Paul Kacprzak’s rant about Brock Lesnar was not exactly what I expect as a “news” article on the website. I’ll grant that Lesnar’s comments aren’t the most well thought out, but I’m not exactly looking to him for opinions on public policy. Comments like “Karma is a bitch and I can see Brock having his Hulk Hogan moments in the future after years of arrogance and indifference” and “do you think that a guy like Brock would have been happy with a barium tube in his butt” are something best left to message boards or better yet, unsaid. While Lesnar is a public figure who was using that position to rant about political issues, responding in a similar manner doesn’t exactly raise the level of discourse or persuade others to your point of view.
The assertion that since Sean Morley is no longer making the big money with WWE and doesn’t hear him “yap” about how libertarian he his and that Morley surely must have changed his mind is akin to the “no atheists in foxholes” claim made by the religious right. The implication is that Morley and others who disagree with the health care changes being proposed (or other government programs) can’t possibly have a legitimate reason to oppose them and if their financial situation were to change, they would immediately be all for them. “I see players who are 20 years younger then me who will have a lifetime of health problems due to their sport” is the exact reason why many people are against the current proposals. The people who didn’t compete in those sports or even follow them are paying the subsidy.
The last paragraph is a classic false dilemma. Lesnar not publicly complaining about the various taxpayer funded amenities that he benefits from must mean he’s ok with them as long as he benefits directly and also implies that he can’t possibly disagree with one government program without disagreeing with them all. He may or may not disagree with publicly funded air traffic control, highways, or arenas. But disagreeing with the general principle doesn’t mean he can’t utilize them after the decision has been made and the money spent. His taxes pay for roads and air traffic control and the publicly subsidized arenas were approved by the voters of that area with the intent of inviting people like Lesnar to entertain them. An equivalent argument would be that Kacprzak shouldn’t work in the medical field because he’s making money from a system he thinks is flawed. That would be equally silly.
I agree with Lesnar in that I don’t like the current healthcare proposal. I will also agree with Kacprzak that Lesnar’s rant on healthcare in Canada was at best ill informed and at worst childish. Plus, I suspect Lesnar’s rant was also part pro wrestling promo. But maybe I’m giving him to much credit.
Jason Campbell
Dear Wrestling Observer,
I'm a long time wrestling fan and follower of the Observer online. The recent noise from UFC champ Brock Lesnar denegrating the healthcare system here in Canada ticks me off. The folowing is a copy of the letter I sent to Paul Heyman's website after he gave space to Lesnar to spread his ample ignorance.
Thanks for all the work you do and for covering more than just the results and entertainment of the business.
Regards,
Lindsay
_________________
With all due respect to Brock Lesnar, a good deal of the difficulties that found him in a Canadian hospital are of his own doing. As a Canadian I wouldn't trade the quality of our health care system for the corrupt, lunacy that passes for a medical system to our south. Mr. Lesnar is a very fortunate individual, he is wealthy and famous and can afford the very best of most anything he desires. More than 30 million of his fellow citizens are not so lucky. In America today the number of people with either no health care coverage or with grossly inadequate coverage is approximately equal to the entire population of Canada. But really the big, tough warrior was already ill and under doctor's care, so what does the intellectual giant do, he heads into the wilds to hunt. He toddles into the woods in a sparsely populated region of Canada and falls ill. After receiving treatment in a rural facility, this lumbering oaf has the temerity to whine like a spoiled bitch that they didn't have the very latest high tech equipment. Well I'm sure the local health facilities in every American town with a population of less than 40,000 are brimming with the very latest of high tech gear. Hell, its America and the Mayo Clinic is a franchise operation, right?
The simple fact is that Brock Lesnar exacerbated his condition by acting foolishly. He found himself in a perfectly adequate, small town facility and got scared. He got scared because he's a spoiled baby, a gigantic and dangerous spoiled baby but a spoiled baby none the less. To cover for his panic attack, he's decided that he will cover the trail of his own cowardly piddle all the way back to the Mayo Clinic with a healthy layer of the sort of ill thought bullshit we've come to expect from this ignorant behemoth. The pampered monster is no doubt used to having a luxury suite in every medical facility he might enter, sorry Brock but in Canada we provide care for everyone, regardless of status. We don't run spas, we run hospitals where people work hard and do their best. We don't operate on a privilege basis, your wealth doesn't get you more and better than the grandmother living a subsistence lifestyle. In America that grandmother would be turned away from care and would be forced to seek routine treatment at an over burdened emergency room. God bless America, if you have the dollars to do it.
Lesnar is a loud mouthed, brash buffoon whose ignorance is as deep as his shoulders are wide. He's trying to make political hay by slandering his betters. And when it comes to compassion for all the people, not just the wealthy, white and powerful, we Canadians are your betters. We don't have "socialist" medicine but then Brock's not exactly clever enough to parse things beyond the Glenn Beck level of rhetorical 'truth by repeated assertion', no matter how wrong the notion being repeated. We have socialized medicine, meaning that every citizen is entitled to an adequate level of care and dignity. Mr Lesnar might want to take a stroll through parts of Detroit or Gary, Indiana if he really wants to see a third world analogue, one wonders what level of health care is available there or in the projects or in South Central or any of the impoverished, battlegrounds of privation and indignity that are growing and spreading across the American landscape. Well let's face it, a spoiled pissant like Brock will never know the truth of the nation he lives in because he'll be driven past and not through such areas because he's wealthy and famous. While he's got money, the realities of those around him will never encroach on his sheltered world. So goody for Brock Lesnar.
In the mean time, tent cities are springing up, veterans are homeless and living in squalor and millions of American families, working families, are doing without even the very basic levels of health care. If a profoundly lucky man like Brock Lesnar is willing to fight to maintain that as the status quo, well then he's also a profoundly stupid man. But this Canadian is proud to support a system that looks after all of of the people, all of the time. It isn't a perfect system but it is a more economically sound and juster system than the graft, greed and gluttony of America's rapacious profit based system. I don't expect that Mr. Lesnar will decide to moderate his words with anything resembling thought unless there's an economic repercussion. But in future it would be wise to note that loud ignorance does not equal truth. And until Brock Lesnar gets over his petulant fear and juvenile tantrums it would be lovely if he shut his fat mouth about things he quite obviously knows nothing about. And it is abundantly clear he doesn't know much of anything about Canadian healthcare.
Sincerely,
Lindsay Stewart
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