If you’ve ever made the mistake of checking out the local TV networks in the afternoon you already know about the infestation of “judge” shows. For some reason, the knuckle draggers of our country derive some sort of entertainment from watching the plight of others with room temperature IQs in quasi-judicial situations. This is actually pretty funny though:

Comedian Andy Kaufman once invited Alan Spencer, best known as a creator of the cult hit TV series Sledge Hammer!, over to his home and subjected him to a marathon of forty-eight hours of The People’s Court, a series that Kaufman religiously recorded.

Were judge shows the ‘grunge’ movement in rock music, “The People’s Court” would be Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and there are too many imitators and spinoffs to count. That would mean that Judge Wapner could be considered the Kurt Cobain of judge shows, and “Rusty the Bailiff” the Dave Grohl. Even the legendary boxing ref Mills Lane had a judge show for awhile.

There’s actually a website dedicated to judge shows–though from the looks of things it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2002

The Ultimate Judge show site

A better source, at least on judge show ‘bailiffs’ is the well researched Know Your Judge Show Bailiffs

Anyway, the point of all of this is that Navy Seal/pro wrestling legend/former governor of Minnesota and noted MMA skeptic Jesse “The Body” Ventura” is apparently getting his own judge show. Only for someone who’s spent so much of his recent life in politics can this be considered “upward mobility”:

Former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura is in negotiations to star in a daytime TV court show, sources say.

Ventura is talking with Twentieth Television to host a show in which he would appear as a judge in a courtroom-style reality setting, an enduringly popular genre that already has 11 such shows in first-run syndication, unnamed sources told TV Week magazine.

If the deal is completed, Ventura’s show would debut in fall 2009, one of several personality-driven series getting ready for upcoming production, the magazine said.

Ventura was governor of Minnesota for one term from 1998 to 2002, and before that had a long, colorful career as a professional wrestler. The former U.S. Navy frogman has also acted in several movies and television shows.

The above is from a UPI story with props to our source, Wrestling-Radio.com

That’s JUDGE Jesse “The Body” to you, pal @ Wrestling Radio.com