All-Time Top 10 Search Engine Terms for Directing Visitors to This Blog

(aside from “Irv Muchnick,” “Muchnick blog,” etc.)

1. Judy Moorberg

2. Linda McMahon daughter

3. Linda McMahon bankruptcy

4. ABC Nightline Prime

5. WWF sex

6. Linda McMahon commercial

7. WWE contracts

8. Randy Orton suspended

9. Lance Cade autopsy

10. Bare nipple

WWE’s Christian Has Torn Pec — Another Triumph of the Linda McMahon ‘Wellness Policy’

World Wrestling Entertainment performer William Reso (“Christian”) is the latest wrestler to be out of action for half a year following surgery for a torn pectoral muscle, Dave Meltzer reports.

Torn pecs were almost unheard of prior to the steroid era.

Not that we’re accusing Christian of being a druggie. Or WWE of having a joke of a “Wellness Policy.” Or Linda McMahon of being wrong in asserting that there is no evidence that steroids are bad.

And don’t worry, Christian. The McMahons will pay the full cost of your rehab, unless they don’t.

Irv Muchnick

‘I’ve Never Been Investigated by Richard Blumenthal’ – The Diabolical Political Genius of Linda McMahon

Ladies and gentlemen of Connecticut, stop and reflect for a moment on the undeniable savvy of Linda and Vince McMahon. If the game of the U.S. Senate election is knowing how to lower the bar, then without a doubt, no one does it better.

• In December 1989, as the New London Day revealed, Linda McMahon told another executive of her wrestling company to tip their Pennsylvania ring doctor, George Zahorian, that he was under federal investigation for illegal steroid distribution. (Soon thereafter, Zahorian was indicted, and in 1991 he became the first physician in the country to be convicted and sent to federal prison for violation of a statute criminalizing the prescription of steroids for non-therapeutic purposes.)

McMahon’s defense against The Day‘s story came from lawyer Jerry McDevitt: “At no time did they ever charge anybody with any kind of obstruction of justice …” Gee, thanks, Jer!

• In 1994 Vince McMahon himself and the then-World Wrestling Federation went on federal trial for conspiracy to distribute steroids. A year later, after the McMahons were acquitted, the New York Post and the Village Voice both reported in painstaking detail how Rudy Giuliani crony Martin Bergman, the husband of McMahon lead defense counsel Laura Brevetti, made highly inappropriate pre-trial contact with Vince’s secretary, Emily Feinberg; Bergman represented himself as a television news producer offering Feinberg cash for her story, and these bribe precursors may well have suborned her subsequent testimony at trial.

On this one, Linda McMahon hasn’t even had to bother defending herself – not a single Connecticut news outlet has had the guts to pick up the accounts of the episode on this blog. (Traffic statistics, however, show that the reprint here of “In Bed With the WWF: Sex and Scandal in Pro Wrestling,” a chapter of my book Wrestling Babylon, which includes the Feinberg anecdote, is my most heavily visited individual post.)

Of course, if anyone does ask about l’affaire Feinberg, I’m sure Jerry McDevitt will be at the ready. After all, at no time was Martin Bergman or Laura Brevetti or Vince McMahon charged with any kind of obstruction of justice.

• And now the state of Connecticut is investigating World Wrestling Entertainment for abuse of independent contractor classification for its performers, who drop dead by the bushel. The McMahon campaign, which joined with WWE in leaking the news of the state audit (whose launch may well predate the campaign), has calibrated the perfect line on this. If WWE is charged with violating the law, the charge was politically motivated; if WWE is not charged with violating the law, “at no time” was it charged with violating the law.

As Wile E. Coyote used to say, “Brilliant!”

Even senatorial timber — unless people in the Nutmeg State wake up and realize how Linda McMahon’s money and media are playing them for fools.

Irv Muchnick

Linda McMahon Suckers Richard Blumenthal in Pointless JFK Ad Controversy

The flap over the use or misuse in a Linda McMahon campaign commercial of John F. Kennedy’s nearly half-century-old image and tax plan is a perfect example of the sort of thing that moves the chattering class to apoplexy, while failing to move by one iota the needle of the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut.

Naturally, JFK’s nephew cried foul. Naturally, Kevin “Don’t Call Linda McMahon My Mouthpiece” Rennie fired off a one-liner about how another Kennedy got flummoxed by a hot blonde. (Let’s face it, it is a funny line, and was probably in the playbook all along.)

Journalist Ted Mann, of The Day, has blogged and wonked his way through the apples and oranges of supply-side projections of a 1963 tax change in the context of a 2010 global economic meltdown. But guess what the bottom line is, folks? Linda McMahon, the Über Carny, has drawn Richard Blumenthal, the clueless hack, into yet another huge waste of time.

What matters in this election is whether voters will lock in on the nouveau riche McMahon family’s reputed job-creation machine, World Wrestling Entertainment – actually a death mill whose core work is performed by benefit-free independent contractors in an environment of all-the-traffic-will-bear divertissement.

By taking the bait on McMahon’s Kennedy stunt, Blumenthal has frittered away several more precious days doing what appears to be the only thing he knows: clearing his throat.

Irv Muchnick