If Barack Obama and Fox News want to bury their respective hatchets without losing an inch of the partisan ground they’ve gained at each other’s expense, they might consider talking to a doctor.

A neurologist, to be precise.

As Captain Lou Albano and Cyndi Lauper once attested, that pesky medulla oblongata can do heinous things to the brain’s moral center, when left unchecked.

In 1983, Albano and Lauper met by chance on a flight and became fast friends.  At the time, Albano was at the tail-end of a heel run as a manager who, basically, would bring up a new wrestler, then turn on that wrestler and so viciously beat him that the wrestler would recover, declare a feud, and turn face.  During this run, Albano managed 15 title winners, but slowly lost airtime in the early heyday of independent-minded superheroes and supervillians like Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, and Andre The Giant.

That year, Albano appeared as Lauper’s father in “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” A huge MTV hit that instantly established a crossover storyline, Albano began trashing Lauper for not giving him his proper due as the true star of the video.  On MTV, Albano appeared in more Lauper videos–“She Bop,” “Time After Time,” “The Goonies R’ Good Enough”–while at WWF events, Albano’s public ire at his lack of recognition grew.  A staple of the WWF’s shows at Madison Square Garden at that time, Albano incensed fans in 1984 when he made sexist remarks about Lauper, declaring also that he had also written her songs.

On July 23, 1984, The Brawl To End It All marked the WWF’s first appearance on MTV–an hour-long feature match that was MTV’s highest-rated show to date.  Lauper and Albano “managed” surrogates who wrestled in the main event.  When Albano lost, he graciously apologized to Lauper at Madison Square Garden.

Lauper accepted his apology, then announced that, actually, Albano had been suffering all these years from calcium deposits on his medulla oblongata, and that their removal had also removed his “evil tendencies.”  When Roddy Piper interrupted the reconciliation to smash a gold record over Albano’s head, a bona fide face was born:

Hogan intervened to save Lauper and Albano.  Piper picked up Albano’s gripe about feeling overshadowed by Lauper, and challenged Hogan to a title shot.  Again, on MTV, with Lauper and Albano in his corner, Hogan defeated Piper by disqualification, when Paul Orndorff, Jr., jumped into the ring to help Piper, followed by Mr. T, who jumped up from ringside to help his friend, thus setting the stage for a winner-take-all tag-team match of Hogan-T versus Piper-Orndorff, the first Wrestlemania.

That spring, Albano began a solid B-celebrity run, guesting as an ambling, shuffling, friendly extra on 227, a henchman on Miami Vice, movies with Brian DePalma, Joe Piscopo and Roddy Piper, and eventually, as the voice of Mario on The Super Mario Brothers TV Show:

If Albano and Lauper never quite reached the same stratospheres of fame separate of each other, they expanded the brand image and reach of MTV and the WWF while doing some of the best work of their careers.  Albano’s appeal on MTV opened the door to millions of eventual Hulkamaniacs, just as Lauper made female-driven rock tough and cool in wrestling arenas more accustomed to The Scorpions and KISS.

Wrestling fans know that nothing heals old wounds like an unexpected face turn, especially one with a great backstory.  If a questionable medical diagnosis ultimately enabled the tastemakers to endorse each other’s greatness, the fans sure didn’t seem to care. Part of what makes professional wrestling so engaging is that bygones become bygones whenever the plot requires it.

The Obama administration and Fox News have turned recently to tenuous bases.  If traditional Republicanism seems in serious decline, so too does the political capital of a new president seeking to enact major reforms, much less one who is regularly decried by liberals as having sold-out their ideology.

Wrestling fans know that nothing heals old wounds like an unexpected face turn, especially one with a great backstory.  Even if their feud is too satisfying to neglect come the next election cycle, President Obama might extend the olive branch and sit down for a few exclusives, in exchange for the kind of support that, only a few years ago, Rupert Murdoch seemed ready to extend to Candidate Clinton.

What’s needed, though, are seasoned professionals who, like Piper and Hogan, can step in and do some of the heavy lifting to really get things moving: divisive, mic-happy, safely-skewed and over-the-top talking heads whose sheer bombast polarizes red and blue state Americans alike, giving cover for substantive exchanges about the issues of the day.

Someone we all wouldn’t mind seeing cross-checked a couple of times with steel chairs.

Has anyone checked to see if Madison Square Garden is free?