NY Times: ‘Wrestling Becomes a Campaign Issue’; CT Capitol Report on NY Times: ‘Voters Not Responding to Wrestling Attacks’

We have cognitive dissonance here. Or, as the gang warden in Cool Hand Luke put it, “a failure to communicate.”

Today the worthy Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent has a “Letter from Connecticut” in The New York Times headlined “As a Senate Race Tightens, Wrestling Becomes a Campaign Issue.” See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/nyregion/29conn.html?_r=1.

Bass says right there, high up in his story, that Linda McMahon’s record at World Wrestling Entertainment now “will be part of Richard Blumenthal’s closing argument.” Sounds good to me.

But in the link at the mischievous Connecticut Capitol Report, Tom Dudchik highlights the questions raised at the bottom of the Bass piece, talking about how the YouTube of Linda racking WWE announcer Jim Ross hasn’t worked.

So, once more with feeling, folks: It’s the deaths, stupid.

Blumenthal spokesman Maura Downes specifically and accurately tells Bass, “It is especially important to us what happens outside the ring … how she treated her workers.” The article goes on to cite “concussions and premature deaths among WWE wrestlers, steroid use, and the company’s reliance on hundreds of independent contractors who do not receive health care benefits.”

One more thing, Dudchik: Please find yourself a new stock wrestling photo for these links. I don’t even recognize who is preparing to plant his knees in the gut of the guy mistiming a diving splash.

Irv Muchnick