https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.K8UnxhnwRR4V9U5Dq6ypxAHaDt?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain&o=7&rm=3
The scent in the air at Minneapolis's Roosevelt High School auditorium is a peculiar cocktail: cheap floor wax, teenage anxiety, and the faint, lingering ghost of cigar smoke. On the stage, under the harsh fluorescents, sits a figure who seems assembled from disparate American mythologies. He is part pirate, part prophet, part cartoon. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, 73, former Navy SEAL, former professional wrestler, former Reform Party Governor of Minnesota, is holding court. But he is not here to talk politics. He is not here to rally the students about the recent ICE confrontation that brought national cameras to their doorstep. He is here, as he has been twice a year for a decade without fanfare, to teach Advanced Placement U.S. History.
Specifically, he is here to teach Unit 7: The American Empire. And his primary source material is a single, yellowing VHS tape.
"This," Ventura booms, his voice still a gravelly baritone that requires no microphone, "is not in your textbooks. This is diplomacy by body slam. Pay attention."
The tape whirs to life on the screen behind him. The footage is from a 1985 episode of WWF Superstars, taped in St. Paul. A young, bleach-blond Ventura, in feather boas and mirrored sunglasses, is in the ring against "Iron" Mike Sharpe. But the match is irrelevant. The lesson is in the pre-taped vignette that aired earlier in the show. In it, Ventura, in full heel persona, delivers a furious, xenophobic promo, ranting about "foreign job-stealers" and "border-jumpers" ruining America. The live St. Paul audience, heavily Scandinavian and working-class, roared its approval. The segment was a ratings hit.
Ventura pauses the tape. The auditorium is silent.
"Now," he says, removing his modern-day, more subdued sunglasses. "The following week, we were in Los Angeles. The arena was 70% Latino. My promoter, Vince McMahon, hands me a new script. Another anti-immigrant rant. I looked at it, I looked at him, and I said, 'Vince, if I go out there and say this, this building is gonna burn down, and they're gonna hang me from the goalpost.'"
What happened next is the heart of Ventura's unorthodox curriculum. He refused the script. He went to the arena's head of security, a former LAPD sergeant, and asked for a map of the neighborhood. He spent the afternoon walking through Boyle Heights, talking to patrons in taquerias and shopkeepers. That night, he cut a completely different promo. Still a villain, but a villain they could understand. He mocked the "soft, beach-bum" Californians. He bragged about the toughness of the Minnesota winter. He insulted their favorite local wrestler not as a foreigner, but as a "laid-back coward" who wouldn't last a minute in a real man's climate. The crowd still booed, but they booed with a grudging smile. There was no riot. The show went on.
"That," Ventura tells the rapt students, "was my first lesson in foreign policy. You have to know your audience. Not the audience you want, but the audience you have. Rhetoric that works in St. Paul gets you killed in L.A. Context is everything. Now, apply that to McKinley's 'benevolent assimilation' in the Philippines. Apply that to Reagan calling the USSR an 'evil empire.' Who was the audience? What was the intended effect? What were the unintended consequences?"
This is Ventura's secret, decade-long project: The Kayfabe Diplomatic Initiative (KDI). Kayfabe is the wrestling term for the illusory, scripted reality of the performance. Ventura's thesis, developed during his chaotic governorship and refined in these classrooms, is that all public political discourse operates on a level of kayfabe. The trick is not to dismiss it, but to analyze its mechanics—its faces (heroes), heels (villains), storylines, and intended crowd reaction.
"Political science tries to sanitize this stuff," he says later, in the teacher's lounge, sipping black coffee. "I come at it from the gut. I tell the kids, 'When I called Hulk Hogan a 'yellow-haired steroid freak,' I wasn't stating a medical opinion. I was trying to make you hate me, so you'd pay to see him kick my ass. Now, look at this attack ad from the 1988 presidential campaign. See the same mechanics? The sneer, the selective facts, the crafted insult designed to provoke a emotional buy-in?' They get it instantly. It demystifies the whole game."
The KDI has produced a startling outcome. Roosevelt High's AP U.S. History pass rate has been the highest in the state for five years running. More intriguingly, its Model UN team, coached by Ventura on the side, has won the national championship three years in a row, using what they call "kayfabe negotiation tactics"—identifying an opponent's performative motivations rather than just their stated positions.
The recent ICE protests brought Ventura back into the news cycle, but for the students, he was never gone. When news trucks lined their street, it was Ventura who convened an impromptu seminar in the gym. "He didn't tell us what to think," says senior Anya Sharma, captain of the Model UN team. "He said, 'Okay, you've got multiple heels in this storyline—the feds, the activists playing to the cameras, the politicians. Who's the face? Maybe it's the quiet neighbor who brought water. Identify the kayfabe. Then look for the real move.'"
Ventura has no official title at the school. He is a "Guest Pedagogy Specialist," paid in cafeteria pizza and diesel fuel for his boat. The school board, initially skeptical, now fiercely protects his program from political interference, recognizing its unique power.
As the bell rings, ending the lesson on American Empire, a student asks the question hinted at in headlines: "Governor, are you running again?"
Ventura grins his famous, gap-toothed grin, a glint of the old "Body" in his eyes.
"Kid," he says, packing the sacred VHS tape into a worn satchel. "I'm not in the ring anymore. I'm training the referees. And let me tell you, once you know how a match is really worked, you can never just be a fan again. You all," he says, sweeping his gaze across the room, "are my political revolution. Now get outta here. And remember: the best way to counter a bad guy's promo is to change the channel."
He walks out, leaving behind a room buzzing not with partisan fury, but with analytical energy. In a world of polarized performance, Jesse Ventura has found his most subversive role yet: not as the wrestler or the governor, but as the high school teacher showing a generation how to see the strings, so they might one day have the courage to cut them.
Comments
Post a Comment