Friday, August 24th, 2007
This is a column I wrote in the Burlington Free Press which was published in their Op-Ed section on August 4. It’s about an upcoming WWE performance in this city.
I drove by Memorial Auditorium the other day and to my chagrin spotted the sign announcing that World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is once again coming to our city, this coming Sunday, August 5th. My first thought was, “Sunday, the day of the Sabbath, the ‘day the Lord rested,’ a day our culture has customarily reserved for reflection and time spent appreciating friends and family. How ironic the WWE would choose this, of all days, because there are few things in our world more anti-family and in fact anti-human than professional wrestling.”
I must confess up front that I have never been to a WWE match, and except for catching a second or two of it on television while flipping channels, I have never watched it there either. But at my place of employment, Spectrum Youth and Family Services, we do have a training film entitled: Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering. It is an hour long, but it’s only necessary to view 15 or 20 minutes of it to be convinced that a WWE performance promotes and encourages domestic violence towards women. In this film, there are constant images of male wrestlers threatening and harming women, with the frequent refrain from the wrestlers themselves, and the crowd, “She deserved it.”
Of course, fans of professional wrestling will argue back, “But it’s fake! No woman is actually being harmed.” Oh really. Tell that to the surviving parents and siblings of Nancy Benoit, who was strangled to death a month ago by her husband, WWE champion Chris Benoit. He also killed their 7-year-old son before taking his own life. What has not been widely reported is that Ms. Benoit had taken out a restraining order against her husband in 2003 due to his physical abuse of her.
An isolated incident? According to Fox News correspondent Douglas Kennedy, “There is a long history of domestic violence among professional wrestlers,” and he cites the arrest of Harry “Rasputin” Nicholas for threatening the 14-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, and the physical abuse suffered by Debra Williams, wife of another WWE champion, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin; Ms. Williams eventually divorced him, and states, “I have lived domestic abuse – I don’t want to think about what Nancy Benoit went through.”
If you are still not convinced, then take the word of the medical journal Pediatrics, which published last August the findings of Wake Forest University researchers: “Both among male and female students, the frequency with which they watched wrestling was associated with a number of indicators of violence and weapon-carrying.” Lead researcher Robert DuRant stated, “The more children and adolescents are exposed to violence, the more likely they are to engage in violence – and media plays a part.”
In my opinion the evidence is overwhelming that there is no place for the WWE in Burlington, and in particular in a facility such as Memorial Auditorium which is owned by the public. After the tragic murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn last year, which of course followed the tragic murder of Laura Winterbottom and the double-slaying of two women in Essex, the Burlington City Council issued a resolution stating, “that violent behavior perpetrated against women by men is inexcusable and will not be tolerated in our community,” and “that we commit to working with our schools and neighborhoods to educate ourselves, especially boys and men, on prevention of violence against women.”
A commendable gesture. Very nice words. But wouldn’t action be better? How about an ordinance prohibiting a WWE performance within our city, or at least prohibiting the rental of city-owned property to the WWE in light of its dismal record on domestic violence? Now that would actually be doing something, something in honor of Ms. Gardner-Quinn, Ms. Winterbottom and the two Essex women. Something that actually might make a difference.