I was looking forward to reading Say Hello to the Bad Guys, the new book by ESPN’s Marc Raimondi. Billed as the story of how “professional wrestling’s ‘New World Order’ changed America” in the 1990s, it seemed like a book that has nothing to do with schooling but might have something valuable to say about the culture in which schools sit.

For the uninitiated, pro wrestling is theater. The storylines are scripted from on high, pitting good guy “babyfaces” against various villains (or “heels”). It had long been a given that the “good guys” would triumph—and that the fans would root them on. Raimondi’s book traces the moment when a World Championship Wrestling executive decided to have a crew of “heels” conduct a “hostile takeover” of pro wrestling. The result was an extraordinary run for the New World Order bad boys, fronted by megastar and former good guy Hulk Hogan.

Raimondi’s account felt oddly familiar to someone who tracks 21st century politics generally and education in particular. You’ll recall President Trump had a long run as a pro-wrestling personality, and the U.S. secretary of education made her fortune as a wrestling executive. Schools and colleges have been swamped by performative conflict.

I had hoped the book might offer a window into how our culture got this way. After all, the New World Order wasn’t some edge case. Rather, as the book jacket puts it, “In the late 1990s, pro wrestling was the hottest thing in American pop culture, with companies making millions in action figures, video games, and simple black T-shirts emblazoned with three little letters: nWo.”

While Say Hello to the Bad Guys offers less insight than I might have wished into what made these villains so successful or why pro wrestling went mainstream during the Clinton era, Raimondi offers up a series of observations that struck me as terrifically relevant in making sense of today’s performative education discourse.

Early on, Raimondi notes, “In wrestling, promos are as important as the matches, arguably more so. A promo, which is short for promotion, is a talking segment (or interview) that builds to a match or the next beat in the story.” He observes: “If you’re a good promo artist and you can get people to believe in your persona, it almost doesn’t matter” if you’re lousy “in the ring.”

In the age of social media, podcasts, and ubiquitous smartphones, the platform for promos is boundless. Debates over DEI, gender, higher ed, or education choice have been driven by good promo artists—left and right—with robust personas. Statehouse debates over vouchers and education savings accounts are shaped (pro- and con-) by the messaging of school choice “celebrities” whose primary qualification is an energetic social media presence and a taste for vitriol. The DEI surge and attendant backlash were fueled by self-promoters (think Ibram X. Kendi or Robby Starbuck) who mastered a popular shtick. It almost doesn’t matter whether they know what they’re talking about (i.e. if they’re lousy “in the ring”). Relevance demands that advocates and policymakers devote significant time and energy to cutting their own promos. The problem is there is often an inverse relationship between promos and wisdom: Embracing the persona that makes for a good promo tends to work at cross-purposes with deliberation, nuance, or complex realities.

In pro wrestling, cheating plays a pivotal role. As Raimondi explains, “It gives the good guys an excuse when they lose—the bad guy had to do something underhanded to gain an advantage.” The shorthand for this dynamic is “keeping someone strong”—as in, “The bad guy only won by cheating, which means the good guy is still the ‘real’ champion.”

Hello! Welcome to the “my side always loses” cultural politics of 2025 . . . but only because the other side is breaking the rules and violating norms. Every setback is just another excuse to insist that the fix was in.

Thus, on the left, critics of school choice have concluded that the real issue is the cabal of secret billionaires manipulating the democratic process. On the right, when it comes to the problems of higher education, the villains are the shadowy deep-state apparatchiks or America-hating zealots. The notion that people might disagree in good faith or that there’s room for principled compromise is only possible if we concede the legitimacy of the opposition, and to do so is increasingly regarded as weak and squishy. On right and left, what gets celebrated are partisans who FIGHT!

Finally, Raimondi explains, “There’s a term in wrestling called getting the ‘rub.’ It basically means having someone taking their star power and having it ‘rub’ off on someone else.” It’s funny: When I think back to the pre-2000 education politics, there weren’t many celebrities. There were “reform” governors like Jim Hunt, Lamar Alexander, and Bill Clinton, but they were politicians who gave speeches, kissed babies, and wore suits—they sure weren’t pop culture icons equipped to give someone the “rub” (though once Clinton became president, he acquired some of that magic). The other key players were standard-issue interest-group leaders who, with the possible exception of the AFT’s kinetic founder Al Shanker, had not an ounce of rub among them.

Well, starting with Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, Joel Klein, et al., the Bush-Obama years mainstreamed the notion of the education celebrity. Today, however, those superintendents and entrepreneurial founders are far less visible. The new stars are the high-profile ideologues and advocates known mostly for their social media star power and a knack for provocation, rather than for their responsibilities or accomplishments. During Texas’s big ESA fight this year, you’d have to look long and hard to find any politicos posting selfies with organizers or former governors. Legislators were more likely to be seen embracing like-minded shit-posters who’d shown up to bang the drum. Our social media personalities tend to sidle up to elected officials and policymakers who wade into tribal fights, which means they are the ones who get the “rub”—and the media spotlight.

While I didn’t find everything I’d hoped for in Say Hello to the Bad Guys, I did come away reflecting on some uncanny parallels in education today. Our performative clashes may not have the pay-per-view cache of Hulk Hogan vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper, but the similarities are nonetheless disconcerting. And more than a little telling.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”