Early Weekend Notes

LANCE CADE STORY HAS TRACTION

The Connecticut media are starting to poke into the full background of the death of World Wrestling entertainment’s Lance Cade – watch for more in the coming days. Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s WWE is in familiar shoot-the-messenger mode, attacking the credibility of concussion research and reform advocate Chris Nowinski. Ted Mann of the New London Day tweeted, “WWE apparently not of the school that avoids sarcastic defensiveness in responding to public criticism.”

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SPORTS BRAIN INJURIES HAVE A NEW PROFILE

According to The Boston Globe, Kevin Turner, formerly of the New England Patriots, is the 14th ex-National Football League player since 1960 to be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” Pro football players’ rate of ALS is at least eight times that of the general population of adult males. Meanwhile, as The New York Times reported earlier this week, an article in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology has findings that suggest that there is a spine-injury companion to the brain-trauma syndrome Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy whose symptoms align with those of ALS.

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ROGER CLEMENS INDICTED

I deliberately waited for the news-cycle dust to settle on this one; the events of 2007-08 showed that legit sports steroid scandals have a dangerous relationship with the public’s endurance for the far more serious pro wrestling death scandal. But without a doubt, and to reprise my mantra, Roger Clemens has been indicted for lying about his fake accomplishments in a real sport while the McMahon family gets away with promoting real death in a fake sport. Also without a doubt, Linda’s daughter Stephanie McMahon Levesque lied to Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about her knowledge of concussions in WWE just as clearly as Clemens lied to that body about his familiarity with human growth hormone.

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WILL IT MATTER?

The cynics will continue to say it won’t. I will continue to publish the information making the point that it should. Commenting on the Linda McMahon campaign for Senate, Manchester Journal Inquirer editorial page editor Keith Burris wrote, “McMahon is sticking with her plan. She got the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate with a barrage of TV ads and mailings: Flood the airwaves and the mailboxes. Beat the voters into submission. It worked.” For the next 11 weeks “there is to be no respite.”

Irv Muchnick