Unfortunately for Mr. Lewis and Mr. Bozell, the jury in the trial of Lionel Tate didn't see it that way. After deliberating for only three hours, an incredibly short amount of time for a case with such serious ramifications, they brought in a first-degree-murder verdict. Judge Joel Lazarus made his feelings clear when he sentenced Tate to life in prison stating, "It is inconceivable that such injuries could be caused by roughhousing or horseplay or by replicating wrestling moves." Obviously, Tate should have accepted the very lenient plea bargain that the prosecution had offered.
I firmly believe that James Lewis thought that the "wrestling defense" trial was going to make him a star. In some ways it already had. He'd appeared on national talk shows, had been quoted many times in newspapers around the country, and had even appeared on the PTC videotape claiming that "the finger of blame is pointing directly at the World Wrestling Federation." Actually, Mr. Lewis, the finger of blame was pointing directly at your client, who brutally murdered an innocent little girl and then showed no remorse. It was the foundless accusations, half-truths, exaggerations, and lies that were pointing right at the World Wrestling Federation. By the way, Mr. Lewis, I've got a special finger for you.
The World Wrestling Federation should be completely absolved and Brent Bozell should have to retract all his injurious statements that somehow link the World Wrestling Federation to children's deaths. A giant victory for the World Wrestling Federation and a crushing defeat for the PTC, right? Well, not really. Why? Because L. Brent Bozell III was largely successful in his larger goal of demeaning the name of the World Wrestling Federation and in using his tactics to scare off sponsors and to bring in his charitable donations.
The Lionel Tate case (and the other three cases as well, but to a lesser degree) will forever be linked to professional wrestling and in many people's minds, that link will always carry some implication of guilt no matter what a jury in Florida said on January 25, 2001. And to understand why, I have to go back to the Belzer definition of the Big Lie: "If you tell a lie that's big enough and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth even when what you are saying is total crap." Justice by all means should be the major objective here, but, unfortunately, justice is often not enough to clear a name.
Although Mr. Bozell comes off to me as a charis-matically challenged, lying sack of shit, he didn't become such a leader in the field of negative spin by being stupid. No, he was actually quite intelligent in his attack. Look at the four cases. Three of them had no witnesses, and in the one that did have witnesses, they were young children. Three of the cases involved autopsy reports that were inconsistent with the alleged causes of death. Mr. Bozell should have known that the defense could not possibly prove that wrestling was at fault in any of the cases. But he also had to have known that it would be difficult to prove that wrestling was not at fault either. After all, with literally hundreds of thousands of matches to its credit, the world of professional wrestling has in its existence seen people do just about everything imaginable to each other in its quest to entertain. ANYTHING one human being could do to another in the sense of physical punishment could be interpreted as being professional wrestling.
It was a strategy that has produced marvelous results in the storied history of smear campaigns. No one could possibly prove that they were not a witch during the Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts. The Jewish people could not prove that they were not a cause of economic problems in Germany in the 1930s. Alleged Communists could not possibly prove that they were not communists during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. And Bozell probably believes that the World Wrestling Federation cannot possibly prove that wrestling did not play any part in those four deaths. As Kenneth Davis wrote in Don't Know Much About History, "the accused cannot escape because professions of innocence become admissions of guilt and only confessions are accepted."
For the World Wrestling Federation full vindication will never be complete and partial vindication has come with a heavy price, the heaviest of which is our loss of sponsors.
According to Mr. Bozell, the process of eliminating World Wrestling Federation sponsors is a simple one. He has simply "taken these offensive shows directly to the sponsors, we've explained to the sponsors that they are responsible for this poison. And I tell you, time and time again these sponsors look at this, they don't want anything to do with it, and they pull their ads in a New York minute."According to PTC celebrity spokesman Pat Boone, this is a strategy that "strikes terror into the sponsors' hearts . . . and cash registers." Sounds simple, right? Let's take a look at just how simple the MCI WorldCom situation was.
MCI WorldCom
According to the PTC's own Web site, "Direct Contact," MCI representatives had been contacted concerning SmackDown.rs content several times before sending honorary cochairman Steve Allen and Dr. Delores Tucker, the president and founder of the National Congress of Black Women, to the annual MCI WorldCom shareholders' meeting on June 1, 2000, in Mississippi.
After ten months of written correspondence yielded no action from MCI, the PTC began a campaign of telephone inquiries. An early attempt to get MCI WorldCom to withdraw support was thwarted when, according to Steve Allen's own MCI shareholder address, "Ginger Fitzgerald of MCI advertising stated MCI was fully aware of the content of the program and that it was in their opinion perfectly acceptable."
The PTC called again on May 10, 2000, at which time, according to Allen, Claire Hassett of MCI's public-relations department said, "We don't advertise on particular shows or endorse particular shows. We purchase advertising on a network and our goal is to reach a certain target audience. I apologize on behalf of the company if that offends you."
At this point Mr. Bozell and the Parents Television Council stepped up their campaign by declaring on their Web site on May 31, 2000, that Steve Allen and Dr. Tucker were going to the shareholders' meeting "To let MCI know that if it continues to advertise on World Wrestling Federation programming the PTC will hold it personally responsible for every child who is injured or killed as a result of wrestling moves."
As Pat Boone said, the PTC "strikes terror into the sponsors' hearts ...and cash registers." Well, I should say so, Pat, you shameless profiteer and homogenizer of the great soul singers of the fifties. This goes a whole lot further than simply showing a video to a sponsor, this is pretty much threatening to call them "baby killers."
How the hell does the PTC, a supposed moral group, pull off a stunt this low and claim to do it in the name of decency? Even more disturbing is the fact that Bozell seems to have pulled this move directly from Joe McCarthy's playbook.
In 1950, Senator McCarthy was embroiled in a feud with columnist Drew Pearson, who criticized the senator both in his columns and on his radio show. Despite Pearson's reputation as a tough anticommunist, McCarthy insisted that he was a "sugar-coated voice of Russia" and urged people to rise up against "this Moscow-directed character assassin."
He then threatened an economic boycott of the Adam Hat Company, which was Pearson's radio sponsor, if it did not withdraw from his show at once. The Adam Hat Company immediately pulled its support from the show.
In late 1951, McCarthy employed a similar strategy against Time magazine for an uncomplimentary story they had published about the senator from Wisconsin.
"As you well know," McCarthy wrote Time's publisher, "I am preparing material on Time to furnish all of your advertisers so that they may be fully aware of the type of publication they are supporting." Letters were then sent to the advertisers warning them not to do business with a pro-Communist magazine. Time's editors retreated from their stance, a decision they later regretted.
McCarthy's accusations were baseless, but effective nonetheless. Bozell's accusations are, as a court of law in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, proved, equally baseless, but also effective. Following the PTC's threat and Steve Allen's shareholders' address, MCI WorldCom ceased advertising on SmackDown!
Allen began his speech to MCI shareholders by thro
wing around some financial figures and tossing about words like "disgusting," "negative," and "detrimental."
He then quoted sportscaster Bob Costas, who seemed somewhat less than happy with the current World Wrestling Federation product. Which is fine, because everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I won't let Mr. Costas's diminish my ability to enjoy his considerable talents.
Next up was a quote from "Superstar" Billy Graham, a former World Wrestling Federation Champion from the seventies who said, "I stopped watching wrestling because they pushed the envelope too far. The shows are very degrading to women, there's foul language and gestures, and there's real strong sexual overtones. I decided I didn't want this stuff coming into my house, my eyes, or my mind. It made me physically ill." Pretty strong words. But this is the same Billy Graham who paid me and Terry Funk to wrestle in a "Texas Death Match" on May 12, 1998, at Lamar University near Houston. This was at a time following Mr. Graham's religious conversion, and in fact the Lamar show was to benefit a religious cause. The show was canceled, but was done so for financial reasons not moral ones.
Mr. Allen then spoke of "at least thirty-five corporations that have pledged to withhold advertising from the show." Funny, he didn't use the word "withdrawn" as the PTC had previously done. Unfortunately for the PTC, "withhold" and "withdraw" do not have the same meaning. You see, out of the nearly forty companies that he claims to have persuaded to pull their ads, twenty-five of those companies have never advertised with the World Wrestling Federation. How does a company withdraw something that they've never given to begin with?
Well, it's all about the illusion of power that the PTC presents, which does, in fact, lead to real power. "He, Bozell, inflates the numbers, but he has in fact caused advertisers to not buy World Wrestling Federation," said World Wrestling Federation attorney Jerry McDevitt. "He creates an atmosphere where he makes advertisers fear continuing to advertise."
For example, according to a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman, the company "is cited by the PTC as having shut out the World Wrestling Federation on its recommendation, but has never been a World Wrestling Federation advertiser."
I'm also intrigued at the sponsors listed by the PTC. M&M/Mars? The same M&M/Mars that hired me and Stephanie McMahon to entertain and sign autographs at their corporate Halloween party?
Hershey's? The same Hershey's whose arena we wrestle in regularly and whose theme park I appeared at as an advertised attraction?
7 UP? 7 UP, whose slogan includes the phrase "up yours"? Presumably they dropped sponsorship because the World Wrestling Federation with its "suck-it" slogan was too vulgar. If these slogans are to be taken in their literal form, then I feel that 7 UP is guilty of condemning one form of sodomy while advocating another, much more painful (or so I'm guessing) sodomitic act!
Mr. Allen himself dipped into a moral sewer when he brought up the deaths of the four children previously mentioned.
Mr. Allen then offhandedly mentioned that his first job on television was as a wrestling announcer in the 1940s. He conveniently forgot to mention that he was a paid guest at the World Wrestling Federation's WrestleMania VI before admitting that "a year or so ago I hosted a television documentary about the history of wrestling." He also admitted that he loved the sport, but that he certainly didn't "love its present emphasis on cheap sex, vulgarity, and violence of the most sadistic sort."
Does this not seem just a little bit strange? A guy hosts The Unreal History of Professional Wrestling on the A&E network and then tries to bury the very product he claims to love. The A&E special made its debut on April 28, 1998, at a time, as we've mentioned, that the World Wrestling Federation was at its most risque. Does Mr. Allen expect us to believe that he didn't know that? To the contrary, the cheap sex, vulgarity, and violence of the most sadistic sort was on full display as Allen narrated away with the voice of a true wrestling fan.
Maybe what Steve Allen was saying is that it's okay for him to like wrestling, just not anyone else.
Finally, after lobbing a last "cultural sewage" reference toward the World Wrestling Federation, Mr. Allen ominously concluded by saying, "If MCI continues to sponsor World Wrestling Federation SmackDown!, we will make this a national issue by letting our membership, as well as the general public, know that MCI does not care about the damage the World Wrestling Federation and it are doing to our children and that MCFs values are the same as those of the obscene, racist, violent and sexually graphic World Wrestling Federation SmackDown!”
I'm not sure if I can really blame MCI president and CEO, Bernard Ebbers, for folding like a cheap accordion under the PTC's pressure. Maybe he really felt that SmackDown! was repulsive. Or maybe he felt like a jury member during John Gotti's first few trials. Or maybe he lacks a certain type of fortitude.
The Senators
Most of the people I talk to are in complete disagreement with Mr. Bozell and his PTC. Granted, most of these people I am in discussion with are wrestling fans, but nonetheless, I feel that their views are valid ones. When I was doing book signings for Christmas Chaos, I often made a point to ask parents with young children how they felt about SmackDown’s content. In contrast to the stereotypical view of wrestling fans as uneducated ruffians, the people who lined up for Chaos (and Have a Nice Day! a year before) were patient, polite, and pretty much regular-looking people. Sure, I got an occasional "Foley is God" yeller, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
The overwhelming majority of the parents of these young children felt that the PTC's perception of our show was greatly exaggerated. Many of them admitted that the show occasionally yielded segments of poor taste, but felt that overall, SmackDown! was acceptable family viewing.
A few weeks ago I went to World Wrestling Federation headquarters to do the play-by-play for a match with announcer Kevin Kelly for my new videotape and DVD, Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops. Our decidedly underhanded objective on that day was to watch the Al Snow-Big Boss Man "Kennel of Hell" match, which was one of the all-time-great stinkers of the industry and announce it like it was an all-time classic. After doing this devious deed (which will no doubt add to my long list of punishing Al Snow verbal knockouts), I sat back and watched some of the other "knocks and pops" segments with Kevin. The tape's director, Steve Cooney, did a wonderful job of weaving some of my favorite moments into a continuous narrative, a narrative that captured the innocent foolishness that is a much-overlooked part of the World Wrestling Federation. "How can people say our show is so horrible?" I asked Kevin. "Don't they know that so much of it is harmless comedy?" I think my question was merely rhetorical, as I already had the sneaking suspicion that most of our critics don't have a clue about what is on SmackDown!
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas is a member of the PTC advisory board and, in fact, is a part of their Campaign to Clean Up TV Now videotape. He sure seemed to know his stuff when it comes to censoring other people's viewing choices. Or does he? A May 31, 2000, article in the Chicago Sun-Times suggests not.
When the senator claimed that the PTC "quantifies what everybody sees," he was asked what he had personally seen. "I've seen some of the World Wrestling Federation," he said. "I've seen clips that we pulled from some [offending] shows." The Sun-Times then asked if he could be specific. "I'm not remembering the shows that the clips were out of," he said.
Brownback then mentioned some other non-wrestling shows that he watched with his children, shows that he claimed were "just replete with sexually suggestive content." Unfortunately, the senator couldn't remember the names of those shows either, and was at a loss to explain why he allowed his children to view such offensive material.
So once again the World Wrestling Federation falls victim to the dreaded "offensive clips" campaign. For some reason, I don't think that Christian trying to sweat off a pound by wearing a fuzzy chicken outfit, or my impersonating Frank Sinatra singing Britney Spears was seen by Senator Brown-back. No, I'm sure the senator simply saw the worst of the worst (whether the clips were actually from Sm
ackDown! or from a combination of SmackDown!, Raw, and Pay-Per-View is a question I would like to have answered) and decided he would take part in Mr. Bozell's campaign.
What about Joe Lieberman? He seems like a nice guy, and damn, he was almost our country's vice-president. And everyone knows that a dummy can't be vice-presi—oops. Dan Quayle just shot down that theory in a pile of burning wreckage. Still, Senator Lieberman is Mr. Bozell's right-hand man. Whenever anyone accuses the PTC of being ultra-conservative, he throws Joe Lieberman in their face. When he was defending his group against "McCarthyite" insinuations, he said, "Tell Joe Lieberman. He's on our advisory board." So, surely knowing that his image means so much to the PTC's credibility, Joe Lieberman would know his stuff when it came to the PTC's number one, and, as far as I can tell, only cause.
When questioned about SmackDown!, Joe was ready with some astute social commentary. "There is a case where these kids watch violent acts that are presumably faux and artificial, but they can't distinguish that." They can't? Is Senator Joe Lieberman trying to suggest that kids think wrestling is real? I'm sure that some kids do, but they are pretty much the same kids who think that Dr. Evil is really trying to take over the world in the Austin Powers movies.
Well, what else did Joe have to say about SmackDown!? "There's only so much I watch myself," he said. When the Sun-Times pressed him further, he "didn't sound pleased by the tone of the question." "Forgive me, I'm busy! I flip the dials. I read some of the reports on content."
Reports on content? The same reports that I tried to get a look at? Maybe I can give Joe a call and find out if "testicle" is considered a sexual reference or foul language. In return, I could offer him some reports that I have drawn up on the content of some family favorites. Reports that would tear out the spirit of the shows and leave only ugly carcasses that misrepresent the show as a whole. Or pretty much what the PTC does to our show. Reports that would turn a classic book like The Wizard of Oz into a story of witchcraft, death by house dropping, theft, quadruple limb amputation (book version), forty-two decapitations (book), forty neck breakings (book), suggested drug use (poppies), contract killing, kidnapping, and murder by melting.