Couple of Benoit Thoughts

Couple of Benoit Thoughts

I've been avoiding the teevee the last couple of night, on account of the media clusterfuck that seems to grow by the day over this whole deal with Chris Benoit.

There is one thing that I keep telling myself: Nobody completely knows the fact of this case, and that's what bugs me about seeing the talking heads of the world pound their fists and gnash their teeth over whatever little portion of this case falls within the same concentric circle with their personal sacred cows.

That's the conflict I deal with in this post, from a personal standpoint. Because as much as or more than I ever do, I'm about to lay an opinion based on the facts I'm given.

The fact is, I'm fairly well convinced of the investigators' series of events, as portrayed thus far. It seems to be the easiest and most logical conclusion, as insane as it feels to say that. I believe that, for whatever reason, Chris Benoit killed Nancy Benoit, and his son, and then himself.

That makes me sick.

Try as I might to avoid the media clusterfuck, I did catch a bit of Chris Jericho on Nancy Grace last night. Not because I'm any fan of Nancy Grace...I just happened to flip past and see Jericho with his head in a box talking. I have to applaud his stance on the death of his friend. This is not a question of wrestling, or of steroids. It's a question of one man hiding a deep, horrible mental illness for years, letting it go to the point where he snapped in such an unspeakable way, creating this tragedy that a lot of people are going to have to deal with for a long, long time.

I've been mulling it over since Monday. I got into an argument with somebody about that whole topic whether wrestling is to blame, or steroids is to blame. My take was this: I can't count the number of wrestlers who've gone insane, bound the hands and feet of their wives, strangled them, then killed a mentally handicapped son with a choke hold.

Happens two three times a year, usually with the full moon.

I'm not sure what the truth is, but I'm thinking that among the talking head's out there, Jericho's gotten closest to the bullseye at this point. This guy had problems. And more than likely, something would have come of it whether he was on steroids or off, whether he was a professional wrestler, a baseball player, an accountant, a bus driver, a movie star or a fourth grade teacher.

(His thoughts echo a comment by Teresa on a post a couple down from this one...I'd missed it until now, but I agree with it...._)

Something was horribly wrong with Chris Benoit. And it came to light in the most tragic way.

Which is not to say his actions are forgiveable.

Not be any stretch of the imagination.

That's what's surprised me over this, about my own reaction. I've been angry.

I guess it brushed up one of my own sacred cows.

What it comes down to is that suicides are horrible, selfish people. Suicide's a selfish, permanent solution to a temporary problem, that doesn't do anything except hurt everybody around the person committing.

There's a special place in Hell for suicides.

But on top of that, Chris Benoit killed his own kid. I still can't even begin to wrap my mind around this one, even some three or four days later. If there's a special seat in Hell for suicides, there's a deep, shitty hole for child murderers.

----

At the end of the day, I guess that my issue is that I admired Chris Benoit. A lot. He's a guy who made his way in life doing something he loved, which is admirable in and of itself. What's more, he did so against the grain of what is typical in that world. Chris Benoit was undersized, he wasn't special on the microphone. Truth be told, he was rather odd looking.

But, based on his skills doing what it was he did best, he made it to the top of the game.

I admired that.

Still do, I guess.

I reckon I'd feel the same way--confused, angry--if somebody I admired from another field had committed these unspeakable acts.

If Ryne Sandberg, or Carlos Zambrano had done it.

Stephen King, or Joe Lansdale.

Morgan Freeman, or Scarlett Johannsen.

It'd be just as confusing.

This'll be the last I comment on the whole deal, I think. Unless something magically comes to light--I think there's a small, Santa-believing part of me that still wants there to be a bad guy to blame in this whole deal. Part of me hopes that in true, pro-wrestling, bad B-Movie fashion, we'll learn that somehow, somebody murdered the whole family, and that this person I admired is blameless in the whole ordeal.

But it won't.

That doesn't happen, outside of bad soap operas, or Monday Night Wrestling....