ARCHIVE 10/30/07: Vince McMahon & Joe Lieberman: Morality Play Tag-Team Partners

Vince McMahon & Joe Lieberman: Morality Play Tag-Team Partners

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Sun-tzu, the great Chinese military theorist, is credited with a piece of advice that remains solid two and a half millennia later: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” As Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment draws heat from two Congressional committees, which are contemplating hearings on the scandal-plagued pro wrestling industry, the principle is well illustrated by the strange relationship between WWE and the moralistic senator from its home state, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

In an earlier post, “WWE Lobbying: How SmackDown Does SuckUp,” http://muchnick.net/babylon/2007/10/26/wwe-lobbying-how-smackdown-does-suckup/, I took a peek at public documents disclosing WWE’s history of Capitol Hill representation and spending. Turning to the campaign contributions of Vince and Linda McMahon and associates, I focus on their support of Lieberman. It sticks out like The Undertaker at a police lineup of pygmies.

Lieberman is one of the Senate’s most outspoken voices deploring violence and sex in pop culture content directed at young people. Lieberman was on the advisory board of the Parents Television Council, a group whose mission is “to promote and restore responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry in answer to America’s demand for positive, family-oriented television programming.” PTC issues studies from its bully pulpit and is behind advertiser boycotts and others forms of pressure on targeted programmers.

In 2000, WWE sued PTC and its founder Brent Bozell over a PTC campaign claiming that WWE programming was responsible for four children’s deaths. In 2002, PTC settled the suit by paying WWE $3.5 million and issuing a public apology.

During his failed 2004 presidential campaign, Lieberman took a leave of absence from the PTC advisory board. He appears never to have returned.

Meanwhile, Lieberman and WWE seemingly made amends. The campaign contribution database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics (http://crp.org) shows that Linda McMahon (Vince’s wife and the CEO of WWE) last year made two separate $1,000 donations to Lieberman’s campaign fund. Another WWE board member, Michael Solomon, gave Lieberman $1,000.

Big-money players commonly hedge their bets by spreading contributions across a range of candidates who might possibly win. But it’s worth noting that the McMahon family – whose overall donations skew strongly Republican – has never given to the campaigns of Connecticut’s other long-time senator, Democrat Chris Dodd. (Nor has Solomon, a private equity fund owner who has donated mostly to Republicans but also to some Democrats, such as Bill Clinton and Senator Charles Schumer of New York.) Lieberman, a conservative Democrat, was reelected to his Senate seat as an independent after losing the 2006 Democratic primary to antiwar candidate Ned Lamont.

For the record, I do not share the schoolmarm positions of PTC and Lieberman. And I really dislike the former’s thuggish tactics. I protect my own children from whatever inappropriate programming is out there in a different way – by not subscribing to cable and by not permitting much over-the-air TV to play in our house.

I’m struck, however, by the evolving relationship between Vince McMahon – whose current net worth approaches $1 billion and who for a time made the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans – and Joe Lieberman, the family-values-happy politician. Now that other elected officials are taking what I consider an overdue look at the real WWE scandal – the preposterously high number of wrestler deaths – has McMahon neutralized one of his highest-profile critics?

I contacted Senator Lieberman by email, fax, and phone, inviting comment on this item. His office has not yet responded.

Irv Muchnick