Jiu-Jitsu? A Scenario for a Double-Agent Twist on ‘Mothers Opposing McMahon’

[posted 7/15/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


Believe me when I say that I was all set to leave the Mothers Opposing McMahon mystery alone. Dave Meltzer, the most respected wrestling journalist, and Ted Mann, one of Connecticut’s top political reporters, agreed that MOM was a front organization of the Democratic adversaries of Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon. And it makes perfect sense.

But not so fast – this according to another source I also usually find on the money, who has asked not to be named at this point. This person emphatically emailed me, “Dem state committee not behind this.”

Though making mischief is the furthest thing from my mind, why don’t we all work this through for a moment.

If you read carefully the blog about MOM by Rick Green of the Hartford Courant, you can see that Green might not actually be implying that MOM is a Democratic front. Instead, Green is wondering – with his own brand of mischief – whether “Dads Against Dick” (Blumenthal) could be far behind.

Now suppose you were running against Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic nominee for senator who now has to live down being a serial stretcher of the truth about his military service “during” the Vietnam War. Also assume that your operatives determined that an effective tactic would involve attacking Blumenthal on the Vietnam issue, but not frontally. (Remember, the McMahon campaign lost style points for crowing that it had fed the damaging Blumenthal video to Raymond Hernandez of The New York Times.)

We’ll add one more element of supposition: that it always looks better if you launch a personal attack only after you are yourself personally attacked first. (In case you can’t tell, I never get enough of Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid. Wash the car! Paint the house!)

So you arrange to be attacked by an apparent Democratic front group that is actually two full removes from authenticity.

Further, you base the phony attack on yourself on a motif that is already a proven flop: the raunchy content of World Wrestling Entertainment programming. If there’s one thing we all should have learned by now, it’s that no one except a few moralistic nags cares about WWE’s poor taste or misogyny or homophobia.

Not only that. By focusing the faux McMahon attack on WWE television content and YouTube clips – clearing the way for reenergized attacks on Blumenthal for his Vietnam misstatements – you continue to crowd out mental shelf space for the issue that Linda McMahon truly fears: how she enabled a corporate culture responsible for the deaths of many of her employees, plus many many others throughout the industry for which her dominant company sets the tone.

OK, enough of all that. It’s a hot day out here in Northern California, and I’m off to buy a sweet tea at McDonald’s. I’m advised that I can get one in return for all of the above, plus a buck.


Irv Muchnick