10 Times WWE Used Major News Events In Questionable Taste

The Tea Party Movement was a conservative political trend that emerged in 2009 in the wake of Barack Obama's election to the presidency. It was a strongly right-wing protest movement that took its name from the Boston Tea Party, denounced liberalism and lobbied for laxer gun laws and lower taxes. It was a hugely controversial weather front in an already fraught political climate, and the US media was criss-crossed with volleys of rhetoric for and against what was either a grass roots movement of concerned citizens, or a cynically promoted forum for nationalists and xenophobes.

Such an incendiary concept was, of course, perfect for a wrestling storyline.

Jack Swagger came to the ring in February 2013 with a new manager, the lavishly 'tached Zeb Colter, as a heel with strong Tea Party-esque tendencies, including railing against Mexican immigration. The Tea Party thought it was an attempt to make fun of them. If that was the reason, it had only limited success as a sizeable portion of the audience loved Swagger and Colter's supposedly heel right-wing rhetoric. The WWE tried to dilute the toxicity by adding the extremely non-American Cesaro to the 'Real Americans' stable, but not before the appropriateness of the Swagger and Colter characters had already been called into question.