Has Hulk Hogan "Made It"?



Granted, wrestling is a male soap opera, a modern day working class morality tale with a dash of our weird, collective existential Chimpanzee DNA drama thrown in for good measure (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). We get that; truly we do. And Hulk Hogan is it's most commercially successful "performer." We get that too. But does that actually mean that he has, like "Made It"? Is Hulk Hogan a star in the firmament of American celebrity? He was wooden at best and his popularity was buoyed by elementary school students who "said their prayers and ate their vitamins." Kids, bless their little hearts, don't have taste; kids like Spaghettio-'s. By that Daffy Duck logic, Tickle Me Elmo is an A-Lister.

Gore Vidal once mercilessly pilloried Commentary founding editor and arch nepotist Norman Podhoretz for saying as much in the title of his book "Making It," which suggested that because he was invited to boozy parties in the Kennedy White House he was, indeed, a made man. An A-Lister.

Hogan doesn't say as much, but Cindy Adams, who has taken it upon herself to tell us who is and isn't a bona fide star, does:

"HULK Hogan, lately seen in the ring wrestling with the wife he's divorcing, is planning a kick-all. His St. Martin's book will be titled 'My Life Outside the Ring.' Besides stuff about his childhood and 30-year career, The Hulk, born Terry Bollea, goes to the mat with his personal heartbreak.

Born into nothing, preordained to a life of Port Tampa, Fla.'s dock and construction work, we start with his sheer will, grit, determination and wacko moustache and ride all the way up to his VH-1 reality series "Hogan Knows Best.'"

All the way up, Cindy? This reminds us of Joan Rivers' line about Jessica Hahn, saying, positively citrically, "you slept your way to the middle."