What the USA could learn from ECW.

There's a chant that is well known in professional wrestling today. It started in many of the underground matches and came into the common lexicon with Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) in the mid 1990's. The chant is simple but direct in its message, "You fucked up". The chant typically rose through a crowed anytime a wrestler botched a move, or when the choreographed dance of the match was unintentionally broken. Lose your footing while attempting to climb to the top rope? You fucked up. Throw a punch that didn't actually land, but your opponent still "sold" it? You fucked up. Try to suplex your opponent but you slip and he flips over anyway? You fucked up.

It's a bit of a crude delivery system but the message is clear nonetheless, "You made a mistake, we saw it, we recognize it and don't even try to play it off" and you know what? It works! Never after matches to wrestlers say that a mistake is intentional. They don't try to play it off or correct it post match. They know what happens, the fans know what happened and most importantly they know that the fans know. It's a very no frills way to instant feed back (the wrestlers web2.0 if you will).

This is a tactic that could very well benefit Cambridge Police and President Obama. First, with the police and their handeling of Henry Louis Gates Jr. You arrest someone in their own house after you get called about them breaking into their own house? You fucked up. Hands down, that's it. No excuses. No explanations. You fucked up. Not to mention Gates was released and all charges were dropped 24 hours later. Pretend this is any other office on earth. You turn in a report to your boss and 24 hours later your boss explains, "This report is unusable and I'm throwing it away". Would you say you did you're job? No, you fucked up. And for police to play it off like this isn't a mistake in any way is foolish and stubborn and shows them to be more apt to demonstrate a gang like mentality than serve their public.

Now, to President Obama. You get up in a national press conference and use an adverb like, "stupidly" to describe a police action? You fucked up. It doesn't matter if I agree. It doesn't even matter if you're found to be correct. You are elected to be a representative of the people, all people, and when you get up there and single out a specific population (one with a very powerful union and lobby mind you) and describe anything they do as stupid, you better be prepared to feel some national outrage. Even if you feel they acted "stupidly" you're the president elected to lead them and no one wants to be called out by the commander and chief on national TV.

So in the grand scheme of things you have simple fuck up that escalated because both parties refused to acknowledge that the crowd has caught on and is fully aware of what's going on. Both believe they can somehow convince the audience that they're right and everything is going to plan if they just stay the course and refuse to acknowledge what everyone already knows, "you fucked up".