Jesse “The Body” Ventura displays his political acumen.

When Jesse “The Body” Ventura won the Minnesota governorship in 1998, it must have given other high profile bodybuilders a feeling of inadequacy that they likely hadn’t felt since they were skinny runts getting sand kicked in their faces. Less than a month after Ventura’s upset victory, Hulk Hogan announced a bid for the presidency of the United States that barely made it through a couple of talk show appearances. Hogan’s reason for running was that he was “10 times more popular” than Ventura. In 2003, when Ventura decided not to run for reelection, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up the gubernatorial torch and became “The Governator” of California in the recall election that same year. In order to decisively one-up Ventura (his Predator co-star), Arnold won re-election in 2006 and sunk the California economy in the process. Jesse “The Body” envy can drive an oiled up muscleman to extreme levels of electoral lunacy.

Following last week’s big announcement that Arnold won’t be running for office again, and Hulk Hogan’s signing with TNA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ventura is resurfacing. Those guys tend to work like that. Tonight, Ventura is returning to his old stomping grounds to host a three-hour Thanksgiving episode of the WWE’s Monday Night RAW. Like all RAW guest hosts (or all guests on any TV talk show), Jesse’s there to shamelessly plug his latest project, a Tru TV show called Conspiracy Theory that looks like a less funny version of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!. But as he trades verbal barbs with the current WWE roster, Ventura might be rubbing elbow-drops with the future political leadership of America. After reading the tealeaves, here is my expert analysis of the political prospects of some of Vince McMahon’s top superstars…

WWE Champ John Cena (left) and regular guest on “The View,” MVP (right).

JOHN CENA: The current WWE champ’s freakish ability to lift two wrestlers with a combined weight of over 600 pounds onto his shoulders before slamming them to the mat shows that he could probably even elevate the ailing economy of his native Massachusetts. As a candidate he’d be a dream. He supports our troops, has won an award from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Hollywood salute that he learned for his action movie turn as The Marine (2006) gives him a touch of the Reaganesque. However, in order to run for elected office he’d have to lose those baggy denim shorts of his. Even Arnie traded in his Terminator leather jacket and shades for a suit when he entered the political arena. Cena could become a political force in ten years when his rabid pre-adolescent fans finally become old enough to vote.

MVP: This former United States champ has been seen currying the favor of Sherri Shepherd on ABC’s The View a lot lately and that could be a smooth political move. Boosting one’s cachet with that daytime TV audience proved crucial to the success of the Schwarzenegger and Obama campaigns and Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah has definitely generated a lot of buzz. Although MVP has the charisma and the oratory skills for public life, he also has a conviction for burglary that could keep him from even voting in his home state of Florida let alone getting on the ballot there. While acts of burglary are often committed by our political class, most successful pols save their lawbreaking for when they are safely in office. Whereas MVP served 8 ½ years in an actual prison for crimes he committed when he was 16 years old, felonious elected officials are usually remanded to appear on Sunday morning talk shows, The Apprentice or Dancing with the Stars.

Tag-team titlist Chris Jericho lobbies for the endorsement of one-time democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton.

CHRIS JERICHO: Yes, this co-holder of the unified tag-team belts is Canadian but he was born in New York, so unlike Arnold, he can still run for president. His other potential negative is that he’s a bad guy who regularly refers to wrestling fans as “gelatinous tapeworms.” But remember, Jesse always played the part of the heel too and that didn’t stop him from moving into the governor’s mansion. What makes Jericho interesting in today’s polarized political landscape is that he’s a born again Christian who not only gets irony, but revels in it. Some of this may be due to his growing up in a country that already has a universal healthcare system so his faith isn’t automatically combined with a rabid belief in death panels and birther conspiracies. Jericho’s ability to maintain his Christian beliefs while still being way into to 80s metal makes him the ultimate crossover candidate.

SANTINO MARELLA: Marella provides an ethnic comedy relief that we haven’t seen since the days of Chico Marx but it’s doubtful that his clueless Guido shtick will endear him to Italian-Americans. His donning of a tight skirt and wig to win the “Miss WrestleMania” crown is equally unlikely to win the GLBT or women’s vote for him. If only Marella was really Italian instead of Canadian, he might have a legit shot at the Italy’s Parliament. If the Italians would vote in Cicciolina the porn queen or Moussolini’s granddaughter or, hell, Silvio Burlusconi, what’s to stop them catapulting Marrella into high office? Think about it Santino.

JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER: This Southern wrestling legend and longtime RAW color commentator is best known for giving a vicious piledriver to Andy Kaufman, but he’s also a two-time candidate for mayor of Memphis, Tenn. The first time Lawler ran was in 1999 (the same year that Ventura was sworn in as governor) and the second was in a special election earlier this month. Both times Lawler came up short. Although he garnered only four per cent of the vote this last time around, I wouldn’t be surprised if this river boat gambler tries to make the third time a charm. This still begs the question for Jerry: why would you want to be mayor when you’re already the king?

TRIPLE H aka HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY: By marrying WWE heiress Stephanie McMahon, Triple H has put himself in the company of recent presidential contenders John McCain and John Kerry. Having what Rush Limbaugh would deem a “sugar daddy wife” (but only if you’re a democrat) on your arm, whether she’s the inheritor of a beer, ketchup or grappling fortune, can almost get you to the top but you still might come up short come election day. I’m sure that Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley’s winning ways with audiences will be just as much of a boon to any Triple H candidacy as Cindy McCain and Teresa Heinz-Kerry were to their husbands’ presidential aspirations. Under normal circumstances, the presidential also-ran who is married to an heiress could look forward to a long career in the senate to salve the wounds of rejection by the electorate, however certain familial circumstances may deny Triple H this booby prize…

LINDA McMAHON: She’s Triple H’s mother-in-law, Vince McMahon’s wife, former WWE CEO and candidate for Chris Dodd’s Connecticut senate seat. Like other successful businesswomen entering Republican primaries such as former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina or former eBay Pres. Meg Whitman, McMahon may be “too liberal” for the rabid tea-bagger wing of today’s GOP. 1970s wrestling king and Goldwater conservative, “Superstar” Billy Graham (a big influence on both Hogan and Ventura), has already chastised McMahon over the WWE’s penchant for “bra and panties matches” and encouraging steroid use. Graham is supporting conservative congressman Rob Simmons in the primary and you can expect Glenn Beck to do the same. On her side, Linda McMahon sports a slight lead over Dodd in recent polls as well as a $50 million war chest. Just don’t expect followers of Beck’s 9/12 Project to consider such things when drumming blue-state republicans out of the party over ideological impurities.

* * *

So tonight, Jesse “The Body” returns to the WWE to once again bask in the limelight generated by the company that put him on the national stage. Just don’t expect him to stick around too long. Jesse’s got his new cable show to think about. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair may be beating each other bloody in a tour of Australia right now, but Ventura won’t follow his contemporaries back into the squared circle. Jesse’s always known that the hard thing in wrestling isn’t making your big comeback; it’s staying away. The same can certainly be said for politics.

The special 3-hour Thanksgiving episode of RAW with guest host Jesse “The Body” Ventura airs tonight at 8pm on the USA Network.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I’ll be back on December 3 with my review of Steven Seagal’s loony foray into reality television, Lawman. Special thanks to Greg Franklin for coming up with the rad title of this article.

Illustration by Brandi Valenza

Roland Emmerich has built a career by putting the event in the event movie. His most famous film, Independence Day (1996), set the pattern by giving us Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith thwarting an alien invasion with a Mac laptop (presumably running OS 7) on the Fourth of July. With the exception of an anorexic Godzilla in 1998 and the Mel Gibson colonial gorefest The Patriot in 2000, it’s been all specific dates and times for this guy. Emmerich’s last movie was titled 10,000 B.C. (2008) and the one before that was called The Day After Tomorrow (2004). His latest showcase of computer-generated cataclysms, opening this Friday, is titled 2012 after every pothead’s favorite Mayan prophesy of the end of the world. If only Emmerich had been tapped to helm the recent Friday the 13th remake, then we could have had Jason destroying virtual models of every non-Muslim landmark with tidal waves and lava flows.

However, Emmerich may have gotten a tad too specific with 2012. If by some miracle the world is still here in 2013, blu-ray discs of the movie will seem more dated than Meteor (1979) or even Beyond the Time Barrier (1960). It’s a little like releasing a big-budget, apocalyptic disaster movie called Y2K in the late 1990s and then expecting viewers to sit through USA Network reruns of it in 2002.

One way to give this film an extra century of shelf-life would have been for Emmerich to scrap the whole Mayan-tsunami mishmash altogether and instead make a film adaptation of the rock band Rush’s dystopian, sci-fi album 2112. According to Mercury Records’ ad copy, the first side of the Canadian power trio’s 1976 opus takes us to a time of “Templevision, Megadon, twin moons, atmospheric domes.” While “Rush’s chilling vision” of a 22nd Century where “city and sky merge into a single plane” would give a director like Emmerich plenty to digitally project onto an IMAX screen, 2112 is also more topical than the seemingly more pressing 2012.

Left to Right: Ayn Rand, the goddess of unbridled capitalism and Neil Peart of Rush, her most rockin’ disciple.

In the album’s original gatefold, band lyricist and percussion virtuoso Neil Peart acknowledges “the genius” of libertarian icon Ayn Rand as the inspiration for the future-shock rock opera. Rand has been getting a lot of press lately despite being dead since 1982. Last year’s economic collapse and election of Barrack Obama have created an upsurge of interest among the American right wing in the enigmatic figure that Slate recently described as the “amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers.” Two biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—have just hit the bookstores and South Carolina Governor Mark “Appalachian Trails” Sanford reviewed both of them for Newsweek. Where powerful acolytes of Rand such as Alan Greenspan engineered a global financial meltdown worthy of an Emmerich film (if only the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy could be expressed with CGI), Peart and Rush did the even more impossible by taking Rand’s “One Objective Truth” and making it rock.

Peart joined Rush for their sophomore album Fly by Night (1975), replacing original drummer John Rutsey who left the band for a career in bodybuilding. Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson had already shown their instrumental prowess on the hard-driving jam Working Man from Rush’s self-titled debut album (1974). By rounding out the trio, Peart made Rush the greatest instructional rock band of all time, a favorite of young rockers struggling to learn licks through music store tablature books for decades to come. Lyrically, Peart steered the band away from party songs about ice-cold beers and casual sex and to a synthesis of Rand and Tolkien that probably would have confounded either author.

2112, the band’s fourth album and Peart’s third, wasn’t the first time that the drummer used Rand as source material. The song Anthem (from Fly by Night) takes its title from Rand’s 1938 novella and its lyrics extol selfishness, Rand’s highest virtue. “Well, I know they’ve always told you selfishness was wrong,” vocalist Geddy Lee sings in the song’s concluding verse, “Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song.” In a shockingly contentious interview with J. Kordosh in the June 1981 issue of Creem, Peart explains, “I think everything I do has Howard Roark in it,” referring to the pissed-off architect of Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943) who dynamites his own building rather than compromise its design.

In the novel, Roark sums up his and Rand’s philosophy while representing himself during his trial: “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.” During the Creem interview, Peart paraphrases Roark’s testimony as a defense of his (Peart’s) devotion to Rand. “It is a life that no amount of money can ever compensate for,” Peart explains. “That’s why I could never, ever feel guilty about the dollar I earn.”

With Peart’s uncanny drumming abilities, it’s not hard to see how Rand’s tyranny of the talented, where the masses are “second-handers” and “inanimate objects,” would appeal to him. As the eighties progressed, Peart enclosed himself within 360 degrees of percussion containing almost every chime, cymbal and roto-tom imaginable, almost as if he needed the extra gear to slow down his thought process in the same way that a speedy computer runs extra scripts to slow down a program so that a normal person can comprehend it. In order to compete, Geddy Lee played both bass and keyboards, often at the same time through a system of pedals. Alex Lifeson, whom Creem described as “the only homo sapien in the group,” seemed to pale next to his band mates, despite his comparable abilities on his instrument.

In the 2112 suite that takes up the first half of the album, Peart delves more deeply into the conflict between the collective and the individual and borrows more from Rand’s Anthem than just its title and ethos. In Rand’s sci-fi parable, global society is run by a World Council that burns people at the stake for the merest trace of individualism or innovation. In 2112, the Earth is under the heel of the “Solar Federation,” which is run by priests who cram equality down everyone’s throats with massive computer banks. Red star banners are also unfurled showing that Peart both overestimated the longevity of the Soviet Union and was oblivious to Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit doubles every two years. The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx wouldn’t have needed “great computers” filling their “hallowed halls” but could stamp out free will through a device no larger than an iPod.

The conflict in 2112 comes when “a man” discovers a guitar and learns how to play it. He shows the guitar to the priests but they smash it like a disapproving Pete Townsend. Instead of “going Galt” like any good libertarian hero, the man kills himself to the strains of a really ripping Alex Lifeson guitar solo. Then, all hell breaks loose if the ballsy crescendos of The Grand Finale are any indicator, but a voice over at the track’s end tells us that the Solar Federation has “assumed control.” The individual fails and collectivism triumphs making one wonder what was going on in 1976 for Peart to pen such a bleak outcome. Maybe he was upset by the successes of Soviet proxies in conflicts on the African continent or perhaps it was the Saskatchewan government’s takeover of the province’s potash industry.

2112 was Rush’s first album to go gold and the album cover’s image of a naked guy pressing up against a red pentagram came to represent the band in the same way that inflated lips and a wagging tongue symbolize The Stones. By making the playing of a guitar the central heresy to the Solar Federation of 2112, Peart adds a human element not found in Rand’s writing and connects with Rush’s audience of young musicians in doing so. The priests reject the man’s guitar playing as “just a waste of time” in the same way that many parents discourage their teenaged sons and daughters from wanting to be rock stars. Where Rand’s heroes are belligerent industrial tycoons, Peart’s is an everyman, the listener of the album, the kid cramming himself into an arena to see his/her favorite longhaired rock band. Even when embracing Rand, Peart and company cannot escape hard rock’s populist underpinnings.

A late 1970s Capetronic composite stereo system similar to the one that I had as a teenager. Mine had a cassette deck and I must have played the shit out of “Exit Stage Left” and “Caress of Steel” on that thing. I also wore out my first copy of “2112″ on its turntable.

My own devotion to Rush occurred when I was 16 and took up the bass guitar. Peart’s liner note urgings even had me reading Rand, but I soon found that cranking up 2112 over and over again on my cheap Capetronics stereo (purchased at Gemco) was a lot more rockin’ than plodding through Atlas Shrugged. By the time I puzzled out the meaning of The Trees from the album Hemispheres (1978), a cautionary tale of the evils of unionizing and trying to level the playing field, I was done with Peart’s politics if not his band’s music. As I watch today’s Randian supermen of the market like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claim to be doing “God’s work” while raking in millions in bonuses and inflating the bubbles of the future, it’s hard not to think that maybe the trees should all be “kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw” (or at least the return of the Glass-Steagall act), even if Peart would disagree.

Despite my ideological disagreements with Peart, I still get the chills when I hear that wicked note bend that kicks off Lifeson’s solo in The Trees or when Lee strums some bass chords during the end of Red Barchetta. I’d also be among the first in line for 2112: The Movie along with scores of math rockers, Guitar Hero enthusiasts, Canadians, and guys like Ron Paul’s son Rand (I doubt he was named after the atlas company). 2012, however, has to resort to cheap tricks to lure us into theatres like miscasting John Cusack and then drenching him with pails of water as he stands in front of a blue screen for hours on end. My suggestion is to mute the soundtrack of 2012, crank 2112 through your multiplex’s Dolby THX sound system and rock out to scene upon scene of creative destruction. It’s either that or wait for 2112: The Musical.

With acknowledgment to the genius of Darren Norris for coming up with the concept of this post.