When Mick Foley, an iconic figure in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) universe, missed an episode of Monday Night Raw last month, initial reports indicated the current general manager of the production was away getting a hip replacement.
Not an unexpected surgery for a man who has been putting his body on the line for decades. However, it later emerged that Foley didn’t have the operation because it costs $60,000 and he currently does not have health insurance to cover that astronomical figure.
Foley was embarrassed by the subsequent brouhaha and stymied an effort by devoted fans to crowdfund the treatment. But that somebody who is performing for the American public on television every week has to wait to replace a hip damaged over years in the line of duty highlighted once again the strange work practices of the WWE. Despite annual revenues around the $650 million mark, all wrestlers are independent contractors, not employees, and they must purchase their own health insurance.
As former president and CEO of this company notorious for putting the bottom line before the welfare of workers, Linda McMahon seems an obvious pick by Donald Trump to head up America's Small Business Administration (SBA).
Certainly, a case can be made she is uniquely qualified to represent the interests of mom and pop stores in cabinet. Here is somebody who spent decades helping a small regional wrestling outfit become a truly global brand worth billions of dollars. Along the way, she also experienced what it’s like to almost lose everything to bankruptcy, and lately, has devoted much of her philanthropic efforts to promoting greater opportunities for women entrepreneurs.
Impressive resume
An impressive resume until a more forensic examination of her life’s work raises many troubling questions.
Aside from the fact WWE ruthlessly crushed several smaller wrestling concerns as it grew (which kind of contravenes the SBA mission statement), McMahon was also central to creating a product hawking gratuitous violence to children, feeding them a regular diet of misogynistic storylines where women with unfeasibly pneumatic cleavage were subjected to all manner of demeaning ordeals.
Who will forget McMahon’s husband Vince making a female wrestler get down on all fours and crawl around the ring barking like a dog? Never mind the optics, the plastic figurines were flying off the shelves in toy shops in 130 countries worldwide.
Another cogent criticism of McMahon and the WWE is that its success was achieved on the backs of generations of wrestlers chewed up and spat out once they had served their purpose.
Even if the outcome of contests is famously scripted and the moves carefully choreographed, these men and women were charged with pulling off daring athletic stunts, including smashing each other on the heads with metal chairs, and adhering to a travel and performance schedule so physically punishing that many became addicted to painkillers.
Having estimated that 28 alumni from WWE's Raw alone died before the age of 45, the New York Post dubbed it a "death mill". The knock against the company during McMahon's time in charge was straightforward enough.
Wrestlers needed cocktails of pills to be able to endure flinging themselves around the ring several nights a week. That kind of excessive chemical intake wrought further damage on bodies already ravaged by the large amounts of steroids they had to take in order to achieve the unnaturally inflated biceps and grotesquely swollen pecs demanded of nearly all performers.
“Unlike football or baseball or basketball, where steroids can actually enhance performance, they do nothing to enhance performance in WWE,” said Linda McMahon.
Tipped off
That quote came long before she decided she wanted a career in politics but after a grand jury investigation found she had tipped off Dr George Zahorian that he was about to be investigated by the justice department.
The crooked physician was on the company payroll, supplying her wrestlers, including her husband, with nandrolone and other substances.
The WWE began to clean up its steroids act after the US Congress took an interest in the alarming rate of wrestler deaths. It also started to tone down the offensive nature of its content shortly before McMahon launched her attempt to win one of Connecticut's seats in the US Senate in 2010.
When that campaign, during which the sins of the WWE were often used against her, ended in defeat, she tried and failed again two years later. Having squandered $100 million of her fortune on those ill-fated attempts to punch her own ticket to Washington, she discovered an easier path to power.
A long-time, hefty donor to the Trump Foundation (the charity that the president-elect typically didn't seem to do much for charity with), McMahon contributed $7 million to pro-Trump super political action committees during the election. Her generosity was rewarded with a cabinet post that, in many ways, takes the industry she once bestrode closer to mainstream respectability.
That is an achievement in itself because very few organisations have as rancid a history as the WWE. Twice in the 1990s, it was embroiled in sexual abuse scandals. Two ring boys (youngsters who run errands and help around the arena on show night) filed lawsuits regarding repeated attacks they suffered. McMahon’s proactive role in settling those cases included telling one victim she’d get him a new car and give him $5,000 to buy clothes.
Like the steroids, the employee exploitation, the indefensible work practices, and so much else in her tawdry career, this makes her look a perfect fit for the Trump administration.
