War Machine – Have You Heard This One? A Moron, a Psycho and a Clown Walk into a Bar….

By Calico Rudasill at Sssh.com Porn For Women.

 I’ve fessed up before about a few of my guilty pleasures, but I’ve never revealed something quite this embarrassing before: I frequently watch old Law and Order episodes, sometimes several in a row. Back when TNT did an annual Labor Day L&O marathon, one year I watched eight episodes in a single sitting.

One of my favorite things to do while watching the show is to note all the myriad ways in which it’s hopelessly unrealistic and completely unlike real-life courtroom drama. On L&O, for example, cross examination of the average witness takes about three minutes; in real life, your ass is likely to be in that stiff, unforgiving witness chair for hours – possibly across multiple days – if your testimony is particularly important or hotly contested by one party or another.

Occasionally, the defendant in an L&O story is just plain unbelievable, too. Despite being nominally ‘sane’, these characters do things that are so stupid, so nuts, that you find yourself shaking your head and thinking “Nobody is like that in real life. No way.”

Every once in a while, however, real life trumps L&O and serves up a suspect/defendant who is such a cretin, such a fuckwit and such an obvious thug that it makes you recalibrate your assessment of televised legal-industry-fiction plausibility.

One such situation is playing out right now, and it involves an erstwhile would-be porn star, a mixed martial artist, a complete psycho, a brain-dead clown, a vicious thug and a think-skinned imbecile with a mental age of approximately 17 months – and all the emotional restraint that mental age implies.

Now, that’s an impressive cast of characters, to be sure, but you want to know the truly amazing part? They’re all the same guy.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard at least some version of the latest chapter in the ongoing “War Machine” (AKA John Koppenhaver) saga. The short version of that chapter is that War Machine allegedly recently thrashed his porn star ex-girlfriend Christy Mack to within inches of her life – something that War Machine would have us believe was an act of self-defense.

The facts are not all in on the War Machine/Mack case, so I’ll do like we Americans are supposed to do and give this guy the benefit of the doubt until he’s proven guilty. Having said that, anybody who has been aware of this guy for more than the last several weeks will tell you that he’s already proven himself to be a complete psycho – beyond any doubt, much less ‘reasonable’ doubt.

To wit, War Machine’s brief foray into the porn industry ended when he flew off the handle at a porn industry party and beat the living fuck out of a couple other partygoers. The cause of War Machine going off was another guy at the party hitting on his girlfriend. That’s cause for a little agitation and jealously (maybe), but when you immediately resort to pounding someone’s head flat for having the audacity to make a pass at your girlfriend party, you just might be a psycho. Bear in mind this was at a party – a porn industry party, for fuck’s sake – an event at which as a woman I would expect to be hit on, more than once, most likely. And if my male companion beat somebody over that, he would no longer be my “male companion”; he would instantly become “that jealous fucking pyscho I used to date.”

After getting run out of the porn industry (something that, believe me, is no minor feat) War Machine got himself locked up in San Diego for beating people up at a couple different bars in Point Loma and Pacific Beach.

Lest you think his dalliance in the porn industry was the start of the problem, War Machine had his troubles before trying to make it as a cock for hire, too. In 2007, he beat and choked some schmuck unconscious in a Las Vegas parking lot. He picked up another misdemeanor assault and battery charge in 2008, pleading guilty in exchange for a fine and probation in lieu of jail time. His probation from that incident hadn’t run out by the time he got into his San Diego-area bar fights, which is why he finally did some real time in 2010.

The sentence didn’t sit well with Mr. Machine, who thought he had worked out another deal to avoid jail time. War Machine took to Twitter to decry the judge as a “bitch” and generally rant about how fucked up the legal system is, what a victim he is, and assorted other self-pitying bullshit that’s commonly spewed by abject psychos who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.

Now War Machine finds himself back in court again, wearing a blue jail jumpsuit that doesn’t quite cover up the grenade tattooed on his neck. Showing at least a modicum of sense (sense that probably emanates from his attorney, and not from any innate or hard-learned wisdom of War Machine’s own), Mr. Machine has told the court that he’ll go by John Koppenhaver in court. My guess is that he probably won’t refer to the judge as a “bitch” this time, either – not until the trial is over, at least.

War Machine’s lawyer Brandon Sua, who has his work cut out for him, says: “I think the public will understand that War Machine is a character. He is controversial and people need to understand where to draw that line from his character as War Machine and a person as John Koppenhaver, because that’s who he is.”

No, Mr. Sua, the public is not the party that needs to understand the line between the War Machine character and John Koppenhaver; your fucking client is the one who needs to work on making and maintaining that distinction. He’s the one who needs to check War Machine at the door, whether the door is to his girlfriend’s apartment, the entrance to a dive bar, or the aperture through which one is walking into a party.

As for what he is to be called in court, and whether War Machine is merely a “character”, my understanding is that your client legally changed his name to War Machine – and that’s something that character actors generally don’t do. Al Pacino remains Al Pacino off-screen; at no time that I’m aware did he change his name to Michael Corleone, Tony Montana or Ricky Roma.

Put simply, if John Koppenhaver doesn’t want to be judged by the War Machine moniker, then he needs to stop living up to that moniker.

Since Koppenhaver doesn’t appear to be capable of that sort of restraint, he might want to start preparing for his next role, and maybe adopt a new name, while he’s at it. “Big House” and “The Clink” have a certain ring to them, no?