Monday, March 28, 2011

What To Do With Michael Cole...

Hot on the heels of Michael Cole's major Twitter faux pas, more and more details are emerging about Cole's behavior in recent months, and quite frankly, it isn't pretty.

On March 17, WWE announced that they were pairing up with GLAAD, the gay rights organization, in light of recent concerns GLAAD had been airing regarding some of the comments John Cena has made in recent memory. Considering they are heavily into building their program for children, WWE did the right thing here.

It only took this past weekend -- less than ten days -- for somebody to shoot the entire union in the foot, and surprisingly, it had to be WWE heel commentator Michael Cole. I wouldn't have expected this out of him. Let's take the word out of the equation here; scratch that out. The point is, Michael Cole is a WWE employee and has been for over a decade now. He should know better. Forget the word he used on Josh Mathews; when you are on social media, you are still representing the company you work for.

It didn't take fans long to pan his apology, calling it "weak". But it was good enough for GLAAD, who announced that Michael Cole would be a part of their training seminar. ProWrestling.Net thinks that maybe he was sending a direct message and it backfired, considering Cole is new to Twitter. So what? At the end of the day, he is still a company representative, and sending stuff like that to your colleagues doesn't paint you in a great light.

I'm indifferent to Michael Cole as a broadcaster, though I hate him as this new heel persona he has going. PWTorch and other sites are claiming that he has become what you see on TV behind the scenes. Hopefully with this Twitter-Gate scandal on the WWE's hands, maybe Vince will cool off on Cole for a little while.

Again, forget about the entire political correctness thing; it's a hateful word, and it's a hurtful word to a lot of people, so there is no blame to anyone who gets offended. However, this I think is more about representing your company. Michael Cole shot his company in the foot on a subject that has seen a lot of press and campaigns in recent years. It doesn't just make Michael Cole look bad; it makes everyone associated with him look bad, and that's something that Vince can't have.

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