Wrestling Newsletter Writer Thinks He Has Proof That ‘Mothers Opposing McMahon’ Is a Democratic Front Group

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


A couple of days ago I passed along Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green’s blog item about the group Mothers Opposing (Linda) McMahon. Green made the plausible stretch of speculating that MOM is something less than a spontaneous organization of female parents aghast at the family-values lapses of the Connecticut Republican Senate candidate, who is also the Mommy Warbucks of World Wrestling Entertainment.

Yesterday Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter asserted the same speculation as fact. In a web update headlined “Dems cover group for anti-McMahon,” Meltzer wrote, “It’s actually the Democratic State Central Committee behind the group.”

Green has not responded to my email requesting elaboration. However, a Connecticut politico told me that before publishing his blog post, Green, “as you would expect,” asked DSCC “point black if they were behind it and they said no.” The source added that while MOM’s YouTube video says its author is “CTDEMS,” “anyone can use that as a user name.”

Meltzer told me that the basis of his own story was “a piece of literature I got [that] said ‘Paid for the Democratic State Central Committee www.ctdems.org Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.’”

I asked Meltzer whether he confronted DSCC with his information, but he didn’t answer.

Draw your own conclusions. Mine is that, although it would be less than shocking to confirm that MOM is a front group, even one set up by DSCC, Meltzer did not prove it. What drives me nuts about him, more than particular problems of bottom-line accuracy, is the defiant confidence with which he presents his own particular mix of hard reporting and free-floating gossip as the final and authoritative word on any subject.

Meltzer is also selective with his exacting standards. In the current print edition of the Wrestling Observer, he follows up on the brain aneurysm – excuse me, the burst capillary – recently sustained by 57-year-old wrestling legend Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat. According to Meltzer, at press time Steamboat “was still hospitalized in Tampa. He may be hospitalized as long as another week.”

Meltzer adds, “The latest medical word is that it can’t be proven conclusively one way or another if the beating he took in the angle [on WWE’s Raw show] was or wasn’t related to his medical condition.” Well, no shit!


Irv Muchnick