How Vince McMahon Explains the 21st Century

February 12, 2024 9:17 PM

The Hideous Spectacle of Vince McMahon Tim Marchman and Tom Scocca discuss Vince McMahon + The WWE, what makes a scandal, and what it means that the ringleader of wrestling has been an absolute monster this whole time. (SL: The Indignity on Substack) [CW: sexual abuse]
posted by wowenthusiast (16 comments total)

That was a lovely straightforward un-titillating interview about something that’s none of those things.
posted by clew at 10:25 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

Holy shit content warnings! And I guess that's a pun, as horrific as that is.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:49 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Mod note: content warning added
posted by taz (staff) at 12:30 AM on February 13 [2 favorites]

That is an excellent overview of a horrible man & his horrible system and a fascinating look at the state of modern journalism, among many other things. It's kayfabe all the way down, except when it isn't.
posted by chavenet at 12:47 AM on February 13 [2 favorites]

So back in my Limo days, I was working at the planning desk and received this call from Vince McMahon's personal assistant, who wanted to schedule a limo to pick him up at International Arrivals to transfer him to the rental car lot to pick up his car.

I explained that this was a waste of time, money, and resources, as the car rental lots at the YVR at the time were directly across the roadway from the International Arrivals concourse. We're talking a zebra-striped, canvas-awning-covered, Commisionare-controlled cross-walk that leads directly to all of the car rental kiosks.

After some back and forth about this, including 3-4 phone calls and me faxing her a diagram of the layout of the terminal, I hear him yelling at her in the background, "Just rent the damn limo, or I'll find someone who can!"

So we book the limo for his transfer. In those days the limo corral was all the way past the Domestic Arrivals concourse and was about as far away as you could get from the International terminal and still actually be on Sea Island. We're talking a 20-minute hike here. This holding area was called "The Weeds" on the radio when describing locations out there.

The following week when his plane arrived, I was out at the Airport, acting as the Expediter, basically an on-the-ground dispatcher who juggles the chaos of multiple trips, vans, buses, limos, and passengers with the ever-changing pandemonium of delayed and canceled flights, no shows, early arrivals, etc.

Not wanting to waste scarce resources by booking out an entire car and driver for 3 hours, I made the decision that I would act as the greeter and driver for this "trip", since I needed to be there anyway. So he emerges from customs, late as usual with international flights, and I walk him all the way down to " The Weeds", put his bag in the trunk, cruise out of the tunnel and circle all the way around the entire terminal, and pull up in front of the International Arrivals concourse, right where we started.

I hop out of the car, pop the trunk, grab his bag, look him in the eye, and say "Here you go, sir. Have a nice stay!"
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:54 AM on February 13 [130 favorites]

kayfabe as a concept has served me quite well when understanding how large orgs operate. its central concept in power dynamics IMO
posted by web5.0 at 5:17 AM on February 13 [18 favorites]

McMahon always gave me the creeps, even as a kid in the 80s. I can't say I'm surprised that he is this horrible. I hope he goes down very, very hard.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:07 AM on February 13 [10 favorites]

Josie Riesman interviewed Bret "The Hitman" Hart for his response to this news. (CN: assault)
posted by pxe2000 at 6:56 AM on February 13 [5 favorites]

I've never been into wrestling, except briefly for GLOW (both the actual wrestling show and the fictionalized series about it), but I did enjoy Grantland back in the day, and this part caught my eye:

Bill Simmons—whose longtime collaborator Connor Schell resigned from the WWE board around the same time the Journal broke the hush-money scandal, something curiously unmentioned on his Wikipedia page—is currently involved with a Netflix documentary about McMahon which, from what Simmons has written and said about McMahon in the past, I would guess on some level is meant to advance the accurate theory that, warts and all, he was and may be the key to understanding America as it was in his time. Apparently they’ve kept thinking they had finished it up and have had to keep filming to account for new revelations. They must be in a real pickle now, as any remotely honest depiction of his life would depict him primarily as a monstrous lifelong predator who operated so openly that his very brazenness shielded and protected him from scrutiny, which I doubt is how they had it laid out the whole time.

posted by Halloween Jack at 7:22 AM on February 13 [10 favorites]

Wow, that Bret Hart interview is wild for its openness in describing how he didn't believe rumors and accusations, looking for holes in the stories or outright dismissing them, for so long. And frankly it's pretty disappointing that not only is Bret Hart once again changing his mind about what he is willing to say about Vince (too little, too late IMO), but that it seems it's finally happening because the accusations include "weird" sexual assault versus just garden variety sexual assault.

Perhaps that’s what sticks to a Teflon man: not accusations that he’s harmful and dangerous, but rather ones that say he’s pathetic and gross.

(from the Hart interview piece)
posted by misskaz at 7:23 AM on February 13 [7 favorites]

> There’s no way to tell, especially because we have no way to tell what they’re looking at. If they decide to look into everything, the pit is just endless. As an example, the McMahons and the WWF were involved in an extremely serious child-molestation scandal that the FBI investigated in a fairly half-assed way about 30 years ago.

So most likely it'll be a Trumpy situation where there are so many charges and/or investigations going on simultaneously that none of them ever reach trial. For rich men the wheels of justice turn exceedingly slowly.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:56 AM on February 13 [4 favorites]

Vince McMahon is just such a fucking 34 flavors of toxic asshole, I cannot possibly fathom who would have any difficulty believing these accusations immediately.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:07 AM on February 13 [13 favorites]

He used to be able to say that, whatever evils McMahon did, he did for the public, in service of wrestling as an art form and industry.

What the sweet ever-loving fuck


This is not the least bit surprising though:

He already lost his father, a legendary wrestling promoter in his own right, 20 years ago. Now, it is as though he has lost another.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:46 AM on February 13

Vince McMahon is just such a fucking 34 flavors of toxic asshole, I cannot possibly fathom who would have any difficulty believing these accusations immediately.

Perhaps someone whose financial livelihood is dependent on McMahon's enterprises?

I suspect a good number of people entering the ring do so with their metaphorical blinders on, and noses tightly pinched.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:07 AM on February 13 [7 favorites]

Including his children and wife, all of whom have been integral to the business in various capacities for years.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:32 PM on February 13

Ari Emanuel, who is mentioned in the article as the super-agent whose agency created the successor to WWE, is both the inspiration for the HBO show Entourage and Rahm Emanuel's brother.
posted by jonp72 at 8:57 PM on February 13 [2 favorites]