It Was Never Safe to Watch WWE
Or, how the phrase "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is so misapplied.
Vince McMahon was forced out of leadership of WWE 40-plus years too late.
The prevailing mood with the sociopath’s ouster from his position in WWE thanks to attempting to hide hush money for victims of his sexual harassment (and worse) is celebratory because for once, someone awful is experiencing consequences for his actions. The harsh truth is that him taking up the mantel from a father who didn’t even want him involved in the business in the first place meant disaster for the wrestling industry and the workers within it to the point where only now is the average life expectancy for someone who was active in the ring starting to rise again. That’s not even taking into account the business implications, but WWE hemorrhaging viewers means jack and shit compared to the legions of men and women dying before their 60th birthday because wrestling chewed them up and spit them out.
The question turns to “is it okay to watch WWE now that the evil man in charge has been ousted?” The simple, dueling answers that contradict each other are “it was always okay to watch WWE” and “it was never okay to watch WWE or any professional wrestling.” Constantly waging war in blacks and whites only will leave you red with blood and bruises because there’s no answer in a society as flawed as the one we have that doesn’t involve, and forgive the cliché here, a tapestry painted in shades of gray. For a civilization that has unprecedented access to information compared to any other time in history, people today have a shockingly poor grasp on how to judge things with nuance. Everything in a society based on consumption has moral weight applied to consumption only. That’s how you can justify boycotting Chick-Fil-A for making donations to homophobic organizations and not bat an eye when Wendy’s abuses towards the farm workers who pick their tomatoes try to force their way to the surface again. The only life that doesn’t matter is that of the Nazi. Everyone else should have equal weight, right? So why is one moral and the other not?
The phrase “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” gets thrown around a lot to handwave away abuses by people’s favorite products, and that’s not at all what the use of that axiom is intended. Yes, it’s true that if you boycotted every company that had something wrong with it, you couldn’t live in this world without doing your best “opening scene of Aladdin” impersonation, and I mean the one with “One Jump Ahead” as the setpiece song, not “Arabian Nights.” One has to make their bones that the world they live in is deeply screwed up, but the phrase “no ethical consumption” means we never stop fighting to make things more ethical. I will leave to your imagination what that means so I can divest all liability from my own self. It’s brutal out there for someone who sits to the left of even Bernie Sanders on the political alignment chart. I may have already said too much.
But the question isn’t “is wrestling ethical to consume?” (short answer is, lol, no not even among its peers), it’s “is it okay to watch WWE now?” While Vince McMahon is a uniquely evil figure in the history of a uniquely evil group of individuals known as wrestling promoters, his ouster alone does not guarantee that WWE right now as situated is better or worse by an appreciable margin. Corporate structure in America makes it such that no one figurehead can change the nature of a company, especially not one as stained in blood as WWE. Even taking away all the evil inflicted by McMahon by himself, it was still a company where pedophile rapists felt comfortable enough because their co-workers stood idly by and even made jokes about their degenerate assaults. The sheer number of ghouls and criminally aggressive lunkheads that have populated the ranks of that company over the years is astounding, and nothing about the new leadership suggests that those people will be disavowed or that things might ever change.
For example, Stephanie McMahon, the new co-CEO (along with Nick Khan, who for all intents and purposes is just a garden variety corporate sociopath not worthy of a full hit piece at this date and time), went on camera and compared the 9/11 attacks to the federal government putting her father on trial for steroid abuse. While she’s done the most work to try and keep a squeaky-clean public image, at least for a corporate raider of her genetic stature, her idea of “squeaky clean” is pretty gross:
Her husband, former wrestler Triple H and current head of creative Paul Levesque, has a worse rap sheet. His role in the infamous Montreal Screwjob left several members of the Hart family looking at him like a corporate stooge at best. His WrestleMania XIX feud against Booker T repeatedly dipped into race-baiting against his Black challenger, which one could handwave away to bad creative until you realized by this point he was already dating Stephanie and was in Vince’s inner circle. Maybe you don’t have the tangible proof that he had creative control over his stories, but it was not farfetched. Later on, as an executive, he continually ignored evidence that one of the wrestlers in his NXT brand, Patrick Clark, was having sexually explicit text conversations with minors, going to the point to smear victims while keeping him on the roster until it became politically convenient to quietly let him go. All of that pales in comparison to how he got himself into the McMahon inner circle, when he dumped his then-girlfriend Joanie “Chyna” Laurer to hook up with Stephanie. Chyna was one of the companies biggest and brightest stars, and soon after Levesque ghosted her, the company fired her, which set her on a spiral of drug addiction and depression that would eventually wear her body down into an early grave.
The system rewards sociopaths, and there should be absolutely no surprise when the progeny of a monster turn out to be monsters themselves. If WWE had billions in revenue incoming with a monster like Vince McMahon in charge, it should follow those who follow him don’t have to be saints. All they have to do is make sure they don’t do anything that would jeopardize the stream of money that points in Uncle Sam’s direction. That’s really the only reason why Vince is gone; he fucked with accounting numbers. None who can make decisions that matter care about the paralegals and wrestlers he raped or drove to their deaths (look up Ashley Massaro, please and thank you). They care about the bottom line.
If Vince were the sticking point, then it would take a massive culture shift from the people in charge to make it that his removal and his removal alone would matter. The women who signed NDAs over their trysts with him or John Laurinaitis or Kevin Dunn or anyone else in his inner circle would be released from them and able to tell their stories without legal repercussion. Roster members credibly accused of sexual assault or domestic violence like Matt Riddle, Austin “Theory” White, and Gable Steveson would be released from their contracts so as to assure the vulnerable backstage that management cares about their safety. Preferential treatment would not be guaranteed to Ronda Rousey, who for all her star power has used her bully pulpit to spread transphobia and paranoia over Sandy Hook and other mass shootings. Reparations would be made to the families of Massaro and Owen Hart and Nancy Argentino and Nancy Sullivan-Benoit for the hurt the company inflicted on them directly or at the closest possible layer of indirect as possible.
None of those constructive steps are being taken. You know what wrestling fans are more concerned with? “How much better will creative be now that Triple H is in charge?” and “I can’t wait to see how much production improves when they finally replace Kevin Dunn.” Shamelessly transparent sycophant “influencers” like Louis Dangoor are already borderline tampering by wondering aloud how many WWE alumni Vince chased to AEW will come back now that Levesque is in charge. They’re worrying about all the wrong things because in their mind, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is a get out of jail free card if that sentence is in their minds at all. It’s not to say Vince McMahon wasn’t the problem, because he built the system. The real problem is and always will be that the system McMahon built will always ensure that until WWE gets sold to a company like Disney or FOX with a slightly different, slightly less cruel system in place, it will remain in the upper echelon of corporations accelerating the rot under the current system.
I still didn’t answer the question, obviously. “Is it okay to watch WWE now that Vince McMahon is gone from the company?” The answer isn’t in black or white. If you found it okay to watch before McMahon left, you’re not dissuaded because someone who was actively evil faced some modicum of consequence for his grotesque misdeeds1. If you didn’t find it okay to watch, what about the company has materially changed for you to come back in? If creative was the only thing keeping you away, this newsletter post is decidedly not for you anyway. If it wasn’t, they’re still taking in Saudi money. They haven’t ousted the offenders. The NDAs are still in place. Hell, two of the three people in the highest positions of power are Vince’s daughter and his son-in-law. It’s the next verse, same as the first. But that’s capitalism in a nutshell for you. You get minor treats while the upper levels increase the pressure to squeeze out every last dime that they can. I have no uplifting way to end a post like this except to say that maybe Vince McMahon will die a miserable old man in federal prison. It’ll be 40 years too late to have made a measurable difference on anything, but in this climate bereft of consequences for the worst offenders, it'll be something at least.
As someone who still watches the NFL, I get the allure of watching WWE if it speaks to you. I don’t get why it speaks to anyone as a wrestling fan anymore, but diff’rent strokes for different folks, I guess.