Fly on the Wall
by Chris Davis
Beyond the Mat
#PrayforLawler trended on Twitter last week after Memphis wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Jerry "The King" Lawler suffered a heart attack while shooting Monday Night Raw. Tributes to the 62-year-old grappler cropped up across the internet. Grantland.com described Lawler's recent cage match with CM Punk as "exhilarating ... touching ... difficult to watch."
But this is Lawler, the man who slapped comedian Andy Kaufman live on Late Night with David Letterman, ushering in a whole new era of wrestling consciousness. Even when he's on the receiving end of a defibrillator, somebody will try to get some heat off the situation. Wrestler Jerome "New Jack" Young was merciless in his Twitter comments: "If Lawler dies, let me know where his grave is so I can go piss on it," he wrote. Young explained that racist-sounding comments weren't actually racist because two children he's fathered have a white mother. He deflected further criticism with a terrible threat: "The next 1 of you m--------rs call me racist, I will send you a free DVD."
Gifted
Illusionist David Copperfield recently acquired a newly discovered audio interview with the Rev. Martin Luther King and is donating it to the National Civil Rights Museum. For his next trick, he'll make racism disappear and cut inequality in half.
The Helpless
The Onion, America's top source for fake news, used Memphis as the setting for a satirical column about Mitt Romney. Choice cut: "Romney is just now telling people he grew up desperately poor in Memphis. ... He was particularly shaped by his father Rufus Romney, a strapping young man with 'tattered shoes like Swiss cheese' who left early each day to work in the wheat fields outside Memphis. ... His mother, Maybelle, would go off every morning in her crisp white uniform to work for the wealthy families over in Chicksaw [sic] Gardens."
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