[posted 6/22/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The Connecticut Mirror’s Deirdre Shesgreen has combed the personal financial disclosures of Linda McMahon, Richard Blumenthal, and Peter Schiff, and concluded: “No matter who wins this race, any of these candidates would likely rank among the top ten richest lawmakers in Congress in terms of household wealth.” See “U.S. Senate candidates disclose assets,” http://www.ctmirror.org/story/6515/blumenthalmcmahonfinances.
All good info. What is missed here, and probably not intended, is a question above and beyond whether super-rich politicians can relate to average voters. The Linda McMahon challenge involves whether a self-funded candidate is performing an act of civic hygiene, or simply of personal vanity, when she uses her wealth to short-circuit conventional means of building a campaign and claiming a constituency.
Meanwhile, an online publication called American Thinker has published a loopy essay headlined “Linda McMahon and the Triple-Damn Stinger Splash.” See http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/linda_mcmahon_and_the_tripleda_1.html.
The author, Stuart Schwartz, teaches in the School of Communication at Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. The school’s website describes its mission as striving “to educate competent, committed Christians in the art, theory and technology of communication.”
Professor Schwartz’s piece is best described as the sort of thing the Hartford Courant’s Kevin “Don’t Call Linda McMahon My Mouthpiece” Rennie might have turned out during a night of debauchery with Timothy Leary. “Triple Damn Stinger Splash”? It’s hard to top an aging born-again hipster. Linda, apparently, woke up one morning and spontaneously realized that she had both a precise vision of what ails the nation and the precise skills to fix it. And any deviation from this tidy narrative is elitist. If nothing else, the money-grubbing kitsch queen of Campaign 2010 may have found her Teddy White.
Irv Muchnick
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Dr. Joseph Maroon Sighting in Excellent New Haven Register Article on WWE and Steroids
[posted 6/20/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Ed Stannard, metro editor of the New Haven Register, has produced one of the most valuable pieces of coverage in the Linda McMahon Senate campaign: an overview of her World Wrestling Entertainment’s history of steroid controversy.
See “Steroid stain lingers over Linda McMahon’s WWE,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/06/20/news/doc4c1d86ac45467296138524.txt. Equally devastating is the front-page headline in the print edition in capital letters: JUICED.
The Register account is thorough and balanced, and the online version includes links to a lot of important primary-source material. Linda’s BusinessWeek whopper questioning the notion that steroids are bad is given legs.
And it will be open season on her spokesman Ed Patru’s bull about steroids not providing a competitive advantage in pro wrestling because it is scripted. Plenty of credible people can and will contradict them.
I was especially pleased to see that Stannard got WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, on the record with what I believe are his first public quotes relating to that job since I started zeroing in on the deficiencies of his work and that of other company-contracted doctors — several of whom, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
I suspect that when all is said and done, whether Linda McMahon wins or loses in November, a consequence of her candidacy will be more focused heat on the supposedly respectable politicians, doctors, media shills, and others who, by omission or commission, have enabled the McMahon family’s financial and political ascent.
In the case of Dr. Maroon — a neurologist whose work on concussions in the National Football League has been attacked as inadequate and ethically compromised — we now see that he simply parrots the WWE line about the distinction between anabolic steroid abuse and “testosterone replacement therapy.” The company first rolled this out following the 2007 toxicology report on wrestler Chris Benoit, who had murdered his wife and their son before killing himself. Of course, this was only after they had already allowed the public to believe that Benoit had passed his drug tests with flying colors, when in actuality he had off-the-charts quantities of testosterone excused by a get-out-of-jail-free-card “therapeutic use exemption.”
Here’s what Maroon told the Register:
Maroon said exemptions are given for prohibited drugs if they are administered under a doctor’s care, but that no exemptions are given for anabolic steroids, because they are illegal. Testosterone therapy, he points out, is not the same as steroids.
“There are certain substances, androgenic steroids, that there’s no exemption whatsoever,” Maroon said. “Those are banned substances and under no circumstances are they permitted.”
This is nonsense on androgens — literally and figuratively. The need for therapeutic use of testosterone is wildly exaggerated in wrestling and all of sports. To the extent that it is needed, it was almost always triggered by the original abuse of steroids, which caused the athlete’s endocrine system to malfunction. The net effect of all this is a giant loophole in WWE’s Wellness Policy.
Maroon’s failure to address that question with any nuance marks him as a co-opted professional rather than an independent expert. I expect that, sooner or later, critics will start holding these doctors accountable for lending their good names to WWE.
Irv Muchnick
Ed Stannard, metro editor of the New Haven Register, has produced one of the most valuable pieces of coverage in the Linda McMahon Senate campaign: an overview of her World Wrestling Entertainment’s history of steroid controversy.
See “Steroid stain lingers over Linda McMahon’s WWE,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/06/20/news/doc4c1d86ac45467296138524.txt. Equally devastating is the front-page headline in the print edition in capital letters: JUICED.
The Register account is thorough and balanced, and the online version includes links to a lot of important primary-source material. Linda’s BusinessWeek whopper questioning the notion that steroids are bad is given legs.
And it will be open season on her spokesman Ed Patru’s bull about steroids not providing a competitive advantage in pro wrestling because it is scripted. Plenty of credible people can and will contradict them.
I was especially pleased to see that Stannard got WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, on the record with what I believe are his first public quotes relating to that job since I started zeroing in on the deficiencies of his work and that of other company-contracted doctors — several of whom, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
I suspect that when all is said and done, whether Linda McMahon wins or loses in November, a consequence of her candidacy will be more focused heat on the supposedly respectable politicians, doctors, media shills, and others who, by omission or commission, have enabled the McMahon family’s financial and political ascent.
In the case of Dr. Maroon — a neurologist whose work on concussions in the National Football League has been attacked as inadequate and ethically compromised — we now see that he simply parrots the WWE line about the distinction between anabolic steroid abuse and “testosterone replacement therapy.” The company first rolled this out following the 2007 toxicology report on wrestler Chris Benoit, who had murdered his wife and their son before killing himself. Of course, this was only after they had already allowed the public to believe that Benoit had passed his drug tests with flying colors, when in actuality he had off-the-charts quantities of testosterone excused by a get-out-of-jail-free-card “therapeutic use exemption.”
Here’s what Maroon told the Register:
Maroon said exemptions are given for prohibited drugs if they are administered under a doctor’s care, but that no exemptions are given for anabolic steroids, because they are illegal. Testosterone therapy, he points out, is not the same as steroids.
“There are certain substances, androgenic steroids, that there’s no exemption whatsoever,” Maroon said. “Those are banned substances and under no circumstances are they permitted.”
This is nonsense on androgens — literally and figuratively. The need for therapeutic use of testosterone is wildly exaggerated in wrestling and all of sports. To the extent that it is needed, it was almost always triggered by the original abuse of steroids, which caused the athlete’s endocrine system to malfunction. The net effect of all this is a giant loophole in WWE’s Wellness Policy.
Maroon’s failure to address that question with any nuance marks him as a co-opted professional rather than an independent expert. I expect that, sooner or later, critics will start holding these doctors accountable for lending their good names to WWE.
Irv Muchnick
Dr. Joseph Maroon Sighting in Excellent New Haven Register Article on WWE and Steroids
[posted 6/20/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Ed Stannard, metro editor of the New Haven Register, has produced one of the most valuable pieces of coverage in the Linda McMahon Senate campaign: an overview of her World Wrestling Entertainment’s history of steroid controversy.
See “Steroid stain lingers over Linda McMahon’s WWE,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/06/20/news/doc4c1d86ac45467296138524.txt. Equally devastating is the front-page headline in the print edition in capital letters: JUICED.
The Register account is thorough and balanced, and the online version includes links to a lot of important primary-source material. Linda’s BusinessWeek whopper questioning the notion that steroids are bad is given legs.
And it will be open season on her spokesman Ed Patru’s bull about steroids not providing a competitive advantage in pro wrestling because it is scripted. Plenty of credible people can and will contradict them.
I was especially pleased to see that Stannard got WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, on the record with what I believe are his first public quotes relating to that job since I started zeroing in on the deficiencies of his work and that of other company-contracted doctors — several of whom, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
I suspect that when all is said and done, whether Linda McMahon wins or loses in November, a consequence of her candidacy will be more focused heat on the supposedly respectable politicians, doctors, media shills, and others who, by omission or commission, have enabled the McMahon family’s financial and political ascent.
In the case of Dr. Maroon — a neurologist whose work on concussions in the National Football League has been attacked as inadequate and ethically compromised — we now see that he simply parrots the WWE line about the distinction between anabolic steroid abuse and “testosterone replacement therapy.” The company first rolled this out following the 2007 toxicology report on wrestler Chris Benoit, who had murdered his wife and their son before killing himself. Of course, this was only after they had already allowed the public to believe that Benoit had passed his drug tests with flying colors, when in actuality he had off-the-charts quantities of testosterone excused by a get-out-of-jail-free-card “therapeutic use exemption.”
Here’s what Maroon told the Register:
Maroon said exemptions are given for prohibited drugs if they are administered under a doctor’s care, but that no exemptions are given for anabolic steroids, because they are illegal. Testosterone therapy, he points out, is not the same as steroids.
“There are certain substances, androgenic steroids, that there’s no exemption whatsoever,” Maroon said. “Those are banned substances and under no circumstances are they permitted.”
This is nonsense on androgens — literally and figuratively. The need for therapeutic use of testosterone is wildly exaggerated in wrestling and all of sports. To the extent that it is needed, it was almost always triggered by the original abuse of steroids, which caused the athlete’s endocrine system to malfunction. The net effect of all this is a giant loophole in WWE’s Wellness Policy.
Maroon’s failure to address that question with any nuance marks him as a co-opted professional rather than an independent expert. I expect that, sooner or later, critics will start holding these doctors accountable for lending their good names to WWE.
Irv Muchnick
Ed Stannard, metro editor of the New Haven Register, has produced one of the most valuable pieces of coverage in the Linda McMahon Senate campaign: an overview of her World Wrestling Entertainment’s history of steroid controversy.
See “Steroid stain lingers over Linda McMahon’s WWE,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/06/20/news/doc4c1d86ac45467296138524.txt. Equally devastating is the front-page headline in the print edition in capital letters: JUICED.
The Register account is thorough and balanced, and the online version includes links to a lot of important primary-source material. Linda’s BusinessWeek whopper questioning the notion that steroids are bad is given legs.
And it will be open season on her spokesman Ed Patru’s bull about steroids not providing a competitive advantage in pro wrestling because it is scripted. Plenty of credible people can and will contradict them.
I was especially pleased to see that Stannard got WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, on the record with what I believe are his first public quotes relating to that job since I started zeroing in on the deficiencies of his work and that of other company-contracted doctors — several of whom, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
I suspect that when all is said and done, whether Linda McMahon wins or loses in November, a consequence of her candidacy will be more focused heat on the supposedly respectable politicians, doctors, media shills, and others who, by omission or commission, have enabled the McMahon family’s financial and political ascent.
In the case of Dr. Maroon — a neurologist whose work on concussions in the National Football League has been attacked as inadequate and ethically compromised — we now see that he simply parrots the WWE line about the distinction between anabolic steroid abuse and “testosterone replacement therapy.” The company first rolled this out following the 2007 toxicology report on wrestler Chris Benoit, who had murdered his wife and their son before killing himself. Of course, this was only after they had already allowed the public to believe that Benoit had passed his drug tests with flying colors, when in actuality he had off-the-charts quantities of testosterone excused by a get-out-of-jail-free-card “therapeutic use exemption.”
Here’s what Maroon told the Register:
Maroon said exemptions are given for prohibited drugs if they are administered under a doctor’s care, but that no exemptions are given for anabolic steroids, because they are illegal. Testosterone therapy, he points out, is not the same as steroids.
“There are certain substances, androgenic steroids, that there’s no exemption whatsoever,” Maroon said. “Those are banned substances and under no circumstances are they permitted.”
This is nonsense on androgens — literally and figuratively. The need for therapeutic use of testosterone is wildly exaggerated in wrestling and all of sports. To the extent that it is needed, it was almost always triggered by the original abuse of steroids, which caused the athlete’s endocrine system to malfunction. The net effect of all this is a giant loophole in WWE’s Wellness Policy.
Maroon’s failure to address that question with any nuance marks him as a co-opted professional rather than an independent expert. I expect that, sooner or later, critics will start holding these doctors accountable for lending their good names to WWE.
Irv Muchnick
Don’t Look Now, But Another Pro Wrestler Just Died Young
[posted 6/19/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Michael Verdi (“Trent Acid”), a prominent pro wrestler on the independent circuit who seemed ticketed for a major league career before drug problems derailed him, has died at 29. His grandmother found him dead.
Of course, Verdi/Acid was never a World Wrestling Entertainment “independent contractor” — so he doesn’t count.
Besides — who’s counting?
Irv Muchnick
Michael Verdi (“Trent Acid”), a prominent pro wrestler on the independent circuit who seemed ticketed for a major league career before drug problems derailed him, has died at 29. His grandmother found him dead.
Of course, Verdi/Acid was never a World Wrestling Entertainment “independent contractor” — so he doesn’t count.
Besides — who’s counting?
Irv Muchnick
Sounds Like Vince McMahon Got a Facelift
[posted 6/19/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
From British journalist Mike Aldren’s Wrestling Globe Newsletter:
“Regarding Vince McMahon showing up to the TV tapings two week’s ago with black eyes, one source who would know was under the impression that Vince recently underwent some type of facial cosmetic surgery.”
Irv Muchnick
From British journalist Mike Aldren’s Wrestling Globe Newsletter:
“Regarding Vince McMahon showing up to the TV tapings two week’s ago with black eyes, one source who would know was under the impression that Vince recently underwent some type of facial cosmetic surgery.”
Irv Muchnick
Best Explanation of Bryan Danielson Firing Is Classic Vince McMahon Weirdness
[posted 6/17/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
I’ve held off on an in-depth post about the Bryan Danielson situation because I had no special information on it and I was trying to get a fix.
A week ago Monday, on the USA cable network’s Raw, Danielson — among the best pro wrestlers in the world not to get the opportunity for stardom in World Wrestling Entertainment — participated in a shtick in which performers for WWE’s third-tier brand, NXT, “invaded” the Raw show. Danielson and company “beat up” everyone in sight, and Danielson himself was shown on camera “choking” an announcer with his necktie.
No one thought much of it at the time, but late last week WWE cryptically announced that Danielson had been dismissed. Eventually the word leaked that choking someone with a necktie violated the punctilious and evolving creative standards of the thespian troupe whose former CEO, Linda McMahon, is running for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.
Citing all kinds of mixed messages and clues — which I won’t take the time to get into because it’s my 5-year-old daughter’s last day in preschool and my 14-year-old daughter’s last day in middle school — wrestling insiders expressed skepticism about this official explanation. In particular, the gap of several days before Danielson was sacked, and the fact that the offensive scene had not been edited out of the Spanish network feed of Raw despite ample time to do so, led to speculation that Linda’s husband, WWE honcho Vince McMahon, was yielding to pressure from the USA network or a sponsor. The Danielson firing, when he just as easily could have been warned or suspended, certainly seemed draconian.
Immediate speculation centered on whether this was all an “angle” or soap-opera plot twist. But for that to be the case, Vince would have had to have “worked” not only the public, but also his own office staff, from top to bottom, and it was hard to imagine that he would have calculated such a ruse as cost-effective.
In recent days, another theory emerged: that the Linda McMahon campaign, not the network or a sponsor, got Vince to ditch Danielson. Wrestling media types received an anonymous and untraceable email from someone claiming to be a campaign staffer and making this assertion. I think wrestling journalists exercised proper discretion in deciding not to give the email legitimacy. So far as I know, only one published it.
The truth is that no one really knows what happened. We’ll have a better idea if Danielson returns to the WWE roster, either quietly or bombastically, but that does not appear to be in the cards for the immediate future.
I’ve paid special attention to the analysis of Bryan Alvarez, publisher of the newsletter Figure Four Weekly, because Alvarez co-authored Death of WCW, which may be the bestselling independently published pro wrestling book of all time. Alvarez chronicled how Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, which was clueless but had deep pockets, gave WWE’s predecessor company a run for the money in the late 1990s before descending into unprofitable (as opposed to profitable) chaos and dysfunction. One of WCW’s signatures was the so-called “worked shoot,” in which management pulled the wool over not only the fans’ eyes, but also its own wrestlers, and then congratulated itself for its skill at postmodernist mindfucking. The only problem was that the point of a business is to make money, not to prove what great postmodernist mindfuckers you are, so the ultimate joke was on management, as WCW imploded.
Linda McMahon campaign watchers should note that the involvement of family members in WWE storylines is a somewhat parallel phenomenon of overly aggressive and pointless script-writing. But the McMahons have a virtual monopoly on the business now, which means that bad creative decisions might hurt their business but can’t kill it. Besides, only on his worst days has Vince McMahon made business decisions as bad as the ones that Ted Turner’s hapless minions made habitually on their best days.
Anyway, here’s Alvarez’s take on l’affaire Danielson, and it seems reasonable to me:
Time will tell the real story, but to me, after examining both sides of the argument and talking to people close to both sides all weekend, it comes down to one of only two possible scenarios. Either Vince McMahon lied to many and perhaps all of his employees and Bryan Danielson lied to many and perhaps all of his best friends, or Vince McMahon did something irrational. In the end, especially based on recent history and what I know about both guys, option two makes the most sense to me.
Irv Muchnick
I’ve held off on an in-depth post about the Bryan Danielson situation because I had no special information on it and I was trying to get a fix.
A week ago Monday, on the USA cable network’s Raw, Danielson — among the best pro wrestlers in the world not to get the opportunity for stardom in World Wrestling Entertainment — participated in a shtick in which performers for WWE’s third-tier brand, NXT, “invaded” the Raw show. Danielson and company “beat up” everyone in sight, and Danielson himself was shown on camera “choking” an announcer with his necktie.
No one thought much of it at the time, but late last week WWE cryptically announced that Danielson had been dismissed. Eventually the word leaked that choking someone with a necktie violated the punctilious and evolving creative standards of the thespian troupe whose former CEO, Linda McMahon, is running for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.
Citing all kinds of mixed messages and clues — which I won’t take the time to get into because it’s my 5-year-old daughter’s last day in preschool and my 14-year-old daughter’s last day in middle school — wrestling insiders expressed skepticism about this official explanation. In particular, the gap of several days before Danielson was sacked, and the fact that the offensive scene had not been edited out of the Spanish network feed of Raw despite ample time to do so, led to speculation that Linda’s husband, WWE honcho Vince McMahon, was yielding to pressure from the USA network or a sponsor. The Danielson firing, when he just as easily could have been warned or suspended, certainly seemed draconian.
Immediate speculation centered on whether this was all an “angle” or soap-opera plot twist. But for that to be the case, Vince would have had to have “worked” not only the public, but also his own office staff, from top to bottom, and it was hard to imagine that he would have calculated such a ruse as cost-effective.
In recent days, another theory emerged: that the Linda McMahon campaign, not the network or a sponsor, got Vince to ditch Danielson. Wrestling media types received an anonymous and untraceable email from someone claiming to be a campaign staffer and making this assertion. I think wrestling journalists exercised proper discretion in deciding not to give the email legitimacy. So far as I know, only one published it.
The truth is that no one really knows what happened. We’ll have a better idea if Danielson returns to the WWE roster, either quietly or bombastically, but that does not appear to be in the cards for the immediate future.
I’ve paid special attention to the analysis of Bryan Alvarez, publisher of the newsletter Figure Four Weekly, because Alvarez co-authored Death of WCW, which may be the bestselling independently published pro wrestling book of all time. Alvarez chronicled how Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, which was clueless but had deep pockets, gave WWE’s predecessor company a run for the money in the late 1990s before descending into unprofitable (as opposed to profitable) chaos and dysfunction. One of WCW’s signatures was the so-called “worked shoot,” in which management pulled the wool over not only the fans’ eyes, but also its own wrestlers, and then congratulated itself for its skill at postmodernist mindfucking. The only problem was that the point of a business is to make money, not to prove what great postmodernist mindfuckers you are, so the ultimate joke was on management, as WCW imploded.
Linda McMahon campaign watchers should note that the involvement of family members in WWE storylines is a somewhat parallel phenomenon of overly aggressive and pointless script-writing. But the McMahons have a virtual monopoly on the business now, which means that bad creative decisions might hurt their business but can’t kill it. Besides, only on his worst days has Vince McMahon made business decisions as bad as the ones that Ted Turner’s hapless minions made habitually on their best days.
Anyway, here’s Alvarez’s take on l’affaire Danielson, and it seems reasonable to me:
Time will tell the real story, but to me, after examining both sides of the argument and talking to people close to both sides all weekend, it comes down to one of only two possible scenarios. Either Vince McMahon lied to many and perhaps all of his employees and Bryan Danielson lied to many and perhaps all of his best friends, or Vince McMahon did something irrational. In the end, especially based on recent history and what I know about both guys, option two makes the most sense to me.
Irv Muchnick
NFL ‘Maroons’ WWE’s Medical Director
[posted 6/16/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The Linda McMahon story everyone is talking about is whether World Wrestling Entertainment fired wrestler Bryan Danielson at the behest of McMahon’s Senate campaign. I’ll get to that shortly.
But the story everyone should be talking about is WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, who is also a team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers and was a consultant to the National Football League on concussion issues. The NFL almost certainly has thrown Maroon under the bus, along with every other league-affiliated doctor associated with a concussion policy that has come under heavy Congressional and media criticism.
My takeout here is that WWE’s own embrace of Maroon, the year following the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, suggests that the company is doing the least it can about concussions rather than the most. But so far the only person other than myself who has taken note of this intersection of facts is Mike Benoit, Chris’s father, who emailed me yesterday with the June 1 New York Times article about the NFL concussion team shakeup.
In the Senate campaign coverage, there hasn’t been a word about Dr. Maroon. And the wrestling media have been no better. Yesterday the Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 website update linked to the two-week-old Times story -- which had no reference to wrestling -- without elaboration. No one is mentioning the NFL/WWE overlap in Maroon’s work, or the six-month-old information on this blog that WWE and Maroon lied to ESPN about their access to studies of Benoit’s damaged brain.
See “NFL Severs Relationships With Past Concussion Docs – Does That Apply to WWE Medical Director Joseph Maroon?”, June 3, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/nfl-severs-relationships-with-past-concussion-docs-does-that-apply-to-wwe-medical-director-joseph-maroon/, and “Paging Dr. Joseph Maroon, Medical Director for Linda McMahon’s WWE,” December 30, 2009, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/paging-dr-joseph-maroonmedical-director-for-senate-candidate-linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-wwe/.
Yesterday I faxed NFL spokesman Greg Aiello for an update on Maroon’s status with the NFL and the Steelers. In March, Aiello told me that Maroon was still on the league concussion committee, but that would seem to be contradicted by the reports, in The Times and elsewhere, that the new committee co-chairs have gone to great lengths to end all associations with the experts previously associated with a now-discredited policy.
Of course, I’ll share here any response I get from Aiello.
Next post: the Bryan Danielson mystery and whether his sacking was an illegal attempt by WWE to influence the Senate campaign of its former CEO.
Irv Muchnick
The Linda McMahon story everyone is talking about is whether World Wrestling Entertainment fired wrestler Bryan Danielson at the behest of McMahon’s Senate campaign. I’ll get to that shortly.
But the story everyone should be talking about is WWE’s medical director, Dr. Joseph Maroon, who is also a team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers and was a consultant to the National Football League on concussion issues. The NFL almost certainly has thrown Maroon under the bus, along with every other league-affiliated doctor associated with a concussion policy that has come under heavy Congressional and media criticism.
My takeout here is that WWE’s own embrace of Maroon, the year following the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, suggests that the company is doing the least it can about concussions rather than the most. But so far the only person other than myself who has taken note of this intersection of facts is Mike Benoit, Chris’s father, who emailed me yesterday with the June 1 New York Times article about the NFL concussion team shakeup.
In the Senate campaign coverage, there hasn’t been a word about Dr. Maroon. And the wrestling media have been no better. Yesterday the Wrestling Observer/Figure 4 website update linked to the two-week-old Times story -- which had no reference to wrestling -- without elaboration. No one is mentioning the NFL/WWE overlap in Maroon’s work, or the six-month-old information on this blog that WWE and Maroon lied to ESPN about their access to studies of Benoit’s damaged brain.
See “NFL Severs Relationships With Past Concussion Docs – Does That Apply to WWE Medical Director Joseph Maroon?”, June 3, 2010, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/nfl-severs-relationships-with-past-concussion-docs-does-that-apply-to-wwe-medical-director-joseph-maroon/, and “Paging Dr. Joseph Maroon, Medical Director for Linda McMahon’s WWE,” December 30, 2009, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/paging-dr-joseph-maroonmedical-director-for-senate-candidate-linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-wwe/.
Yesterday I faxed NFL spokesman Greg Aiello for an update on Maroon’s status with the NFL and the Steelers. In March, Aiello told me that Maroon was still on the league concussion committee, but that would seem to be contradicted by the reports, in The Times and elsewhere, that the new committee co-chairs have gone to great lengths to end all associations with the experts previously associated with a now-discredited policy.
Of course, I’ll share here any response I get from Aiello.
Next post: the Bryan Danielson mystery and whether his sacking was an illegal attempt by WWE to influence the Senate campaign of its former CEO.
Irv Muchnick
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Did He Or Didn’t He? John Cena’s Soap Opera Concussion
[posted 6/11/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
World Wrestling Entertainment’s John Cena, the focus here yesterday of the latest musings about steroids at Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s company, has a parallel-universe line of palaver on his Twitter feed. This is in keeping with orders to WWE “independent contractors” to propel their fictional storylines. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
On Monday’s edition of Raw, Cena was beaten to a pulp by jealous invaders of WWE’s third-tier brand, NXT. After falling silent for nearly three days, Cena tweeted to his fans on Thursday, “CeNation. Sorry for delay. Checked out fine. Mild concussion and some back and hip trouble, but I am in 1 piece. Thank u for your concern.”
Today Cena tweeted, “CeNation. I will not be out of action. I have taken and passed Impact testing, and I can deal with mine hip and spine issues. Never give up.”
So he will wrestle as scheduled at shows this weekend. I’m not sure, but I think if he were diagnosed with a concussion, even a “mild” one, he should have been automatically shelved. But maybe I’m wrong, and the fictional concussion diagnosis could be superseded by a fictional neurological impact test — as designed by WWE’s brilliant medical director, disgraced NFL concussion expert Joseph Maroon.
Oh, never mind.
Irv Muchnick
World Wrestling Entertainment’s John Cena, the focus here yesterday of the latest musings about steroids at Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s company, has a parallel-universe line of palaver on his Twitter feed. This is in keeping with orders to WWE “independent contractors” to propel their fictional storylines. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
On Monday’s edition of Raw, Cena was beaten to a pulp by jealous invaders of WWE’s third-tier brand, NXT. After falling silent for nearly three days, Cena tweeted to his fans on Thursday, “CeNation. Sorry for delay. Checked out fine. Mild concussion and some back and hip trouble, but I am in 1 piece. Thank u for your concern.”
Today Cena tweeted, “CeNation. I will not be out of action. I have taken and passed Impact testing, and I can deal with mine hip and spine issues. Never give up.”
So he will wrestle as scheduled at shows this weekend. I’m not sure, but I think if he were diagnosed with a concussion, even a “mild” one, he should have been automatically shelved. But maybe I’m wrong, and the fictional concussion diagnosis could be superseded by a fictional neurological impact test — as designed by WWE’s brilliant medical director, disgraced NFL concussion expert Joseph Maroon.
Oh, never mind.
Irv Muchnick
What Congressional Investigators Asked Linda McMahon About John Cena, WWE’s No. 1 Star
[posted 6/10/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The Ted Mann story in The Day yesterday, reviewing Linda McMahon’s December 13, 2007, interview by the staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, then chaired by Henry Waxman, has an important offshoot: a hint that John Cena, the top star of World Wrestling Entertainment, might be taking prescribed testosterone under a WWE Wellness Policy “therapeutic use exemption.”
I start this analysis of Mann’s reporting by disagreeing with the journalistic decision there to slip this potential Cena bombshell between the lines. Personally, when I have something to say, I prefer to come right out and say it. I don’t know any more than Mann whether Cena is clean. I do know there is a very slim probability that Cena (who has been a bodybuilder as well as a pro wrestler) looks the way he looks without ever using anabolic steroids.
I further know that Cena, the face of WWE, has grown a nose longer than Pinocchio’s for the things he has said in media interviews pushing the company line about its Orwellian “wellness policy” subsequent to the June 2007 Chris Benoit murder-suicide.
All told, the public dialogue is hamstrung by neuroses with respect to the public health problem of drugs in sports, sports entertainment, and society at large. My own general response is a philosophy that “more is more.”
In that spirit, here is the whole record behind the Cena reference, beginning with the explosive complete passage itself in The Day:
As in the 1994 [federal] trial [of Vince McMahon and WWE’s predecessor company], [lawyer Jerry] McDevitt aggressively countered the would-be [Congressional staff] interrogators of the company [in 2007], frequently charging them with engaging [Linda] McMahon in a “memory test” over the results of drug tests on individual wrestlers, and the identities of the “two or three” wrestlers, like Benoit and John Cena, who investigators believed had been given exemptions by the WWE to take testosterone as part of a hormone replacement therapy sometimes linked to past steroid use.
In a conversation yesterday, Mann clarified that he was not asserting that Cena took testosterone or had been granted a “TUE.” The context is that the Congressional investigators had been told that Benoit had a TUE and they were pressing Linda McMahon on whether Cena had one, as well.
Was Cena’s name dropped by investigators after unearthing “probable cause” in earlier interviews – most notably with David Black, the WWE drug-testing administrator? Or was it just a “fishing expedition”? That is not entirely clear from the transcript below. And I’m sure that if I ask Brian Cohen, the Waxman committee’s senior investigator and policy advisor, he won’t help us out.
But don’t feel sorry for Cena. After Benoit went on his homicidal-suicidal spree, WWE put out the story that he had passed his drug tests; the truth was that Benoit had ridiculous levels of testosterone covered by a TUE. In July 2007 the toxicology report showed an off-the-charts testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of 59-to-1, but WWE’s misleading line – “spin” is far too kind – was that that Benoit came up “negative for anabolic steroids.”
Folks, testosterone is the clinical generic of an anabolic steroid. This was analogous to saying Benoit was loaded with hospital-supplied morphine, but no worries, morphine ain’t street heroin.
Cena pushed the same malarkey on Larry King Live. “[T]he media kind of jump to conclusions,” Cena told the reliably pliant King. “You can see that Dr. Kris Sperry [Georgia medical examiner] said that there were elevated levels of testosterone. Chris tested clean for all anabolic steroids. Granted, the testosterone levels were high. But Kris Sperry also went on to state that even with his elevated levels of testosterone, there is no link between high testosterone level and the behavior that happened in the Chris Benoit murder.”
Cena said Benoit “obviously” supplemented testosterone “between April,” the date of his last WWE drug test, “and the time of the tragedy.”
Asked why Benoit would take testosterone supplementation, Cena said, “I’m not a doctor, Larry, I don’t know.... I can’t give you an educated answer, so I don’t even want to theorize.”
(Here’s why: Benoit had abused steroids so long and so much that his endocrine system had stopped functioning, and he needed prescription testosterone to keep functioning as a man. Coincidentally, the dosage also allowed him, at age 40, to maintain the cartoon look required for his WWE character.)
OK, on to the full background for The Day’s reference to Cena yesterday vis-Ã -vis Linda McMahon’s Waxman committee staff interview. See the bottom of this post for the relevant language, pages 110 through 114 of the transcript.
The complete 162-page transcript can be viewed at http://muchnick.net/lindawaxman.pdf. For students of the McMahon Senate candidacy, this is required reading on the syllabus, along with such items on this blog as her involvement in obstructing the federal investigations of the company steroid doctor, and of her husband and the company itself; and her absurd disclosure form to the Connecticut legislature at the time of her nomination to the state board of education in January 2009, stating that she had no known controversies in her past.
Irv Muchnick
***************
[Brian Cohen] Q Were you aware of any other current or former WWE champions or top stars in WWE who have received therapeutic use exemptions, medical use exemptions for the use of testosterone?
[Linda McMahon] A Not as I sit here this moment. Like Benoit, you brought up and refreshed my memory –
Q Right.
A If you have others to bring up, I’m happy – you know, it is a memory test. I can’t remember it all. I’d be happy to tell you what I know. I’m happy to share with you, I’m not trying to hold back information from you at all.
Q That’s fine. I guess I will just ask you to take a few seconds to refresh your memory and think about whether it has come to your attention that any of the champions or the top stars at WWE have received medical use exemptions?
A I can’t think of any right now.
Q Are you aware of whether John Cena has received a medical use exemption?
Mr. McDevitt. You know, stop. You’re now going into individual drug test results, I mean you are; I mean you have been.
Mr. Cohen. Jerry, I asked a very specific question before.
Mr. McDevitt. Well, I know.
Mr. Cohen. I asked it as general as possible.
Mr. McDevitt. But that’s still–
Mr. Cohen. I then asked a very specific question and was given a different answer to that question.
Mr. McDevitt. That’s not what you’re doing.
Mr. Cohen. I’m trying to find out some information here. Ms. McMahon has indicated that she perhaps needs her memory to be refreshed, and I’m trying to do that if need be.
Mr. McDevitt. Now, yeah. But you were asking without names before, and she could have answered that question without names before if she had a memory of it.
Mr. Cohen. Well, she didn’t answer the question that way. She told me she had no knowledge.
Mr. McDevitt. Well—
Mr. Cohen. And then I asked a name and she, in fact, had knowledge of that name.
Mr. McDevitt. So that’s what we’re going to now do, go through the names of the roster and ask of this person and that person. This is definitely different from the letter that we received from the committee.
Mr. Cohen. I will not go through every specific name.
Mr. McDevitt. That went to great lengths to say we will not be asking for the individual drug test results of people or to turn over their results, and now you’re asking her whether John Cena has a testosterone use exemption.
Now, it is not that I would necessarily mind you getting the answer to that, quite frankly, but it frankly is contrary to what you are operating under with this Commission’s rules. And it is a violation of the privacy of these people. And there is not a drug testing program in America that can be run if the results of that are subject to congressional investigation. It won’t happen, Brian. I’m being honest with you. People will not do drug testing programs if that’s the result, that they get hauled into places like this and asked to reveal the results of drug tests. You will do more harm to people who are trying to do drug testing than you can imagine if you are going to start that process, Brian.
[majority senior investigative counsel David Leviss]. We are trying to understand, without the names, the number of individuals who have received medical use exemptions. And perhaps if at a break Ms. McMahon needs to go over a list of names off the record to refresh her recollection, we’re happy to entertain that.
Mr. McDevitt. I’m sorry, I have to say I think that’s disingenuous. You have from Dr. Black documents that show you the number of people who got TUEs. You have had him in here, you have graphs of it, you know the answer to that question without identities. You got it right from Dr. Black. So that’s not what you are trying to do. You know the number of TUEs.
Now you’re trying to put names to them, and that’s what you are trying to do by questioning them. Dr. Black gave you that information. I know he gave you that information. We gave you that information. You have information on the number of TUEs. She’s told you this morning that there’s two people who have been sent to endocrinologists to evaluate TUEs. She told you that this morning without names.
[minority counsel Jennifer Safavian]. And I would agree. I don’t think on the record we should put names unless it is public information, because I don’t know what’s going to happen with this transcript so I don’t think we need the names.
Mr. Cohen. We’ll move on.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Before we do, I would like to refresh your memory one more time if you can remember whether any — aside from Mr. Benoit whether any top WWE stars, whether any WWE champions, whether you have been made aware of whether that talent has received a medical use exemption for testosterone –
Mr. McDevitt. If you have something to refresh her recollection, give it to her. I mean, to say “refresh your recollection,” it doesn’t give her anything to refresh her recollection
BY MR. COHEN:
Q I’m going to ask the question one more time. Do you have any recollection or knowledge of any top WWE stars or WWE champions, aside from Mr. Benoit, who received medical use exemptions?
A No, not specifically, I don’t.
The Ted Mann story in The Day yesterday, reviewing Linda McMahon’s December 13, 2007, interview by the staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, then chaired by Henry Waxman, has an important offshoot: a hint that John Cena, the top star of World Wrestling Entertainment, might be taking prescribed testosterone under a WWE Wellness Policy “therapeutic use exemption.”
I start this analysis of Mann’s reporting by disagreeing with the journalistic decision there to slip this potential Cena bombshell between the lines. Personally, when I have something to say, I prefer to come right out and say it. I don’t know any more than Mann whether Cena is clean. I do know there is a very slim probability that Cena (who has been a bodybuilder as well as a pro wrestler) looks the way he looks without ever using anabolic steroids.
I further know that Cena, the face of WWE, has grown a nose longer than Pinocchio’s for the things he has said in media interviews pushing the company line about its Orwellian “wellness policy” subsequent to the June 2007 Chris Benoit murder-suicide.
All told, the public dialogue is hamstrung by neuroses with respect to the public health problem of drugs in sports, sports entertainment, and society at large. My own general response is a philosophy that “more is more.”
In that spirit, here is the whole record behind the Cena reference, beginning with the explosive complete passage itself in The Day:
As in the 1994 [federal] trial [of Vince McMahon and WWE’s predecessor company], [lawyer Jerry] McDevitt aggressively countered the would-be [Congressional staff] interrogators of the company [in 2007], frequently charging them with engaging [Linda] McMahon in a “memory test” over the results of drug tests on individual wrestlers, and the identities of the “two or three” wrestlers, like Benoit and John Cena, who investigators believed had been given exemptions by the WWE to take testosterone as part of a hormone replacement therapy sometimes linked to past steroid use.
In a conversation yesterday, Mann clarified that he was not asserting that Cena took testosterone or had been granted a “TUE.” The context is that the Congressional investigators had been told that Benoit had a TUE and they were pressing Linda McMahon on whether Cena had one, as well.
Was Cena’s name dropped by investigators after unearthing “probable cause” in earlier interviews – most notably with David Black, the WWE drug-testing administrator? Or was it just a “fishing expedition”? That is not entirely clear from the transcript below. And I’m sure that if I ask Brian Cohen, the Waxman committee’s senior investigator and policy advisor, he won’t help us out.
But don’t feel sorry for Cena. After Benoit went on his homicidal-suicidal spree, WWE put out the story that he had passed his drug tests; the truth was that Benoit had ridiculous levels of testosterone covered by a TUE. In July 2007 the toxicology report showed an off-the-charts testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of 59-to-1, but WWE’s misleading line – “spin” is far too kind – was that that Benoit came up “negative for anabolic steroids.”
Folks, testosterone is the clinical generic of an anabolic steroid. This was analogous to saying Benoit was loaded with hospital-supplied morphine, but no worries, morphine ain’t street heroin.
Cena pushed the same malarkey on Larry King Live. “[T]he media kind of jump to conclusions,” Cena told the reliably pliant King. “You can see that Dr. Kris Sperry [Georgia medical examiner] said that there were elevated levels of testosterone. Chris tested clean for all anabolic steroids. Granted, the testosterone levels were high. But Kris Sperry also went on to state that even with his elevated levels of testosterone, there is no link between high testosterone level and the behavior that happened in the Chris Benoit murder.”
Cena said Benoit “obviously” supplemented testosterone “between April,” the date of his last WWE drug test, “and the time of the tragedy.”
Asked why Benoit would take testosterone supplementation, Cena said, “I’m not a doctor, Larry, I don’t know.... I can’t give you an educated answer, so I don’t even want to theorize.”
(Here’s why: Benoit had abused steroids so long and so much that his endocrine system had stopped functioning, and he needed prescription testosterone to keep functioning as a man. Coincidentally, the dosage also allowed him, at age 40, to maintain the cartoon look required for his WWE character.)
OK, on to the full background for The Day’s reference to Cena yesterday vis-Ã -vis Linda McMahon’s Waxman committee staff interview. See the bottom of this post for the relevant language, pages 110 through 114 of the transcript.
The complete 162-page transcript can be viewed at http://muchnick.net/lindawaxman.pdf. For students of the McMahon Senate candidacy, this is required reading on the syllabus, along with such items on this blog as her involvement in obstructing the federal investigations of the company steroid doctor, and of her husband and the company itself; and her absurd disclosure form to the Connecticut legislature at the time of her nomination to the state board of education in January 2009, stating that she had no known controversies in her past.
Irv Muchnick
***************
[Brian Cohen] Q Were you aware of any other current or former WWE champions or top stars in WWE who have received therapeutic use exemptions, medical use exemptions for the use of testosterone?
[Linda McMahon] A Not as I sit here this moment. Like Benoit, you brought up and refreshed my memory –
Q Right.
A If you have others to bring up, I’m happy – you know, it is a memory test. I can’t remember it all. I’d be happy to tell you what I know. I’m happy to share with you, I’m not trying to hold back information from you at all.
Q That’s fine. I guess I will just ask you to take a few seconds to refresh your memory and think about whether it has come to your attention that any of the champions or the top stars at WWE have received medical use exemptions?
A I can’t think of any right now.
Q Are you aware of whether John Cena has received a medical use exemption?
Mr. McDevitt. You know, stop. You’re now going into individual drug test results, I mean you are; I mean you have been.
Mr. Cohen. Jerry, I asked a very specific question before.
Mr. McDevitt. Well, I know.
Mr. Cohen. I asked it as general as possible.
Mr. McDevitt. But that’s still–
Mr. Cohen. I then asked a very specific question and was given a different answer to that question.
Mr. McDevitt. That’s not what you’re doing.
Mr. Cohen. I’m trying to find out some information here. Ms. McMahon has indicated that she perhaps needs her memory to be refreshed, and I’m trying to do that if need be.
Mr. McDevitt. Now, yeah. But you were asking without names before, and she could have answered that question without names before if she had a memory of it.
Mr. Cohen. Well, she didn’t answer the question that way. She told me she had no knowledge.
Mr. McDevitt. Well—
Mr. Cohen. And then I asked a name and she, in fact, had knowledge of that name.
Mr. McDevitt. So that’s what we’re going to now do, go through the names of the roster and ask of this person and that person. This is definitely different from the letter that we received from the committee.
Mr. Cohen. I will not go through every specific name.
Mr. McDevitt. That went to great lengths to say we will not be asking for the individual drug test results of people or to turn over their results, and now you’re asking her whether John Cena has a testosterone use exemption.
Now, it is not that I would necessarily mind you getting the answer to that, quite frankly, but it frankly is contrary to what you are operating under with this Commission’s rules. And it is a violation of the privacy of these people. And there is not a drug testing program in America that can be run if the results of that are subject to congressional investigation. It won’t happen, Brian. I’m being honest with you. People will not do drug testing programs if that’s the result, that they get hauled into places like this and asked to reveal the results of drug tests. You will do more harm to people who are trying to do drug testing than you can imagine if you are going to start that process, Brian.
[majority senior investigative counsel David Leviss]. We are trying to understand, without the names, the number of individuals who have received medical use exemptions. And perhaps if at a break Ms. McMahon needs to go over a list of names off the record to refresh her recollection, we’re happy to entertain that.
Mr. McDevitt. I’m sorry, I have to say I think that’s disingenuous. You have from Dr. Black documents that show you the number of people who got TUEs. You have had him in here, you have graphs of it, you know the answer to that question without identities. You got it right from Dr. Black. So that’s not what you are trying to do. You know the number of TUEs.
Now you’re trying to put names to them, and that’s what you are trying to do by questioning them. Dr. Black gave you that information. I know he gave you that information. We gave you that information. You have information on the number of TUEs. She’s told you this morning that there’s two people who have been sent to endocrinologists to evaluate TUEs. She told you that this morning without names.
[minority counsel Jennifer Safavian]. And I would agree. I don’t think on the record we should put names unless it is public information, because I don’t know what’s going to happen with this transcript so I don’t think we need the names.
Mr. Cohen. We’ll move on.
BY MR. COHEN:
Q Before we do, I would like to refresh your memory one more time if you can remember whether any — aside from Mr. Benoit whether any top WWE stars, whether any WWE champions, whether you have been made aware of whether that talent has received a medical use exemption for testosterone –
Mr. McDevitt. If you have something to refresh her recollection, give it to her. I mean, to say “refresh your recollection,” it doesn’t give her anything to refresh her recollection
BY MR. COHEN:
Q I’m going to ask the question one more time. Do you have any recollection or knowledge of any top WWE stars or WWE champions, aside from Mr. Benoit, who received medical use exemptions?
A No, not specifically, I don’t.
What Happened to Vince? Your McMahon Campaign Tabloid Teaser for This Week
[posted 6/9/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Linda McMahon’s husband Vince showed up at the World Wrestling Entertainment television shoot in Miami on Monday with “two black eyes, and a cut over one eye that went to his forehead.” Meltzer continues:
“Nobody seemed to know what happened. It was described to me as something everybody was whispering about very privately, but nobody wanted to say something aloud about for fear they might be heard. Vince never addressed it and if anyone asked Vince, they weren’t telling anyone what he said. It looked like he was either in a fight or some kind of an accident. Most figured the latter if only because it if was a fight, it would be hard to be kept quiet.”
Irv Muchnick
Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Linda McMahon’s husband Vince showed up at the World Wrestling Entertainment television shoot in Miami on Monday with “two black eyes, and a cut over one eye that went to his forehead.” Meltzer continues:
“Nobody seemed to know what happened. It was described to me as something everybody was whispering about very privately, but nobody wanted to say something aloud about for fear they might be heard. Vince never addressed it and if anyone asked Vince, they weren’t telling anyone what he said. It looked like he was either in a fight or some kind of an accident. Most figured the latter if only because it if was a fight, it would be hard to be kept quiet.”
Irv Muchnick
Linda McMahon’s Lawyer: She Didn’t Know WWE Steroid Doc Was Dealing Right at the Arenas
[posted 6/9/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Ted Mann of The Day in New London today breaks down Linda McMahon’s December 2007 interview by staff investigators and attorneys for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee, then chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman, was investigating World Wrestling Entertainment’s Wellness Policy in the wake of the sensational June 2007 double murder/suicide of WWE star Chris Benoit.
With his earlier exclusive on McMahon’s 1989 memo ordering another wrestling executive to tip Dr. George Zahorian that he was under federal investigation for dealing steroids, Mann was already in front of fellow Connecticut journalists in exposing the important elements of this Senate candidate’s business past. Today’s story extends Mann’s lead. Go read “Deposition details McMahon steroid testimony,” http://www.theday.com/article/20100609/NWS12/306099933/1019&town=.
Where I can add to the public’s understanding is with respect to this passage of the Mann piece:
In an interview Tuesday, Jerry McDevitt, the lead attorney for the WWE who sat in on the deposition in 2007, said Linda McMahon meant to underscore that company officials had been unaware of Zahorian’s steroid sales when they occurred in the arenas where live wrestling performances were held in the late 1980s.
“She was talking about what was going on at the arenas,” he said, not suggesting that all of Zahorian’s activities were unknown to Vince and Linda McMahon.
Bullfeathers.
Yeah, Vince and Linda didn’t know “all” of Zahorian’s activities; for example, they probably didn’t know whether the good doctor golfed in his free time or invested his steroid-dealing profits in mutual funds. But the idea that the McMahons had no idea that Zahorian was pushing drugs at arenas in Pennsylvania, just before shows at which he was the state athletic commission-appointed ringside doctor, is laughable.
There is overwhelming evidence that, in addition to FedExing steroids and other pharmaceuticals to wrestlers (and to Vince McMahon himself) more or less on demand, Zahorian handed out what the McMahons’ chief aide, Pat Patterson, called “the boys’ candy” backstage prior to syndicated television tapings at the Lehigh County Agricultural Hall in Allentown in the early 1980s. The wrestlers lined up for their required blood-pressure tests. At their turns, they handed Dr. Z cash and he handed them their bags of goodies.
If Linda McMahon gets elected to the Senate, let’s hope she remembers details of nuclear test-ban treaties better than she seems to recall the steroid farm that she and her husband fertilized.
Irv Muchnick
Ted Mann of The Day in New London today breaks down Linda McMahon’s December 2007 interview by staff investigators and attorneys for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee, then chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman, was investigating World Wrestling Entertainment’s Wellness Policy in the wake of the sensational June 2007 double murder/suicide of WWE star Chris Benoit.
With his earlier exclusive on McMahon’s 1989 memo ordering another wrestling executive to tip Dr. George Zahorian that he was under federal investigation for dealing steroids, Mann was already in front of fellow Connecticut journalists in exposing the important elements of this Senate candidate’s business past. Today’s story extends Mann’s lead. Go read “Deposition details McMahon steroid testimony,” http://www.theday.com/article/20100609/NWS12/306099933/1019&town=.
Where I can add to the public’s understanding is with respect to this passage of the Mann piece:
In an interview Tuesday, Jerry McDevitt, the lead attorney for the WWE who sat in on the deposition in 2007, said Linda McMahon meant to underscore that company officials had been unaware of Zahorian’s steroid sales when they occurred in the arenas where live wrestling performances were held in the late 1980s.
“She was talking about what was going on at the arenas,” he said, not suggesting that all of Zahorian’s activities were unknown to Vince and Linda McMahon.
Bullfeathers.
Yeah, Vince and Linda didn’t know “all” of Zahorian’s activities; for example, they probably didn’t know whether the good doctor golfed in his free time or invested his steroid-dealing profits in mutual funds. But the idea that the McMahons had no idea that Zahorian was pushing drugs at arenas in Pennsylvania, just before shows at which he was the state athletic commission-appointed ringside doctor, is laughable.
There is overwhelming evidence that, in addition to FedExing steroids and other pharmaceuticals to wrestlers (and to Vince McMahon himself) more or less on demand, Zahorian handed out what the McMahons’ chief aide, Pat Patterson, called “the boys’ candy” backstage prior to syndicated television tapings at the Lehigh County Agricultural Hall in Allentown in the early 1980s. The wrestlers lined up for their required blood-pressure tests. At their turns, they handed Dr. Z cash and he handed them their bags of goodies.
If Linda McMahon gets elected to the Senate, let’s hope she remembers details of nuclear test-ban treaties better than she seems to recall the steroid farm that she and her husband fertilized.
Irv Muchnick
What's the Deal with Linda McMahon and Women?
[posted 6/7/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
As Linda McMahon’s campaign hits a rough patch, one topic no one is discussing in any depth is Linda and women.
Spending $50 million as the minority party candidate in a presidential off-year election, McMahon will not lose the Connecticut Senate election to Democrat Richard Blumenthal by 20-plus points. The polls will surely fluctuate between now and November.
But it’s clear from McMahon’s television commercials and mailers that she has relied heavily on a perceived gender gap. What I want to know is, Why?
Two other female former corporate CEO’s are likely Republican nominees for statewide office in California, where I live. Neither Meg Whitman (eBay, governor) nor Carly Fiorina (Hewlett-Packard, senator) has been nearly as explicit in pitching women. McMahon’s reliance here is also full of seeming contradictions, given what could reasonably be termed the misogynist content of World Wrestling Entertainment programming. I couch these words because I’m not particularly interested in getting into all that. Women don’t need a male commentator lecturing them on the standards, contradictions, and compromises of female power seekers. Bill Clinton’s wife made her choices, and Hugh Hefner’s daughter made hers, and now Vince McMahon’s wife apparently has made hers.
However, I do believe the sexual corporate climate at WWE is not only fair game but also a valuable indicator of this Senate candidate’s qualifications. See “Linda McMahon’s WWE and ESPN: Connecticut Cohorts in ‘Sports Entertainment’ and Sexual Harassment,” May 13, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/linda-mcmahons-wwe-and-espn-connecticut-cohorts-in-sports-entertainment-and-sexual-harassment/. So here’s yet another hitherto unreported story in that motif.
In March 2009 the former global licensing coordinator for WWE, Fara D’Angelo, filed a sexual discrimination and harassment civil suit against the company in U.S. District Court in Connecticut. The case is pending. D’Angelo alleges a long pattern of harassment by Alex Romer, WWE’s former London-based senior director of international consumer products, who is now a private consultant. According to the complaint (viewable at http://muchnick.net/dangelo.pdf), Mike Archer, WWE’s senior director of quality assurance, and Bernadette Hawkes, senior coordinator of quality assurance, both advised D’Angelo to look for another job when she reported Romer’s behavior to them.
I received no response to emails to both Romer in London and WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman in Stamford.
Irv Muchnick
As Linda McMahon’s campaign hits a rough patch, one topic no one is discussing in any depth is Linda and women.
Spending $50 million as the minority party candidate in a presidential off-year election, McMahon will not lose the Connecticut Senate election to Democrat Richard Blumenthal by 20-plus points. The polls will surely fluctuate between now and November.
But it’s clear from McMahon’s television commercials and mailers that she has relied heavily on a perceived gender gap. What I want to know is, Why?
Two other female former corporate CEO’s are likely Republican nominees for statewide office in California, where I live. Neither Meg Whitman (eBay, governor) nor Carly Fiorina (Hewlett-Packard, senator) has been nearly as explicit in pitching women. McMahon’s reliance here is also full of seeming contradictions, given what could reasonably be termed the misogynist content of World Wrestling Entertainment programming. I couch these words because I’m not particularly interested in getting into all that. Women don’t need a male commentator lecturing them on the standards, contradictions, and compromises of female power seekers. Bill Clinton’s wife made her choices, and Hugh Hefner’s daughter made hers, and now Vince McMahon’s wife apparently has made hers.
However, I do believe the sexual corporate climate at WWE is not only fair game but also a valuable indicator of this Senate candidate’s qualifications. See “Linda McMahon’s WWE and ESPN: Connecticut Cohorts in ‘Sports Entertainment’ and Sexual Harassment,” May 13, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/linda-mcmahons-wwe-and-espn-connecticut-cohorts-in-sports-entertainment-and-sexual-harassment/. So here’s yet another hitherto unreported story in that motif.
In March 2009 the former global licensing coordinator for WWE, Fara D’Angelo, filed a sexual discrimination and harassment civil suit against the company in U.S. District Court in Connecticut. The case is pending. D’Angelo alleges a long pattern of harassment by Alex Romer, WWE’s former London-based senior director of international consumer products, who is now a private consultant. According to the complaint (viewable at http://muchnick.net/dangelo.pdf), Mike Archer, WWE’s senior director of quality assurance, and Bernadette Hawkes, senior coordinator of quality assurance, both advised D’Angelo to look for another job when she reported Romer’s behavior to them.
I received no response to emails to both Romer in London and WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman in Stamford.
Irv Muchnick
NFL Severs Relationships With Past Concussion Docs — Does That Apply to WWE Medical Director Joseph Maroon?
[posted 6/3/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Alex Marvez, the senior pro football writer for FoxSports.com — who also writes a weekly syndicated pro wrestling column for Scripps-Howard News Service — yesterday updated the National Football League’s work on preventing concussions. As I’ll explain, the development also bears down indirectly on the NFL’s illegitimate stepbrother in recreational violence, World Wrestling Entertainment, whose face in electoral politics is Linda McMahon, the likely Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.
See Marvez’s “NFL to meet with concussion experts Wednesday,” http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/NFL-meeting-on-concussions-at-Johns-Hopkins-Baltimore-060110.
Dr. Hunt Batjer, the new co-chair of the NFL head/neck/spine committee, told The New York Times that the league sought “a complete severance from all prior relationships with that committee.”
This statement is a clear repudiation of the work of, among others, Dr. Joseph Maroon, a team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers who has been an NFL voice on the concussion issue, and who in 2008 also became medical director for World Wrestling Entertainment. Batjer’s new NFL co-chair, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, appeared on Marvez’s Sirirus satellite radio show, and Marvez wrote that the two doctors are “emphasizing a split from past research that has come under heavy fire from critics for being inaccurate, incomplete and/or ethically compromised.”
On this blog, I have been reporting extensively on the possible wide-ranging ethical compromises of the WWE medical team, especially the several members who, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Maroon’s UPMC colleague and WWE’s cardiologist, Dr. Bryan Donohue, co-founded an unregulated supplement company (whose product Maroon himself also endorses); meanwhile, across-the-board drug user and wrestler Eddie “Umaga” Fatu had an enlarged heart when he died in December 2009, six months after leaving WWE.
And Maroon himself participated in WWE’s lie to ESPN about access to the research on Chris Benoit’s damaged brain following his June 2007 double murder/suicide. Maroon had been right there at a presentation of the Benoit findings by doctors from the brain research institute at West Virginia University.
Three months ago Greg Aiello, an NFL spokesman, told me that Maroon was still on the league’s concussion committee. Has that changed?
The questions deepen about the efficacy and good faith of the WWE “Wellness Policy” developed under Senate candidate Linda McMahon, the company’s former CEO. Will that change?
Irv Muchnick
Alex Marvez, the senior pro football writer for FoxSports.com — who also writes a weekly syndicated pro wrestling column for Scripps-Howard News Service — yesterday updated the National Football League’s work on preventing concussions. As I’ll explain, the development also bears down indirectly on the NFL’s illegitimate stepbrother in recreational violence, World Wrestling Entertainment, whose face in electoral politics is Linda McMahon, the likely Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.
See Marvez’s “NFL to meet with concussion experts Wednesday,” http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/NFL-meeting-on-concussions-at-Johns-Hopkins-Baltimore-060110.
Dr. Hunt Batjer, the new co-chair of the NFL head/neck/spine committee, told The New York Times that the league sought “a complete severance from all prior relationships with that committee.”
This statement is a clear repudiation of the work of, among others, Dr. Joseph Maroon, a team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers who has been an NFL voice on the concussion issue, and who in 2008 also became medical director for World Wrestling Entertainment. Batjer’s new NFL co-chair, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, appeared on Marvez’s Sirirus satellite radio show, and Marvez wrote that the two doctors are “emphasizing a split from past research that has come under heavy fire from critics for being inaccurate, incomplete and/or ethically compromised.”
On this blog, I have been reporting extensively on the possible wide-ranging ethical compromises of the WWE medical team, especially the several members who, like Maroon, are based at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Maroon’s UPMC colleague and WWE’s cardiologist, Dr. Bryan Donohue, co-founded an unregulated supplement company (whose product Maroon himself also endorses); meanwhile, across-the-board drug user and wrestler Eddie “Umaga” Fatu had an enlarged heart when he died in December 2009, six months after leaving WWE.
And Maroon himself participated in WWE’s lie to ESPN about access to the research on Chris Benoit’s damaged brain following his June 2007 double murder/suicide. Maroon had been right there at a presentation of the Benoit findings by doctors from the brain research institute at West Virginia University.
Three months ago Greg Aiello, an NFL spokesman, told me that Maroon was still on the league’s concussion committee. Has that changed?
The questions deepen about the efficacy and good faith of the WWE “Wellness Policy” developed under Senate candidate Linda McMahon, the company’s former CEO. Will that change?
Irv Muchnick
Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam Semantics vs. Linda McMahon’s Insultingly Bad Business Memory
[posted 5/31/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The occasion of Memorial Day has intensified the dissatisfaction – in some quarters, disgust – over Richard Blumenthal’s occasional puffing up of his military record. Properly so, I think.
I also think Linda McMahon is taking extraneous darts over random and often pointless gotchas in her business record at World Wrestling Entertainment, when she should be facing howitzers for central elements of it.
Blumenthal has been loose with his language about serving in the Marine Reserves “in” rather than “during” the Vietnam War.
McMahon, for her part, has erected a no-credibility stone wall in front of her memory of a possible criminal act – obstruction of justice – and no one is calling her on it.
In December 1989, based on a tip she now says came from the U.S. attorney for the middle district of Pennsylvania, McMahon told an executive of her wrestling company to tip off their steroid connection, Dr. George Zahorian, that he was under federal investigation. Her accounting for this so far has consisted of this statement to Ted Mann of The Day in New London: “I don’t pretend to remember to go back, to revisit all the aspects of that case.”
There is a double irony in Linda McMahon’s refusal to “pretend to remember,” since just about everything about her qualifications for public office is based on pretend: it seems that she only pretended to be involved in highly profitable television sleaze; and she pretended to have a degree in education when Governor Jodi Rell appointed her to the state board of education.
But, of course, her assertion of a faulty memory alone deserves howls of derision. If McMahon can’t remember central facts of the central crisis of her business career, then how can she hold herself up as a serious candidate to discharge the public’s business?
This all reminds me of one of the three conversations I’ve ever had with Linda’s husband Vince McMahon, and the only substantive one. In 1992, as a stringer for People magazine, I broke the story that Hulk Hogan, licensor of a children’s vitamin line, was a steroid abuser and a druggie. (Shocker!) On deadline, Vince agreed to a damage-control phone interview.
At one point I asked him how much his then-World Wrestling Federation had had to pay to get ABC’s John Stossel to drop a lawsuit after wrestler David Shults slapped him silly on camera.
“I don’t remember the amount,” Vince replied.
I persisted. “I find it hard to believe that a CEO wouldn’t remember a number like that,” I said.
“Don’t insult me,” Vince said. “I said I don’t remember.”
This time it’s Linda who doesn’t remember. And the insult is on the people of Connecticut.
Irv Muchnick
The occasion of Memorial Day has intensified the dissatisfaction – in some quarters, disgust – over Richard Blumenthal’s occasional puffing up of his military record. Properly so, I think.
I also think Linda McMahon is taking extraneous darts over random and often pointless gotchas in her business record at World Wrestling Entertainment, when she should be facing howitzers for central elements of it.
Blumenthal has been loose with his language about serving in the Marine Reserves “in” rather than “during” the Vietnam War.
McMahon, for her part, has erected a no-credibility stone wall in front of her memory of a possible criminal act – obstruction of justice – and no one is calling her on it.
In December 1989, based on a tip she now says came from the U.S. attorney for the middle district of Pennsylvania, McMahon told an executive of her wrestling company to tip off their steroid connection, Dr. George Zahorian, that he was under federal investigation. Her accounting for this so far has consisted of this statement to Ted Mann of The Day in New London: “I don’t pretend to remember to go back, to revisit all the aspects of that case.”
There is a double irony in Linda McMahon’s refusal to “pretend to remember,” since just about everything about her qualifications for public office is based on pretend: it seems that she only pretended to be involved in highly profitable television sleaze; and she pretended to have a degree in education when Governor Jodi Rell appointed her to the state board of education.
But, of course, her assertion of a faulty memory alone deserves howls of derision. If McMahon can’t remember central facts of the central crisis of her business career, then how can she hold herself up as a serious candidate to discharge the public’s business?
This all reminds me of one of the three conversations I’ve ever had with Linda’s husband Vince McMahon, and the only substantive one. In 1992, as a stringer for People magazine, I broke the story that Hulk Hogan, licensor of a children’s vitamin line, was a steroid abuser and a druggie. (Shocker!) On deadline, Vince agreed to a damage-control phone interview.
At one point I asked him how much his then-World Wrestling Federation had had to pay to get ABC’s John Stossel to drop a lawsuit after wrestler David Shults slapped him silly on camera.
“I don’t remember the amount,” Vince replied.
I persisted. “I find it hard to believe that a CEO wouldn’t remember a number like that,” I said.
“Don’t insult me,” Vince said. “I said I don’t remember.”
This time it’s Linda who doesn’t remember. And the insult is on the people of Connecticut.
Irv Muchnick
Welcome to Linda McMahon’s Wide World of XFL Politics
[posted 5/30/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Anyone expecting me to take a frontal partisan shot at Kevin “Don’t Call Me Linda McMahon’s Mouthpiece” Rennie for his column in Sunday’s Hartford Courant will be disappointed. Rennie is just doing what he always does, and quite plausibly, in his column “Blumenthal, McMahon Approval Ratings Take A Beating,” http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-rennie-0530-20100530,0,2689091.column.
This veteran of Connecticut Republican circles, who has put all his eggs in the basket of McMahon’s faux-outsider credentials in a national political year of faux outsiders, actually makes a lot of sense at the retail level. Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam gaffe is more damaging than the snap Quinnipiac poll suggests. Linda McMahon’s Republican opponent Rob Simmons did try to have it both ways by backing out of the race after losing at the convention without really backing out.
Above all, Rennie is right when he observes that Linda and Vince McMahon don’t give a flying FU what the chattering class thinks of their dignity, tactics, or World Wrestling Entertainment pedigree. The Rennie line, “There are no pretty ways to build a fortune,” echoes another I have been quoting a lot on this blog: “Popular culture has always been a bit coarser than political leaders like to acknowledge.”
I don’t know how the Senate race will turn out. But what’s pretty clear already is that it is the political echo of the XFL football league. In 2001 the McMahons, cash-rich after a public stock offering, decided to export their pro wrestling marketing operation to pro football. Challenging the hegemony of the National Football League, they got their Fairfield County buddy, NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol, to convince network brass that an alternative spring football league could do no worse than the recycled movies and standard crap that was being broadcast on Saturday, the week’s slowest ratings night.
The McMahons and Ebersol were spectacularly wrong. The XFL made the cover of Sports Illustrated and got big numbers for the first week of its novelty act. Then it fell to record low levels.
The XFL was farcical history after one season. But not so fast with that epitaph: the frank coarseness of the product pushed the established NFL, which was already barreling in that direction anyway, into new frontiers of coarseness. Vince and Linda usually don’t win when they venture outside their comfort zone of “sports entertainment,” but they always leave footprints. Their anthropological role is to stick style points in our faces, and up our asses.
The McMahon-manufactured New York Times hit on Blumenthal and the surprise win at the Republican convention were Linda’s Sports Illustrated cover and premiere ratings smash. What remains to be seen is whether the general election cycle will simply take the XFL’s second-rate football to a new platform.
Here’s what neither Kevin Rennie nor his ideological adversaries ever completely grasp: the larger meaning of WrestleWorld isn’t its size, but its ability to export values when we’re not looking. Those values are now on display in the political arena, and they make the Willie Horton ads of the 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign look like the Lincoln-Douglas debates by comparison.
My guess is that Linda’s campaign will go the way of the XFL – that is, it will “lose,” not “win.” But like everyone else, I’m along for the ride to see what gruesome gimmick lies around the next corner. There are no pretty ways to find out if crudeness is just part of the package of statecraft, or has become its essence.
Irv Muchnick
Anyone expecting me to take a frontal partisan shot at Kevin “Don’t Call Me Linda McMahon’s Mouthpiece” Rennie for his column in Sunday’s Hartford Courant will be disappointed. Rennie is just doing what he always does, and quite plausibly, in his column “Blumenthal, McMahon Approval Ratings Take A Beating,” http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-rennie-0530-20100530,0,2689091.column.
This veteran of Connecticut Republican circles, who has put all his eggs in the basket of McMahon’s faux-outsider credentials in a national political year of faux outsiders, actually makes a lot of sense at the retail level. Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam gaffe is more damaging than the snap Quinnipiac poll suggests. Linda McMahon’s Republican opponent Rob Simmons did try to have it both ways by backing out of the race after losing at the convention without really backing out.
Above all, Rennie is right when he observes that Linda and Vince McMahon don’t give a flying FU what the chattering class thinks of their dignity, tactics, or World Wrestling Entertainment pedigree. The Rennie line, “There are no pretty ways to build a fortune,” echoes another I have been quoting a lot on this blog: “Popular culture has always been a bit coarser than political leaders like to acknowledge.”
I don’t know how the Senate race will turn out. But what’s pretty clear already is that it is the political echo of the XFL football league. In 2001 the McMahons, cash-rich after a public stock offering, decided to export their pro wrestling marketing operation to pro football. Challenging the hegemony of the National Football League, they got their Fairfield County buddy, NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol, to convince network brass that an alternative spring football league could do no worse than the recycled movies and standard crap that was being broadcast on Saturday, the week’s slowest ratings night.
The McMahons and Ebersol were spectacularly wrong. The XFL made the cover of Sports Illustrated and got big numbers for the first week of its novelty act. Then it fell to record low levels.
The XFL was farcical history after one season. But not so fast with that epitaph: the frank coarseness of the product pushed the established NFL, which was already barreling in that direction anyway, into new frontiers of coarseness. Vince and Linda usually don’t win when they venture outside their comfort zone of “sports entertainment,” but they always leave footprints. Their anthropological role is to stick style points in our faces, and up our asses.
The McMahon-manufactured New York Times hit on Blumenthal and the surprise win at the Republican convention were Linda’s Sports Illustrated cover and premiere ratings smash. What remains to be seen is whether the general election cycle will simply take the XFL’s second-rate football to a new platform.
Here’s what neither Kevin Rennie nor his ideological adversaries ever completely grasp: the larger meaning of WrestleWorld isn’t its size, but its ability to export values when we’re not looking. Those values are now on display in the political arena, and they make the Willie Horton ads of the 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign look like the Lincoln-Douglas debates by comparison.
My guess is that Linda’s campaign will go the way of the XFL – that is, it will “lose,” not “win.” But like everyone else, I’m along for the ride to see what gruesome gimmick lies around the next corner. There are no pretty ways to find out if crudeness is just part of the package of statecraft, or has become its essence.
Irv Muchnick
Forget Linda McMahon’s Daughter’s Bare Nipple – Take a Look at Her Sleazoid Son-in-Law’s ‘Nutritionist’
[posted 5/28/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
With a salaciousness that only this Connecticut Senate race can offer, David Collins of New London’s The Day writes today, “… Democrats have not yet rolled out the ads that surely will depict [Linda] McMahon presiding over an entertainment product juiced up with violence, prostitution, adultery and other topics not so conducive to a family values campaign. Some of it, like a picture of McMahon’s daughter in the World Wrestling Entertainment ring with a bare nipple showing, can’t even be used in opposition advertisements.” See http://www.theday.com/article/20100528/NWS05/305289883/-1/NWS.
As a public service, the ever-helpful Connecticut Capitol Report (http://ctcapitolreport.com) runs the photo of Stephanie McMahon Levesque’s enhanced mammaries. But believe me, viral emails of a bare boob are comparatively tame stuff.
My friend Anthony Roberts, “the CNN of steroids,” reports that a customer of the supplement company owned by Dave Palumbo, the “nutritionist” for Stephanie’s husband Paul “Triple H” Levesque, this week filed a civil lawsuit in New York against Palumbo and his Species Nutrition line. The plaintiff, Maria Bezrodnaya, alleges that the products “Lipolyze” and “Somalyze” caused her to sustain near-fatal liver injuries.
Dave Palumbo was already well known as one of the dirtiest of the many dirty characters who have pushed supplements through articles in publications like Muscular Development magazine. At one point he was imprisoned for selling fake Human Growth Hormone – all the while giving it his unabashed endorsement, claiming his own freakish physique was a result of a product that, in fact, was simply sugar water (and unsterilized sugar water at that). After his release from prison, Palumbo became Triple H’s personal trainer.
“Palumbo is known as a steroid guru more than anything else,” Anthony Roberts tells me. “In the bodybuilding world, the terms ‘nutritionist’ and ‘steroid advisor’ are synonymous. Dave’s ‘contest prep’ services include designing steroid cycles.”
Roberts says the new lawsuit against Palumbo exposes “that what he is telling the public in the promotion of his products is in direct contradiction to what has been documented by medical experts.”
Roberts’ blog post, “Personal injury lawsuit filed against Species Nutrition – and more!”, is at http://www.anthonyroberts.co.za/2010/05/personal-injury-lawsuit-filed-against-species-nutrition-and-more/.
As I’ve reported previously on this blog, the consulting cardiologist for WWE’s so-called Wellness Policy – Dr. Bryan Donohue of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – is also a founder of an unregulated supplement company, and sometimes hypes his product without even disclosing his equity interest. Meanwhile, wrestler Eddie “Umaga” Fatu died last December, six months after leaving WWE, and the autopsy showed that he had an enlarged heart.
Irv Muchnick
With a salaciousness that only this Connecticut Senate race can offer, David Collins of New London’s The Day writes today, “… Democrats have not yet rolled out the ads that surely will depict [Linda] McMahon presiding over an entertainment product juiced up with violence, prostitution, adultery and other topics not so conducive to a family values campaign. Some of it, like a picture of McMahon’s daughter in the World Wrestling Entertainment ring with a bare nipple showing, can’t even be used in opposition advertisements.” See http://www.theday.com/article/20100528/NWS05/305289883/-1/NWS.
As a public service, the ever-helpful Connecticut Capitol Report (http://ctcapitolreport.com) runs the photo of Stephanie McMahon Levesque’s enhanced mammaries. But believe me, viral emails of a bare boob are comparatively tame stuff.
My friend Anthony Roberts, “the CNN of steroids,” reports that a customer of the supplement company owned by Dave Palumbo, the “nutritionist” for Stephanie’s husband Paul “Triple H” Levesque, this week filed a civil lawsuit in New York against Palumbo and his Species Nutrition line. The plaintiff, Maria Bezrodnaya, alleges that the products “Lipolyze” and “Somalyze” caused her to sustain near-fatal liver injuries.
Dave Palumbo was already well known as one of the dirtiest of the many dirty characters who have pushed supplements through articles in publications like Muscular Development magazine. At one point he was imprisoned for selling fake Human Growth Hormone – all the while giving it his unabashed endorsement, claiming his own freakish physique was a result of a product that, in fact, was simply sugar water (and unsterilized sugar water at that). After his release from prison, Palumbo became Triple H’s personal trainer.
“Palumbo is known as a steroid guru more than anything else,” Anthony Roberts tells me. “In the bodybuilding world, the terms ‘nutritionist’ and ‘steroid advisor’ are synonymous. Dave’s ‘contest prep’ services include designing steroid cycles.”
Roberts says the new lawsuit against Palumbo exposes “that what he is telling the public in the promotion of his products is in direct contradiction to what has been documented by medical experts.”
Roberts’ blog post, “Personal injury lawsuit filed against Species Nutrition – and more!”, is at http://www.anthonyroberts.co.za/2010/05/personal-injury-lawsuit-filed-against-species-nutrition-and-more/.
As I’ve reported previously on this blog, the consulting cardiologist for WWE’s so-called Wellness Policy – Dr. Bryan Donohue of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – is also a founder of an unregulated supplement company, and sometimes hypes his product without even disclosing his equity interest. Meanwhile, wrestler Eddie “Umaga” Fatu died last December, six months after leaving WWE, and the autopsy showed that he had an enlarged heart.
Irv Muchnick
Friday, June 11, 2010
Let’s Match Up the Records of ‘War Liar’ Blumenthal and ‘Panderer’ McMahon
[posted 5/27/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
I think everyone will agree that I have sucked up quite enough to Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal Inquirer. His latest column, “Which will hurt more: ‘war liar’ or ‘panderer’?”, http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/27/chris_powell/doc4bfd8a5a6c0d5972894794.txt, has the Richard Blumenthal vs. Linda McMahon dynamic only half-right.
There’s no quarrel with this thought: “Here’s betting that while they make this year’s U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut the most poisonous in history, [the two mud-slinging points] largely cancel each other out.”
Nor with this: “With such tempting material for character assassination, the Senate campaign is sure to be waged mainly through sneering commercials on TV and radio, a stimulus plan for broadcasters, who are given their licenses on the public’s airwaves for free and then allowed to charge the country to have a democracy.”
But Powell stumbles into the same sound-bite simplicity he deplores when he lets McMahon’s business off the hook by calling it “grotesque,” and leaving it at that.
The problem with World Wrestling Entertainment isn’t that it’s grotesque, overly violent, or overly sexed. The problem with WWE — and with the Senate candidate made by it — isn’t that it’s “borderline-pornographic.” That’s the phrase used today by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, a variation on Powell’s “grotesque,” echoing that of Chris Hedges’ awful book, Empire of Illusion (see my review here). What’s with this “borderline” stuff, anyway? And who cares?
I’d like to hear a little talk about the structure, not the TV content, of McMahon’s business. More than a little talk — a little reporting. Her WWE’s jobs in Connecticut (which also come and go by the grace of corporate expansion and contraction, and without reference to the McMahon family’s windfall stock dividends, enabled by tax breaks) are a function of a no-benefits independent contractor work force of performers who drop dead in impossible numbers — proportions far exceeding those of rock stars or football or baseball players. But thanks to Vince and Linda McMahon’s money and political connections in both parties, and both inside Connecticut and inside the Washington Beltway, a Congressional investigation following the 2007 Chris Benoit murder-suicide fizzled.
The McMahons also arguably obstructed justice — engaged, if you will, in “borderline criminality” — decades after Blumenthal, like many others of his generation (including, apparently, Vince McMahon) used deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam. To his discredit, Blumenthal has played fast and loose with the truth about his military service. For Vince, his lack of any military service seems to be an almost uniquely untouched subject for lying.
This year, unless Connecticut journalists (including those supervised by Journal Inquirer managing editor Powell) get on the stick, another opportunity to clean up that sleazy industry will fizzle.
I say, let’s put up Richard Blumenthal’s record as state attorney general against Linda McMahon’s record as CEO of a publicly traded corporation with a billion-dollar market cap. I hold no brief for Blumenthal; that his record includes its quota, or more, of manipulation and grandstanding is a given.
But what we need here isn’t smackdown, folks. It’s straight-up.
Irv Muchnick
I think everyone will agree that I have sucked up quite enough to Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal Inquirer. His latest column, “Which will hurt more: ‘war liar’ or ‘panderer’?”, http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/27/chris_powell/doc4bfd8a5a6c0d5972894794.txt, has the Richard Blumenthal vs. Linda McMahon dynamic only half-right.
There’s no quarrel with this thought: “Here’s betting that while they make this year’s U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut the most poisonous in history, [the two mud-slinging points] largely cancel each other out.”
Nor with this: “With such tempting material for character assassination, the Senate campaign is sure to be waged mainly through sneering commercials on TV and radio, a stimulus plan for broadcasters, who are given their licenses on the public’s airwaves for free and then allowed to charge the country to have a democracy.”
But Powell stumbles into the same sound-bite simplicity he deplores when he lets McMahon’s business off the hook by calling it “grotesque,” and leaving it at that.
The problem with World Wrestling Entertainment isn’t that it’s grotesque, overly violent, or overly sexed. The problem with WWE — and with the Senate candidate made by it — isn’t that it’s “borderline-pornographic.” That’s the phrase used today by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, a variation on Powell’s “grotesque,” echoing that of Chris Hedges’ awful book, Empire of Illusion (see my review here). What’s with this “borderline” stuff, anyway? And who cares?
I’d like to hear a little talk about the structure, not the TV content, of McMahon’s business. More than a little talk — a little reporting. Her WWE’s jobs in Connecticut (which also come and go by the grace of corporate expansion and contraction, and without reference to the McMahon family’s windfall stock dividends, enabled by tax breaks) are a function of a no-benefits independent contractor work force of performers who drop dead in impossible numbers — proportions far exceeding those of rock stars or football or baseball players. But thanks to Vince and Linda McMahon’s money and political connections in both parties, and both inside Connecticut and inside the Washington Beltway, a Congressional investigation following the 2007 Chris Benoit murder-suicide fizzled.
The McMahons also arguably obstructed justice — engaged, if you will, in “borderline criminality” — decades after Blumenthal, like many others of his generation (including, apparently, Vince McMahon) used deferments to avoid military service in Vietnam. To his discredit, Blumenthal has played fast and loose with the truth about his military service. For Vince, his lack of any military service seems to be an almost uniquely untouched subject for lying.
This year, unless Connecticut journalists (including those supervised by Journal Inquirer managing editor Powell) get on the stick, another opportunity to clean up that sleazy industry will fizzle.
I say, let’s put up Richard Blumenthal’s record as state attorney general against Linda McMahon’s record as CEO of a publicly traded corporation with a billion-dollar market cap. I hold no brief for Blumenthal; that his record includes its quota, or more, of manipulation and grandstanding is a given.
But what we need here isn’t smackdown, folks. It’s straight-up.
Irv Muchnick
Muchnick Flashback — ‘Linda McMahon Campaign Coverage: A Guide for the Perplexed’
[posted 5/27/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Originally published here on April 12.
TED MANN, New London Day: Broward County records reveal that Linda McMahon operated an international slave trade out of her husband Vince’s yacht, the Sexy Bitch, in Boca Raton, Florida.
IRV MUCHNICK, Wrestling Babylon Blog: As I show in my book CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, the mainstream media focus too much on trivial issues. The real story here is how many slaves died in transit.
@jodilatina on Twitter: See the latest YouTube video of Linda wowing them at the Naugatuck Valley branch of the Ladies Aid & Missionary Society! Followed by Linda and Kate Snow in a pie-throwing contest on NBC’s Dateline!
ROB SIMMONS: When I was a CIA agent I helped coordinate several undercover operations to disrupt the slave trade.
PETER SCHIFF: The point is that we can’t grow the economy until we get government off the backs of slave traders.
RICK GREEN, Hartford Courant: Who wore the hotter-looking suit on Dateline – Linda or Kate Snow?
SUSAN BYSIEWICZ: I am eminently qualified to make legal rulings on the slave trade of the Republican from whom I received campaign contributions and whom I then endorsed for the state Board of Education, where she served even longer than I ran for governor.
BRIAN LOCKHART, Stamford Advocate: According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, it doesn’t matter.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: As attorney general, I vigorously prosecuted Connecticut’s slave traders. As senator, I will do everything in my power to support them.
SUZAN BIBISI: This interview is over. Ms. McMahon is running behind schedule for her shoot on “The View.”
KEVIN RENNIE, Hartford Courant columnist and former state legislator: A slave trader with a slick media campaign vs. a guy who voted for card check when he was in the House of Representatives? No contest.
CHRIS HEALY, state Republican Party chair: What did you say, Kevin? Linda’s check to Suzan didn’t clear yet?
RAHM EMANUEL: President Obama supports our troops and I take campaign contributions from wherever I can find them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fucking retarded.
LINDA McMAHON: I don’t remember any of this. It happened yesterday and we should be talking about the future not the past. WWE is constantly evolving its slave-trade practices. We need a senator who will incentivize small business with an independent-contractor work force and plenty of corporate tax breaks.
VINCE McMAHON: [unseen and unheard]
THE WASHINGTON POST: Poised and well-spoken, Linda McMahon makes for a surprisingly strong candidate. According to our exclusive inside industry source, George “The Animal” Steele, the allegations against WWE were dismissed back when he was still teaching PE at a Detroit high school.
DAVE MELTZER, Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Everything that everyone else has just said, I already knew.
JERRY McDEVITT, WWE lawyer: Not only have you implied that Linda McMahon became a near-billionaire – giving her the resources to run a self-funded $50 million campaign – via profits from a sleazy business. You are also casting innuendos that she may have been involved in criminal activity. I am researching whether these statements breach the “reckless disregard for the truth” libel standard of New York Times v. Sullivan….
LOWELL WEICKER, WWE board member: Stop it right now, all you ankle-biting midgets! I am in favor of health-care reform, except as it might apply to the occupational health and safety standards of this company. I have a solemn fiduciary responsibility to our stockholders, including me.
TOM DUDCHIK, Connecticut Capitol Report: Moosup police break up dog-fighting ring; mayor says “at least the curs had balls that clank, like Weicker”; click HERE for photos of the foxiest state TV news babes.
Irv Muchnick
Originally published here on April 12.
TED MANN, New London Day: Broward County records reveal that Linda McMahon operated an international slave trade out of her husband Vince’s yacht, the Sexy Bitch, in Boca Raton, Florida.
IRV MUCHNICK, Wrestling Babylon Blog: As I show in my book CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, the mainstream media focus too much on trivial issues. The real story here is how many slaves died in transit.
@jodilatina on Twitter: See the latest YouTube video of Linda wowing them at the Naugatuck Valley branch of the Ladies Aid & Missionary Society! Followed by Linda and Kate Snow in a pie-throwing contest on NBC’s Dateline!
ROB SIMMONS: When I was a CIA agent I helped coordinate several undercover operations to disrupt the slave trade.
PETER SCHIFF: The point is that we can’t grow the economy until we get government off the backs of slave traders.
RICK GREEN, Hartford Courant: Who wore the hotter-looking suit on Dateline – Linda or Kate Snow?
SUSAN BYSIEWICZ: I am eminently qualified to make legal rulings on the slave trade of the Republican from whom I received campaign contributions and whom I then endorsed for the state Board of Education, where she served even longer than I ran for governor.
BRIAN LOCKHART, Stamford Advocate: According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, it doesn’t matter.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: As attorney general, I vigorously prosecuted Connecticut’s slave traders. As senator, I will do everything in my power to support them.
SUZAN BIBISI: This interview is over. Ms. McMahon is running behind schedule for her shoot on “The View.”
KEVIN RENNIE, Hartford Courant columnist and former state legislator: A slave trader with a slick media campaign vs. a guy who voted for card check when he was in the House of Representatives? No contest.
CHRIS HEALY, state Republican Party chair: What did you say, Kevin? Linda’s check to Suzan didn’t clear yet?
RAHM EMANUEL: President Obama supports our troops and I take campaign contributions from wherever I can find them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fucking retarded.
LINDA McMAHON: I don’t remember any of this. It happened yesterday and we should be talking about the future not the past. WWE is constantly evolving its slave-trade practices. We need a senator who will incentivize small business with an independent-contractor work force and plenty of corporate tax breaks.
VINCE McMAHON: [unseen and unheard]
THE WASHINGTON POST: Poised and well-spoken, Linda McMahon makes for a surprisingly strong candidate. According to our exclusive inside industry source, George “The Animal” Steele, the allegations against WWE were dismissed back when he was still teaching PE at a Detroit high school.
DAVE MELTZER, Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Everything that everyone else has just said, I already knew.
JERRY McDEVITT, WWE lawyer: Not only have you implied that Linda McMahon became a near-billionaire – giving her the resources to run a self-funded $50 million campaign – via profits from a sleazy business. You are also casting innuendos that she may have been involved in criminal activity. I am researching whether these statements breach the “reckless disregard for the truth” libel standard of New York Times v. Sullivan….
LOWELL WEICKER, WWE board member: Stop it right now, all you ankle-biting midgets! I am in favor of health-care reform, except as it might apply to the occupational health and safety standards of this company. I have a solemn fiduciary responsibility to our stockholders, including me.
TOM DUDCHIK, Connecticut Capitol Report: Moosup police break up dog-fighting ring; mayor says “at least the curs had balls that clank, like Weicker”; click HERE for photos of the foxiest state TV news babes.
Irv Muchnick
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Take The New York Times’ Gail Collins on Linda McMahon ... PLEASE!
[posted 5/25/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
Today New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins (who once worked for the Hartford Courant) pulls out her joke book and legitimizes all the one-liners out there about the Senate candidacy of Linda McMahon.
See “Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire?”, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27collins.html.
The main difference between Gail “Please Don’t Confuse Me With Maureen Dowd” Collins and Jerry “The King” Lawler, the sidekick announcer on Monday Night Raw, is that Lawler mostly knows what he’s talking about when he makes pro wrestling references.
If The Times wants to contribute to the national IQ, it can do some real reporting on World Wrestling Entertainment’s death pandemic, and history of sexual harassment (both hetero- and homosexual varieties) and obstruction of justice.
Irv Muchnick
Today New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins (who once worked for the Hartford Courant) pulls out her joke book and legitimizes all the one-liners out there about the Senate candidacy of Linda McMahon.
See “Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire?”, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27collins.html.
The main difference between Gail “Please Don’t Confuse Me With Maureen Dowd” Collins and Jerry “The King” Lawler, the sidekick announcer on Monday Night Raw, is that Lawler mostly knows what he’s talking about when he makes pro wrestling references.
If The Times wants to contribute to the national IQ, it can do some real reporting on World Wrestling Entertainment’s death pandemic, and history of sexual harassment (both hetero- and homosexual varieties) and obstruction of justice.
Irv Muchnick
Hearst Picks Up WWE Sexual Harassment Story
[posted 5/25/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
The Connecticut Post and other Hearst newspapers in Connecticut are reporting the story, first broken here on May 10, about the departure of World Wrestling Entertainment’s executive vice president and general counsel, Jared Bartie, following an allegation that he sexually harassed another company manager during WrestleMania week in Arizona in late March.
See “WWE denies exec fired over sexual harassment,” by business reporter Michael C. Juliano, ” http://www.ctpost.com/business/article/WWE-denies-exec-fired-over-sexual-harassment-499926.php.
The story mostly rehashes other rewrites that have appeared in a range of other publications, including the website of American Lawyer Media’s Corporate Counsel magazine. But credit Hearst with quoting me as asserting that “WWE has a long history and culture of sexual harassment,” including claims “in the past against WWE founder Vince McMahon.” (The article tactfully refrains from noting that Vince McMahon’s spouse and WWE’s other founder, Linda McMahon, is the Republican candidate for Connecticut’s open U.S. Senate seat.)
WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman told Hearst’s Juliano that the company “neither responds to Muchnick nor comments on personnel matters.”
Irv Muchnick
The Connecticut Post and other Hearst newspapers in Connecticut are reporting the story, first broken here on May 10, about the departure of World Wrestling Entertainment’s executive vice president and general counsel, Jared Bartie, following an allegation that he sexually harassed another company manager during WrestleMania week in Arizona in late March.
See “WWE denies exec fired over sexual harassment,” by business reporter Michael C. Juliano, ” http://www.ctpost.com/business/article/WWE-denies-exec-fired-over-sexual-harassment-499926.php.
The story mostly rehashes other rewrites that have appeared in a range of other publications, including the website of American Lawyer Media’s Corporate Counsel magazine. But credit Hearst with quoting me as asserting that “WWE has a long history and culture of sexual harassment,” including claims “in the past against WWE founder Vince McMahon.” (The article tactfully refrains from noting that Vince McMahon’s spouse and WWE’s other founder, Linda McMahon, is the Republican candidate for Connecticut’s open U.S. Senate seat.)
WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman told Hearst’s Juliano that the company “neither responds to Muchnick nor comments on personnel matters.”
Irv Muchnick
Richard Blumenthal Campaign Clears Its Throat in First Linda McMahon Attack
[posted 5/25/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
According to RealClearPolitics.com, Mindy Myers, the campaign manager for Richard Blumenthal, today said:
“The people of Connecticut face a clear, stark choice between Dick Blumenthal, who will continue standing up for them against powerful interests on issues that matter, like their jobs and health care, and Linda McMahon’s self interest that’s gained her multi-million dollar profits peddling steroid-fueled violence to our kids, exploiting her workers, and obstructing investigations into possible crimes under her watch.”
The professional politico rhetoricians can break that one down. For my money, the first of the Big Three of anti-Linda talking points, “steroid-fueled violence,” which could just as easily be describing the NFL, has been pushed hard and not been shown to make much of a difference to potential McMahon voters.
Missing from the other two bullets is the word that best summarizes the funding source of the Linda McMahon campaign: death. Consciousness of the unacceptable cluster of lost lives in the pro wrestling industry is what will transform lines about independent-contractor abuse and big-business-enabled obstruction of justice from attack boilerplate to an understanding of what is truly decadent about World Wrestling Entertainment, a late-empire pop-culture phenomenon that now seeks out-and-out temporal power.
Irv Muchnick
According to RealClearPolitics.com, Mindy Myers, the campaign manager for Richard Blumenthal, today said:
“The people of Connecticut face a clear, stark choice between Dick Blumenthal, who will continue standing up for them against powerful interests on issues that matter, like their jobs and health care, and Linda McMahon’s self interest that’s gained her multi-million dollar profits peddling steroid-fueled violence to our kids, exploiting her workers, and obstructing investigations into possible crimes under her watch.”
The professional politico rhetoricians can break that one down. For my money, the first of the Big Three of anti-Linda talking points, “steroid-fueled violence,” which could just as easily be describing the NFL, has been pushed hard and not been shown to make much of a difference to potential McMahon voters.
Missing from the other two bullets is the word that best summarizes the funding source of the Linda McMahon campaign: death. Consciousness of the unacceptable cluster of lost lives in the pro wrestling industry is what will transform lines about independent-contractor abuse and big-business-enabled obstruction of justice from attack boilerplate to an understanding of what is truly decadent about World Wrestling Entertainment, a late-empire pop-culture phenomenon that now seeks out-and-out temporal power.
Irv Muchnick
Rob Simmons Quits Senate Race
[posted 5/24/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
As announced today.
The nuances — Simmons didn’t remove his name from the ballot for the August primary, etc. — are unimportant for my purposes.
Irv Muchnick
As announced today.
The nuances — Simmons didn’t remove his name from the ballot for the August primary, etc. — are unimportant for my purposes.
Irv Muchnick
Once Again, Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal Inquirer Gets Linda McMahon Right
[posted 5/24/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
I don’t know Chris Powell, managing editor of the Manchester Journal Inquirer; never met the guy. The closest I’ve come to contact with him was in 2008, when I was beginning my Connecticut Freedom of Information Act fight with the Stamford police to acquire the videotaped interrogation of the “Benoit Wikipedia hacker,” and I mistakenly emailed Powell. He politely informed me that he was legislative chair of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, a public-interest group, and directed me to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, the state agency that ultimately adjudicated my complaint.
Nor do I know what Powell’s ideology is supposed to be, or what my own supposed ideology is expected to feel about anything I say that might support his supposed ideology.
All I know is that, for the second time in ten days, Powell has penned a column for the Journal Inquirer that nails the larger meaning of the phenomenon of Linda McMahon’s Senate candidacy. (The first, on May 15, was “Nothing’s different about buying an election,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/15/chris_powell/doc4bed598a55650171354821.txt.)
Highly recommended again is Powell’s latest, “If money is everything, all the rest is nothing,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/24/chris_powell/doc4bfa8691c8e43399660344.txt.
Here’s a sample:
“If McMahon really is prepared to spend $30 million or more showing Connecticut some perspectives on [Democratic opponent Richard] Blumenthal that the state’s fawning news media have largely declined to pursue, no response may be very effective. After his 20-year free ride as attorney general, during which his own targets felt similarly overwhelmed by his command of the media, Blumenthal may have such character assassination coming. But does Connecticut? For its price may be six years of McMahon in the Senate.”
Irv Muchnick
I don’t know Chris Powell, managing editor of the Manchester Journal Inquirer; never met the guy. The closest I’ve come to contact with him was in 2008, when I was beginning my Connecticut Freedom of Information Act fight with the Stamford police to acquire the videotaped interrogation of the “Benoit Wikipedia hacker,” and I mistakenly emailed Powell. He politely informed me that he was legislative chair of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, a public-interest group, and directed me to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, the state agency that ultimately adjudicated my complaint.
Nor do I know what Powell’s ideology is supposed to be, or what my own supposed ideology is expected to feel about anything I say that might support his supposed ideology.
All I know is that, for the second time in ten days, Powell has penned a column for the Journal Inquirer that nails the larger meaning of the phenomenon of Linda McMahon’s Senate candidacy. (The first, on May 15, was “Nothing’s different about buying an election,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/15/chris_powell/doc4bed598a55650171354821.txt.)
Highly recommended again is Powell’s latest, “If money is everything, all the rest is nothing,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/24/chris_powell/doc4bfa8691c8e43399660344.txt.
Here’s a sample:
“If McMahon really is prepared to spend $30 million or more showing Connecticut some perspectives on [Democratic opponent Richard] Blumenthal that the state’s fawning news media have largely declined to pursue, no response may be very effective. After his 20-year free ride as attorney general, during which his own targets felt similarly overwhelmed by his command of the media, Blumenthal may have such character assassination coming. But does Connecticut? For its price may be six years of McMahon in the Senate.”
Irv Muchnick
Lowell Weicker, Dan Malloy, Barack Obama – Three Illustrations of How Linda McMahon’s Money Makes Her the Ultimate Insider
[posted 5/24/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
With her Republican convention win Friday night and the cloud over Democratic opponent Richard Blumenthal’s lie about his military record, Linda McMahon may be on her way to becoming Connecticut’s next United States senator.
Thanks to distracting irrelevancies – such as images of McMahon’s television crotch kicks and the name of her husband’s yacht – she so far has gotten a free pass in the vetting of her fitness for high office. But, ever helpful, your humble blogger will continue to remind readers of the aspects of her World Wrestling Entertainment background that the campaign coverage so far has either buried or ignored altogether.
These aspects involve three prominent politicians – one a Republican-Independent, the other two Democrats – who have figured in Linda McMahon’s rise to power.
The McMahon pitch is that self-funding a slick media campaign keeps a candidate from being beholden to moneyed interests. The McMahon lesson, however, is that the means of such an ascent are, ipso facto, moneyed interests.
***
LOWELL WEICKER
The former senator and governor is an old McMahon family crony. How old? He helped engineer the involvement of Linda and her husband Vince with the Special Olympics. The reason at the time was that Vince and WWE’s predecessor company needed a little image-buffing while they were under federal investigation, then indictment, for the illegal steroid trafficking of their doctor and wrestlers. But you never know how handy such a connection can prove nearly two decades later. When commentators went into a tizzy over old footage of “Eugene,” a retarded WWE character, the McMahons could cite their Special Olympics patronage for political cover.
When WWE went public with a 1999 stock offering, Weicker was on the ground floor as a charter investor and member of the board of directors. He has made millions from stock options and dividends.
Weicker has not endorsed anyone in the Senate race. Despite his WWE connection, he had endorsed Chris Dodd, an old Senate colleague, before Dodd dropped out. Much of Weicker’s legacy work involves health care reform, through his presidency of the Trust for America’s Health. Blumenthal supports and would help implement Obama reforms; McMahon doesn’t and would not. (For now, let’s not even get into what a mockery Director Weicker’s WWE makes of the concept of public health, with its no-benefits, independent-contractor technicalities and its shameful record of occupational health and safety – and death.) But don’t hold your breath waiting for Weicker to speak clearly on this one.
DAN MALLOY
The long-time mayor of Stamford, WWE’s headquarters city, won the Democratic nomination for governor at last weekend’s convention and will be challenged in a primary by Ned Lamont.
In January 2009, when Governor Jodi Rell nominated Linda McMahon for the state Board of Education, Mayor Malloy was right there with politicians of both parties speaking glowingly of her qualifications. McMahon was subsequently found to have lied about an academic degree, but so what? More than a year later, with her appointment to public office having already served its purpose as a launch pad for her Senate run, McMahon resigned – just as the Hartford Courant was revealing that her disclosure statements at the time of her nomination had maintained with a straight face that there were no controversies in her past.
My blog has exposed another dimension of the relationship between Stamford city government and the McMahons: the kid-glove treatment by the Stamford police after a local teenage wrestling fan edited the Wikipedia biography of WWE star Chris Benoit, in June 2007, to state that his wife Nancy was dead – more than half a day before her body, and those of Chris Benoit himself and their son, were discovered in a grisly double murder/suicide. The video of the interrogation of the Wikipedia editor (which I obtained only after a long Freedom of Information battle) shows that none of the important questions was asked, perhaps to help protect WWE’s phony timeline of what it knew about the Benoit crime and when it knew it.
BARACK OBAMA
Just as Linda McMahon was being nominated for the state Board of Education, Congressman Henry Waxman, then chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was ending his investigation of drugs and death in WWE with a whimper: he quietly abandoned a push for public hearings and shuttled his findings over to the White House Office of Drug Policy Control. Earlier this year the Hearst newspapers reviewed that story but never closed the loop.
The Obama administration did not follow up on the Waxman report. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, had received Congressional campaign contributions from Linda McMahon.
WWE’s Washington lobbyist, the K&L Gates law firm, last year reported expenditures of “zero” on the company’s behalf and de-registered as its lobbyist. Mission accomplished!
President Obama’s gifts to Linda McMahon were of commission as well as omission. Last December he taped a welcome for WWE’s NBC “Tribute to the Troops” special from Iraq, which was promptly exploited by the McMahon campaign for partisan gain.
(And what about the report in The Day that a federal prosecutor in 1989 tipped Linda McMahon about his pending investigation? Under other circumstances, that would sound like a job for Obama Justice.)
***
With opponents like Weicker, Malloy, and Obama, who needs supporters? To pervert the words of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, Linda McMahon’s political career is not a victory of party. It is a celebration of fiefdom.
Irv Muchnick
With her Republican convention win Friday night and the cloud over Democratic opponent Richard Blumenthal’s lie about his military record, Linda McMahon may be on her way to becoming Connecticut’s next United States senator.
Thanks to distracting irrelevancies – such as images of McMahon’s television crotch kicks and the name of her husband’s yacht – she so far has gotten a free pass in the vetting of her fitness for high office. But, ever helpful, your humble blogger will continue to remind readers of the aspects of her World Wrestling Entertainment background that the campaign coverage so far has either buried or ignored altogether.
These aspects involve three prominent politicians – one a Republican-Independent, the other two Democrats – who have figured in Linda McMahon’s rise to power.
The McMahon pitch is that self-funding a slick media campaign keeps a candidate from being beholden to moneyed interests. The McMahon lesson, however, is that the means of such an ascent are, ipso facto, moneyed interests.
***
LOWELL WEICKER
The former senator and governor is an old McMahon family crony. How old? He helped engineer the involvement of Linda and her husband Vince with the Special Olympics. The reason at the time was that Vince and WWE’s predecessor company needed a little image-buffing while they were under federal investigation, then indictment, for the illegal steroid trafficking of their doctor and wrestlers. But you never know how handy such a connection can prove nearly two decades later. When commentators went into a tizzy over old footage of “Eugene,” a retarded WWE character, the McMahons could cite their Special Olympics patronage for political cover.
When WWE went public with a 1999 stock offering, Weicker was on the ground floor as a charter investor and member of the board of directors. He has made millions from stock options and dividends.
Weicker has not endorsed anyone in the Senate race. Despite his WWE connection, he had endorsed Chris Dodd, an old Senate colleague, before Dodd dropped out. Much of Weicker’s legacy work involves health care reform, through his presidency of the Trust for America’s Health. Blumenthal supports and would help implement Obama reforms; McMahon doesn’t and would not. (For now, let’s not even get into what a mockery Director Weicker’s WWE makes of the concept of public health, with its no-benefits, independent-contractor technicalities and its shameful record of occupational health and safety – and death.) But don’t hold your breath waiting for Weicker to speak clearly on this one.
DAN MALLOY
The long-time mayor of Stamford, WWE’s headquarters city, won the Democratic nomination for governor at last weekend’s convention and will be challenged in a primary by Ned Lamont.
In January 2009, when Governor Jodi Rell nominated Linda McMahon for the state Board of Education, Mayor Malloy was right there with politicians of both parties speaking glowingly of her qualifications. McMahon was subsequently found to have lied about an academic degree, but so what? More than a year later, with her appointment to public office having already served its purpose as a launch pad for her Senate run, McMahon resigned – just as the Hartford Courant was revealing that her disclosure statements at the time of her nomination had maintained with a straight face that there were no controversies in her past.
My blog has exposed another dimension of the relationship between Stamford city government and the McMahons: the kid-glove treatment by the Stamford police after a local teenage wrestling fan edited the Wikipedia biography of WWE star Chris Benoit, in June 2007, to state that his wife Nancy was dead – more than half a day before her body, and those of Chris Benoit himself and their son, were discovered in a grisly double murder/suicide. The video of the interrogation of the Wikipedia editor (which I obtained only after a long Freedom of Information battle) shows that none of the important questions was asked, perhaps to help protect WWE’s phony timeline of what it knew about the Benoit crime and when it knew it.
BARACK OBAMA
Just as Linda McMahon was being nominated for the state Board of Education, Congressman Henry Waxman, then chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was ending his investigation of drugs and death in WWE with a whimper: he quietly abandoned a push for public hearings and shuttled his findings over to the White House Office of Drug Policy Control. Earlier this year the Hearst newspapers reviewed that story but never closed the loop.
The Obama administration did not follow up on the Waxman report. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, had received Congressional campaign contributions from Linda McMahon.
WWE’s Washington lobbyist, the K&L Gates law firm, last year reported expenditures of “zero” on the company’s behalf and de-registered as its lobbyist. Mission accomplished!
President Obama’s gifts to Linda McMahon were of commission as well as omission. Last December he taped a welcome for WWE’s NBC “Tribute to the Troops” special from Iraq, which was promptly exploited by the McMahon campaign for partisan gain.
(And what about the report in The Day that a federal prosecutor in 1989 tipped Linda McMahon about his pending investigation? Under other circumstances, that would sound like a job for Obama Justice.)
***
With opponents like Weicker, Malloy, and Obama, who needs supporters? To pervert the words of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, Linda McMahon’s political career is not a victory of party. It is a celebration of fiefdom.
Irv Muchnick
Linda McMahon Wins at Republican State Convention
[posted 5/22/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
And Rob Simmons, her main opponent for the party nomination for U.S. Senate, has reversed his earlier pledge and vowed to fight McMahon in an August primary. (Simmons qualifies for the ballot with his minority of convention delegate votes. A third Republican, Peter Schiff, did not garner the 15 percent delegate threshold but has said he, too, will find his way to the ballot, by gathering the requisite number of petitions.)
Scrutiny of Linda McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment, home base for industrial death in junk entertainment, continues.
Irv Muchnick
And Rob Simmons, her main opponent for the party nomination for U.S. Senate, has reversed his earlier pledge and vowed to fight McMahon in an August primary. (Simmons qualifies for the ballot with his minority of convention delegate votes. A third Republican, Peter Schiff, did not garner the 15 percent delegate threshold but has said he, too, will find his way to the ballot, by gathering the requisite number of petitions.)
Scrutiny of Linda McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment, home base for industrial death in junk entertainment, continues.
Irv Muchnick
‘Connecticut Senate Race Turns Up Trio of Vietnam War Sanctimony’ ... today at Beyond Chron
[posted 5/21/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]
http://tinyurl.com/2ewzgj3
Connecticut Senate Race Serves Up Trio of Vietnam War Sanctimony
by Irvin Muchnick
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Connecticut_Senate_Race_Serves_Up_Trio_of_Vietnam_War_Sanctimony_8144.html
http://tinyurl.com/2ewzgj3
Connecticut Senate Race Serves Up Trio of Vietnam War Sanctimony
by Irvin Muchnick
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Connecticut_Senate_Race_Serves_Up_Trio_of_Vietnam_War_Sanctimony_8144.html
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