Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Linda McMahon seems to be following the playbook in her U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut that Cyndi Lauper used so many years ago to get noticed, which is that any public association - even with professional wrestlers - is a good one. It helps that McMahon has actually run a professional wrestling league, and not just gotten someone like the late Captain Lou Albano as her unofficial spokesman. But now that she's actually the Republican Senate nominee in Connecticut, the press is starting to look into her former career. Margaret Carlson of the Bloomberg News Service just wrote a damning column about how McMahon added elements of necrophilia and intrafamily violence even as she got a TV-PG rating to get younger viewers to watch it on the tube. McMahon herself once got into the ring to kick someone in the groin and got beaten up by her own daughter. These are just a few of the salacious revelations Carlson provides.

Recent polls show the noted violence peddler behind Democratic candidate Richard Blumenthal by ten points. Carlson fretted that Blumenthal had once been ahead by thirty points, but it's worth noting that the race almost got dead even in the wake of the news that Blumenthal misspoke about his Vietnam-era military service, only to see the Connecticut attorney general's lead recover after the story (fueled by McMahon's opposition research team) died down. Nevertheless, with a plan to spend $50 million of her own money in the primary and general election cycles, McMahon has put Blumenthal on notice, and he's taken notice. He's vowing to campaign hard. I propose he rent a bus and travel all over the state to meet the voters personally. Connecticut is geographically small enough for a statewide tour. He can do it.

(It will be fascinating to hear Chris Matthews's take on this election, as he blasted Blumenthal as someone unfit for the Senate for his allegedly deliberate misrepresentation of his military record, but that was when Vietnam veteran and former congressman Rob Simmons had a fighting chance of being Blumenthal's Republican opponent. As for Matthews, he's conveniently away this week.)

Something Linda McMahon may want to consider, though, is that while Cyndi Lauper's association with professional wrestlers got both her a large audience and got professional wrestling a larger audience, Lauper herself didn't last long and became an answer to an eighties trivia question, the musical equivalent of a Members Only jacket. Lauper, a Democrat, got a lot of credit for popularizing professional wrestling before McMahon made it even bigger. I'll bet Cyndi regrets doing that now. . . .