Tyson the Rapist – The Facts
I found a link on Facebook to Neil Patrick Harris doing a song-and-dance number to open the Tony Awards in New York. It was vaunted as the ‘best awards ceremony opener ever’. Conspicuously, it also featured a brief cameo from Iron Mike himself.
It’s testament to some kind of major cultural confusion that we can have one of the greatest American films of all time – Raging Bull – in which Jake La Motta is portrayed as a desperately dysfunctional animal who ends the film as a stand-up joke; a fat, puffy, broken-down shadow of his former self – and then see Tyson jumping around in a tux at the Tony awards and not connect the two.
If there’s one thing I (and this blog) HATES it’s a whining lefty wanker, like that chorus of twats that make up the audience of Q&A every Monday night. That said, it concerns me that many people don’t seem to remember that Tyson is not the big, funny guy in The Hangover. He’s not a cute joke.
The parallel between Tyson and La Motta is inaccurate in one respect; Tyson is probably the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, and one of the greatest fighters in the annals of history. The ultimate marriage of raw power and sovereign technique. The word ‘awesome’ is not an exaggeration; the fight highlights in James Toback’s biopic, Tyson, left me speechless.
He’s also a convicted rapist, however. This is something that seems to have been forgotten the last few years. Tyson says toward the end of Toback’s film that if people wanted to see a bad guy, he’d show them the ultimate bad guy. I appreciate his motive, and Toback lays it bare, but surely it follows that if you choose to become the bad guy, you’ll end up in the can. In the same way he ceased to be a boxer when he bit off Holyfield’s ear, he became something other than a citizen and an athlete when he was convicted of rape.
To find the name of the girl Tyson was convicted of raping, I googled and came up with ‘Yahoo Answers’.
Three posts, all men (interestingly enough) had written that Desiree Washington was a liar; ‘Mike swears blind and up and down he didn’t do it’, etc etc. While Toback very intelligently and skillfully allows Tyson to maintain his innocence, he stays well out of it and lets us contemplate the sophistication of the portrait.
To be honest, watching Mike caper about at the Tonys made me feel very uncomfortable; almost a little sick. There seemed to be this ghastly thing staring out at me, as blatant as that tattoo on his face, while the assembly of twats pranced and flitted around him.
I am sick to death of hearing the word ‘testosterone’ used pejoratively. Of being flailed with all this bullshit about ‘patriarchy this’ and ‘patriarchy that’. But I read about a Liberal Party function, a gathering of power-brokers who aspire to run the nation, which features a menu which ridicules our prime minister in terms of her sexuality. Love Julia Gillard or hate her, you damn well know it would never have been spelled out in those terms if the prime minister was a man.
Some other crazy bitch wrote into The Age the other day saying that the real reason Jill Maegher was raped and murdered was not because the system failed her, but because we live in a culture of rape.
‘What a fucking ridiculous thing to say’, I thought, and later that night, I’m watching Tyson at the Tonys.
Interestingly, one of the three ‘Yahoo! Answers’ concluded with the following:
“Just another dumb broad trying to cash out on an Athlete.”
Consider the number of women raped by drunk footballers when you read that.
I don’t know if Tyson did rape Desiree Washington. But I do know that he was convicted. The guys on ‘Yahoo! Answers’ might not believe it, but the trial jury did.
And while ‘culture of rape’ sounds extreme, the fact that Tyson has become a sweet-and-cuddly figure of fun is proof that something is very fucking rotten in Denmark.
Theme Park at its Darkest 
February 24, 2015 at 1:12 pm
You my friend have no idea. Why don’t you do some research on the case. So many witnesses and evidence not also allowed to be presented. Even the jury has come out years later admitting it was an unfair trial. Why wasn’t her ex boyfriend allowed to testify? She accused him of rape years earlier which was proven a lie! That bitch is a dirty little lying hoar
March 5, 2015 at 10:28 am
To begin with, I’m not your friend.
Second, you’ll acknowledge the post is entitled, ‘Tyson the Rapist – The Facts.’ Fact – he is a magnificent fighter. Fact – he was convicted of rape. From the standpoint of the public, a man who has bitten off another man’s ear and disqualified himself from competition in the process, not to mention his recent performance on television, suggests that his conviction is probably indicative of some very large bats in the belfry.
In the greater context, he has come to symbolize a number of things, not least of all a rallying point for nut-jobs. I have made no denigrating comments about him as a man. He is most significant to me as a figure who demands maturity from the society that is fascinated with him as a brilliant athlete but very disturbed person.
In a similar way, the woman he raped has become a symbol herself. She is not a person to us; she’s also a symbol. And your willingness to refer to her as a ‘hoar’ (whore is the correct spelling) is evidence of what a repugnant little troll you are.