Welcome to the Friday edition of your open thread. Our threads are always open, just don’t leave a mess.
If we lived in a sane country, David Vitter’s re-election chances would be close to zero. He’s still favored to win however, but more damaging information has come out about his “women’s issues” aide with a domestic violence arrest:
Democrats think they have David Vitter dead to rights. Travel records, they say, indicate that Vitter’s one-time aide Brent Furer twice used taxpayer money to travel to Louisiana to defend himself in court on drunk driving charges. Those same records suggest that Furer seldom traveled to Louisiana on congressional business.
A TPM survey of records from Vitter’s Senate office finds that Furer made just six official trips from DC to New Orleans while working for Vitter. Two of those trips coincide with court dates alone. Two others were to attend a Vittter staff retreat (one of which also overlapped with a court date). One, in August 2007, coincides with the emergence of Vitter’s prostitution scandal, and the sixth took place from April 29 through May 3, 2005.
Vitter seems to be going down the path of all politicians in trouble. Lying, covering-up and lying some more. Haven’t they learned yet that the slow drip, drip, drip of information is much, much worse?
The sports blog Dead Spin tells the tragic story of the death of a WWE wrestler, Lance Cade at the young age of 29. This story has great political importance not only because Connecticut GOP U.S. Senate nominee Linda McMahon is the CEO but it also highlights the poor working conditions of the WWE.
It wasn’t long ago that juiced-up Adonises dominated the top ranks of the WWE. (Some would say that the John Cena-Batista feuds in recent years are evidence that little has changed.) There certainly have been stories in the past about Vince McMahon suggesting that wrestlers go “on the gas” to help their look. And the steroids are only one end of a vicious cycle of self-medication: The grinding schedule necessitates painkillers and sleeping pills to aid in recovery, and those require uppers so you can be ready to go again the next day. Add to that the inevitable impulses of being young and wealthy, living a life on the road in a bawdy boys club, and the potential for myriad chemical abuses comes into stark focus. If it’s not exactly the East German Olympic team, it’s certainly a culture of excess, one full of destructive incentives. Some of the responsibility has to fall on the McMahons.
This is where Lance Cade’s death has particular import. Because Cade, like so many of the other wrestlers who have died over the past 15 years, was addicted at various times to painkillers and sleeping pills, and earlier this year he went to rehab for (reportedly) the second time. The WWE paid for his first trip to rehab, and while that in and of itself doesn’t make the organization culpable, it’s an implicit recognition that Cade’s health did in some way fall under the WWE’s purview.
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Cade was fired three times by the WWE for not having his substance abuse problems under control — the first after suffering a pill-induced seizure on a company flight, and the second time after admitting he had a problem and going to rehab. Despite his confessions of drug use, though, Cade claimed he never actually failed a Wellness Policy test. And there was never any indication that his work suffered from his dependencies. As with Umaga (Eddie Fatu), who died this year, there is the feeling that the WWE finally cut ties with Cade because he had become a liability — because despite wrestling’s attempts to help him, Cade’s talents did not outweigh the potential for negative press should his addictions finally get the better of him. If this was indeed the calculus, there’s a miserable sort of logic at work, and in its prescience it’s doubly heartbreaking.
The post is too long and too detailed to really do it justice with excerpts so go read the whole thing. I had absolutely no idea how bad the world of “sports entertainment” was for these athletes. It’s monstrous.