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Old 07-09-2025, 04:17 PM   #69600
Evil Vito
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The facial expressions of the crowd during that SmackDown say a lot. It's a taped show so of course boos are piped in. But you really don't see anyone booing, either out of genuine anger/hatred or "booing because it's wrestling and it's fun to play along and boo the baddies" spirit.

You do see a lot of people looking totally stone faced and uncomfortable. You don't see too many crowds get to that degree.

A shame all told. Hassan was an awesome promo. And the character had a lot of nuance. The whole point of him is he's an Arab-American angry at the discrimination he's facing with people assuming that he must be a terrorist because he's Arab. They know the jingoistic crowds are gonna boo him and of course Hassan can shit on them for it. But there's a layer there where the crowd's just willfully ignoring their biases.

Instead they stripped any nuance away when he got to SmackDown and decided, yeah, let's make him an actual terrorist now.
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