blame for the athletes choice to use steroids in the first place before all of the facts were out. Again, no proof of any of this was offered. Factually, Grace was incorrect on a lot of what she claimed. Everything else was merely subjective prejudice and innuendo stemming from ignorance. Is this what journalism has come to - innuendo, ignorance and outright disinformation?

The rush to judgement by the media in the Benoit case was not only premature, but it was tragic in and of itself due to the fact that the verifiably real danger of steroid use was glossed over and forgotten. And apparently the real culprit of the Benoit murders might also have been overlooked.

It needs to be pointed out that the greatest risk steroids pose is to the health of the bodies organs. This is factually true. Steroids wreak havoc on the liver and kidneys. Steroids harm the reproductive systems of both men and women, throwing the delicate hormonal balance into utter chaos. Steroids have been shown to predispose abusers to some forms of cancer. All of this is scientifically proven and as such should have been discussed by Nancy Grace on her show, but as far as I recall it was ignored. Apparently, Grace is too obsessed by ratings-driven sensationalism to be bothered with the day to day minutia of fact finding. The viewer suffers. Young, impressionable athletes suffer. Journalism suffers.

Second, the connection between steroids and criminal conduct is harder to prove. I am not saying the connection is not there, nor am I saying it should not be researched. But it is far easier to show a connection between alcoholism and behavioral problems than it is to show the connection between steroid use and violent behavior. For example, how do we know that someone who uses steroids and picks fights with people is doing it because of steroid use? Could it not be just as possible that such a person would be picking fights with people whether or not he used steroids? In my view, Grace glossed over this rebuttal by ignoring certain facts and distorting others.

Finally according to this most recent report, it seems very likely that Benoit suffered from brain damage so severe that it could have easily led to dementia so advanced that it mimicked ALZHEIMER’S. In light of this, Grace’s reporting seems even more irresponsible. If this report is true, it could mean that the real dangers of professional wrestling are not found in needles and bottles behind closed doors, but right inside the square circle where anyone with any intelligence would expect to find it.

Let’s face it, the physical beatings professional wrestlers take when they fall and slam each other, often onto concrete surfaces, simply cannot be absorbed without paying a price. The same is true for all contact sports. Boxers know this. Football players know this. Athletes in general know this. Competitive athletics is hard on the body. Even arm chair quarterbacks like Nancy Grace, who has never so much as bench pressed a broom stick, should be able to understand this, but I guess we should never underestimate the profound degrees to which stupidity can descend.

In conclusion, I am not a steroid advocate. I am not saying steroids are safe to use. I am not even saying that steroids never cause ‘Roid Rage. I am just saying that more research needs to be done. I am saying that professional wrestling is dangerous enough, even without steroids, and that this also needs to be looked at. I am saying that people like Nancy Grace need to keep their mouths shut until they have done enough research to be able to speak intelligently about a subject, rather than engaging in subjective, sensational journalism all in the name of ratings.