Let's get ready to buuuuuuuuuumbleeee.
In today's visit to the spooky psychedelic carnival that is Rick Santorum's sleeveless life, we stop in front of a dimly lit tent labeled
The Time Rick Santorum Successfully Lobbied To Deregulate Pro Wrestling. Dare we enter?
Beginning in 1987, Santorum's mission, as dictated by the WWF, was simple: Get the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission out of the ring. There was no need for state officials to act as referees, because wrestling was a spectacle, not a sport. Nor did it need the state to supply timekeepers, announcers, and doctors—the promoters could take care of that. [...]
At the time Santorum dismissed suggestions that his deregulation bill would open up the industry to abuse. If anything, he told the Inquirer, it would give his client an added incentive to keep wrestlers healthy.
And by "healthy", we mean deaths, doctors administering steroids, and the rest of the mess that resulted from the McMahons' consolidation of the wrestling industry. As for Rick, he did his job well and with gusto:
[Irvin] Muchnick described the deregulation push in detail in a 1988 piece he wrote for the Washington Monthly. Although he didn't talk to Santorum for the article, he said got a call from him shortly after it was published. "It was like asshole central," he remembers. "He was slapping his knees and laughing and reading lines out loud, which at a minimum showed a certain cynicism about the whole thing. But also, it was just very juvenile. I'm sure he didn't expect to be running for president at that point."
Yeah, I'm not real surprised that "asshole" is the first word that comes to mind when someone describes a conversation with Rick Santorum. And I'm sorry, but this guy just continues to creep the hell outta me. He used to be a big wrestling fan, but isn't so much now, apparently:
"Professional wrestling matches, as bizarre as they were and are, at least began as morality plays," Santorum wrote in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family. "Good guys, literally wearing white, fought bad guys, literally wearing black." And as in any good morality play, Santorum argued, there had been a Fall: "Today, professional wrestling is more about titillation than ever. The violence has been sexualized."
Yeah, Um ... Mr. Santorum, if you're getting overly turned on by watching pro wrestling, I think that's maybe something you need to keep to yourself. Though it does explain a few things. Actually, it explains a
lot of things.