Originally published at Death and Taxes, ed. Brian Abrams, 16 March 2016.
Grateful thanks to the Internet Archive for preserving this work.
Heather Clem, who now goes by the name of Heather Cole, is the first named defendant in the original lawsuit filed by Hulk Hogan regarding their videotaped sexual encounter.
In case you’re just tuning in, Cole was then married to Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, and the Clem marital bed is the setting of the video at issue in the current Hogan/Gawker Media trial. And one of the few things all the parties involved appear to have agreed on throughout the proceedings is that the intercourse — not the taping — was approved and consented to in advance by all three parties.
Hogan settled his legal dispute with Cole last June, and she was removed from the suit. In a videotaped deposition shown to the jury on Wednesday, Cole described what sounded like quite a difficult marriage to Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Asked “what Bubba [was] like as a person,” she replied: “He can be fun, funny, giving, loving; he can be equally manipulative, selfish, intimidating and hurtful.”
Cole said that she’d lived at Clem’s house for four years before tying the knot, and that the couple occasionally invited other sexual relationships into the marriage. Her testimony generally gave the impression that she was dominated and perhaps even somewhat abused by her ex-husband. Wearing a white-collared shirt, dark hair down, her voice soft and subdued, Clem cut a very sympathetic figure. Several of those present remarked that Hogan seemed to be avoiding watching her deposition, spending much of the time looking away. What is this lady really like? Her Twitter account provides a most interesting perspective.
Despite all that’s happened, Cole maintains an active online presence. Cole’s Twitter is illustrative of a person with a lot of happiness and love in her life, however freaky the events of the last few years must have been. She bakes cinnamon buns in a heart-shaped tin for her teenage daughter Julia. She loves dogs (REALLY loves them), wine, doughnuts, and inspirational aphorisms. She exercises constantly, like a ton, and has a lot of complicated-looking nutritional schemes. She has a lot of friends, seemingly as freewheeling and uninhibited in their remarks about intimate matters as she is.
Cole also appears close with her family. There are really touching photos of her on Twitter with her parents and her daughter all together and very affectionate-seeming. I first noticed Cole’s Twitter account because of certain tweets that seemed to be making oblique references to the Hogan imbroglio:
This last tweet was posted last week, just as the second day of the trial was wrapping up, with comments referring directly to her role in it. In general, however, it comes as a relief to see that Cole mostly has fun on Twitter, sharing tweets she finds amusing:
Or showing off her (admirable) discipline:
Or spreading inspiring ideas:
