A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATS, AND GOOD WRESTLING

So I'm about halfway through my second pay per view, so that entry should be up soon, but to fill the gap, I thought I'd write quickly about yesterday, which could prove to be a fairly significant day in WWE history.

As most not living under a rock are aware, yesterday was midterm election day and some important races were decided across the US. My adopted home state of Pennsylvania swung Red, which is disheartening, but that is a discussion for another time. Anyway, anyone who follows the WWE (and probably anyone who makes a habit 0f watching the national news) knows, company CEO Vince Mcmahon's wife made a bid for a US Senate seat in her home state of Connecticut. And, well, as most people now know...she lost.



Obviously, I didn't know a ton about the particulars of the race, because it was not taking place in my home state, but to a casual observer, her loss certainly makes sense. Her previous political experience and qualifications for the job were dubious at best. Her campaign ads stressed her strong leadership of the WWE, some even explicitly said she "cleaned it up". Now, the inner workings and heirarchy of the company aren't abundantly clear to outsiders, but I, like most people, thought Vince was still pretty much the main guy, so I couldn't tell if these ads were just all hot air. Clearly most of Connecticut thought so. A lot of recaps of the election I've read this morning have indicated the Mcmahons more or less threw a ton of money at the wall and attempted to buy her this seat, and it didn't work.

All that aside, the notion that she "cleaned up the WWE" is the main thrust of this writing. Maybe 12-18 months ago, the WWE started on a very public campaign to tone down their product to achieve the rating of "TV-PG". Ostensibly, the reason given for this was to expand their potential advertisers, but I don't think it was too hard to see the truth. It was a calculated move made in concert with the start of Linda's campaign to win the Republican primary. It was clear her advisors wanted the product she peddles to come off as un-smutty as possible. The funny thing is, of COURSE it didn't work. Seemingly every knock on her came from her association with the WWE. That was going to happen no matter how family friendly they made WWE product, because ultimately, she has zero political experience. She has never been anything but the WWE guy's wife, so clearly any attacks or counterpoints toward her were going to take that and focus on it, whether her wrestlers were saying the word "ass" on television or not.

I'm not suggesting WWE product has to be needlessly tasteless at every turn, but I do think making everything as toothless as possible has done some damage. The picky choosy, slightly hypocritical nature of the censorship was sort of bothersome as well.

Some examples:

-Stone Cold Steve Austin's trademark catchphrase "can of whoop-ass" was censored in the 10 o clock tv hour. That's a word that can be said pretty much any time of the day on any channel. Hell, it's barely a curse word anymore. In fact, this summer, there was a MOVIE called "Kick Ass" with ads at every bus stop in the city of Philadelphia in plain view of folks of any age. Once again, I'd like to stress that I'm not advocating being tasteless just for the sake of it, but taking it insanely to the other extreme is not necessary either. The thrust of pro wrestling has always been to tell a story with engaging characters, and Stone Cold Steve Austin (one of the most popular characters in the entire history of the business) is a beligerent, trashmouthed redneck. Let him be who he is, especially when who he is made the company boatloads of money.

-Triple H has been one of the more popular wrestlers of the past 15 years. He is also famously married to Vince and Linda's daughter Stephanie (after spending some time with the ambiguously genitaliaed man beast known as Chyna, but that's neither here nor there), which essentially gives him carte blanche in the locker room and basically makes him part heir to the whole kingdom. Anyway, I thought it was suspect that in the midst of doing little nitpicky things like renaming John Cena's "F.U." finishing move "the attitude adjustment", Triple H was still allowed to parade around in a D-Generation X tshirt which read "World's Largest Member" (teeheehee). Is that really any more suggestive or "dirty" than calling a move "the F.U."? I certainly don't think so. But I guess we can write this one off as standard nepotism.

-the most puzzling to me (and I swear I'm not trying to score any points with the feminist community here) is the fact that the WWE female roster hasn't even been a little regulated. They're still allowed to jump around in next to nothing and strike all sorts of sexually suggestive poses on the way to the ring and mid-match. I'm certainly not offended by this. In fact, sometimes it's not half bad. The point I'm trying to make is these inconsistencies enforce the (apparently mis)calculated nature of this whole move.

So the logical question to conclude is "Where do we go from here?". Now that Linda's political aspirations are dashed, does the WWE head back to the status quo? My feeling is "yes". While I doubt they will ever go back to being as racy as the late 90's "Attitude era" (maybe the most commercially prosperous era of the company, but I'll get into that a lot more somewhere down the line), but I suspect the reins will get loosened fairly quickly. If it helps the story of a match to have a wrestler bleed, they will bleed. If it makes sense within the context of a wrestler's character for him to say "hell" or (GASP) "ass", he will. I may be completely offbase, but I think as far as wrestling fans go, this is the possible result for the Connecticut election. (even if the other guy lied about serving in Vietnam)