Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges [1]
“You lost your 401(k). You lost your retirement. You lost your nest egg. You lost your children’s education fund,” Layfield bellows into the mic, his face inches from Michaels’s. “You got to support your extended family, Shawn, and now you look around with all this responsibility, and you look at your beautiful wife, she’s a beautiful lady, you look at your two little wonderful kids, and you wonder: ‘How in the world . . . am I going to send them . . . to college?’ ”
Layfield pauses heavily. Michaels’ face is slack, pained. Small, individual voices shout out from the crowd.
“Well, I’ve got an answer,” Layfield goes on. “I’m offering you a job. I want you to come work—for me.”
“No! No! No!” yells the crowd. Michaels blinks slowly, dazed, and lowers his eyes to the mat.
“See, there’s always alternatives, Shawn. There’s alternatives to everything. You can always wrestle until you’re fifty. You might even wrestle till you’re sixty. In fact, you could be a lot like these has-beens who are disgracing themselves in high school gyms all over the country, bragging about their war stories of selling the place out while they’re hawking their eight-by-tens and selling Polaroids. Shawn, you could be that guy, or you could take my offer, because I promise you this: All the revenue that you’re goin’ to make off your DX T-shirts will not compare to the offer that I . . . made . . . to you.”
He tells the Heartbreak Kid to look in the mirror, adding, “The years haven’t been kind to you, have they, Shawn?” He reminds him that one more bad fall, one more injury, and “you’re done, you’re done.”
The crowd begins to rally their stunned hero, growing louder and louder. “HBK! HBK! HBK!”
“What else can you really do besides this?” Layfield asks. “You get a second chance in life.”
Layfield sweeps off his white Stetson. “Go ahead,” he screams into Michaels’s face. “Ever since you walked out here . . . people have been wantin’ you to kick me in the face. So why don’t you do it? I’m gonna give you a free shot, Shawn, right here.”
The crowd erupts, roaring for the Heartbreak Kid to strike.
“HBK!! DO IT!! DO IT!! HBK!! HBK!!!”
“Listen to ’em. Everybody wants it. Shawn, it’s what you want. You’re twitching. You’re begging to pull the trigger, so I’m telling you right now, take a shot! Take it!”
The Heartbreak Kid takes one step back, his stubbled face trembling, breathing rapidly like a rabbit. The crowd is leaping out of their seats, thrusting their arms in the air, holding up handmade banners.
“HBK!!! HBK!!! HBK!!!”
“Do it, Shawn,” Layfield hollers, “before it’s too late. This is your second chance, but understand this, understand this—”
“HBK!!! HBK!!! HBK!!!”
“—Listen to me and not them! If you take this shot . . . then this offer is off the table . . . forever.”
The crowd stops chanting. Different cries are heard: boos, shouts to attack, shouts to stop. There is no longer unity in the auditorium.
Layfield holds his head outstretched until the Heartbreak Kid slowly turns his back. Layfield leers. Shawn Michaels climbs through the ropes out of the ring and walks heavily back to the dressing room, his dull gaze on the ground.
“Lookin’ forward to doin’ business with ya, Shawn,” Layfield shouts after him.
The crowd screams.
Layfield, like most of the wrestlers, has a long, complicated fictional backstory that includes a host of highly publicized intrigues, fights, betrayals, infidelities, abuse, and outrageous behavior—including goose-stepping around the ring and giving the Nazi salute during a wrestling bout in Germany. But tonight he has come in his newest incarnation as the “self-made millionaire,” the capitalist, the CEO who walked away with a pot of gold while workers across the country lost their jobs, saw their savings and retirement funds evaporate, and fought off foreclosure.
As often happens in a celebrity culture, the line between public and fictional personas blurs. Layfield actually claims to have made