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Pillowpants posted:Where can I read your reporting? If you get the pay wall or otherwise have issues with it, the Business Insider India version has never had a pay wall for some reason and should work fine: https://www.businessinsider.in/poli...ow/78938854.cms A year later, I had a shockingly difficult time getting anyone to bite on a pitch about getting proof that the FBI (and, because they also had a copy, WWE) disregarding a tape that, by their own admission, showed Mel Phillips molesting a ring boy, so I published it myself on Substack: https://babyfacevheel.substack.com/p/wwe-ring-boys-fbi-mel-phillips-videotape My MEL Magazine feature about the INS trying deport Pat Patterson for being gay in the 1960s can be read at this link: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/pat-patterson-government-witch-hunt If you want to count Jimmy Snuka killing Nancy Argentino as part of Titangate because that's when it first received public scrutiny, then you can read my extensively reported feature about that at MEL as well: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/jimmy-snuka-girlfriend-nancy-argentino-death For Titangate more broadly, it's less original reporting, but we unlocked the shows we did on the Between The Sheets Patreon about Titangate and made them free for everyone (they're also available for free in our regular feed now): https://www.patreon.com/collection/345983?view=expanded
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# ? Feb 23, 2024 21:43 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 05:46 |
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davidbix posted:Literally nobody was talking about clumsy anonymous public restroom hookups. We weren't even talking about a witness telling the INS in the mid-1960s that Patterson was regularly patronizing street hustlers who were "young boys," which I don't think can be taken at face value for a number of different reasons. We're talking about specific allegations about Patterson from the late 1970s through his 1992 WWF resignation, almost all of which involved him being in a position of power over his accusers. Thank you for all the information that definitely moves it from 'probably' to 'well yeah', but for the majority of that it kind of its into what I'm saying was that from the fifties to the end of Reaganism, being gay in large parts of the country was illegal, and in the context of that era you either lived in a big city with a queer scene or you lived essentially in the darkness and frequently did things that were Not Good, and would still be illegal today but also back then your entire existence was illegal. Gay men from that generation often had a reputation/stereotype for unwanted advances and attempted assaults, in large part due to coming of age in a time where you had to break rules because the rules were written so that you died lonely and alone. A good number of men were from that men are/were molesters, but the system at the time was producing molesters. That said, you don't need an act of a legislature to tell you to not be sexually involved with children; that's just some good old human consciousness where what's right and wrong is evident and law only provides specifics. Like I said, it's a double standard, and I was just explaining why I personally process it that way and I understand it sucks and some people aren't going to like it. I just think if one is coming into a thread like this and excusing sexual assault, and I'm not going to disavow my thought exercise could be charged as such, then you need to be really loving clear about the reasons. I certainly don't think Patterson is any angel but a lot of that is not inconsistent with gay men of that era. It's not my generation, but I grew up in a neighborhood around old generation gays (I later realized who they were because my parents gave me non-specific warnings about being alone with them) that I'm well aware of how decades of being designated as mentally deranged outlaws for their sexuality affected their behavior. That groomer ring announcer can burn, though. I'm grateful to not be a part of that era. The mid to late 90s were already scary enough. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 23, 2024 |
# ? Feb 23, 2024 22:50 |
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A gay man in a powerful position, who wields that power against other men the same ways as straight men in power were targeting women, doesn't deserve this much leeway no matter the time and place That's a man who's a powerful abuser first and foremost, and his sexuality comes a distant second from that He had way more in common with Vince McMahon than he did any normal gay man just living their lives at the time
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# ? Feb 23, 2024 23:44 |
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Jim Barnett used a college sports program as his own private molesto buffet. Patterson wasn’t even an outlier for behavior. Carnies are by default awful people, sometimes capable of self reflection and growth.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:30 |
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Craptacular! posted:Thank you for all the information that definitely moves it from 'probably' to 'well yeah', but for the majority of that it kind of its into what I'm saying was that from the fifties to the end of Reaganism, being gay in large parts of the country was illegal, and in the context of that era you either lived in a big city with a queer scene or you lived essentially in the darkness and frequently did things that were Not Good, and would still be illegal today but also back then your entire existence was illegal. Gay men from that generation often had a reputation/stereotype for unwanted advances and attempted assaults, in large part due to coming of age in a time where you had to break rules because the rules were written so that you died lonely and alone. A good number of men were from that men are/were molesters, but the system at the time was producing molesters. That said, you don't need an act of a legislature to tell you to not be sexually involved with children; that's just some good old human consciousness where what's right and wrong is evident and law only provides specifics. I'm sorry, but your last two posts read like you're saying "he was a product of his times" as a way to excuse or rationalize his behavior. He was a man who used his power and influence to extort subordinates for favors in the workplace. That is just wrong, regardless of his sexual preference or the social conditions of the time he grew up in. It's like Whoopi Goldberg constantly defending Roman Polanski for raping a teenage girl in the 1970s by saying "times were different" or "things are different where he came from" or whatever, when the underlying fact is this: it was wrong for him to do that back then, and it's still wrong for him to have done it now. The same applies to Patterson.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:33 |
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Craptacular! posted:Thank you for all the information that definitely moves it from 'probably' to 'well yeah', but for the majority of that it kind of its into what I'm saying was that from the fifties to the end of Reaganism, being gay in large parts of the country was illegal, and in the context of that era you either lived in a big city with a queer scene or you lived essentially in the darkness and frequently did things that were Not Good, and would still be illegal today but also back then your entire existence was illegal. Gay men from that generation often had a reputation/stereotype for unwanted advances and attempted assaults, in large part due to coming of age in a time where you had to break rules because the rules were written so that you died lonely and alone. A good number of men were from that men are/were molesters, but the system at the time was producing molesters. That said, you don't need an act of a legislature to tell you to not be sexually involved with children; that's just some good old human consciousness where what's right and wrong is evident and law only provides specifics.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:37 |
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davidbix posted:I wrote an extensively reported feature on the ring boys scandal for Business Insider in 2020: https://www.businessinsider.com/linda-mcmahon-once-employed-an-accused-child-molester-2020-10?r=mcmahon-teaser You rock Bix, thanks for this content!
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:38 |
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I'm sorry, but your last two posts read like you're saying "he was a product of his times" as a way to excuse or rationalize his behavior. He was a man who used his power and influence to extort subordinates for favors in the workplace. That is just wrong, regardless of his sexual preference or the social conditions of the time he grew up in.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:42 |
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davidbix posted:This is not a defense of Whoopi, as her comments are a bunch of different flavors of awful regardless, but it's something that I feel is important to note whenever her comments about Polanski come up: On top of everything else, she was just flat-out wrong about the facts of the case. She thought it was "just" a statutory rape case (hence the infamous "it wasn't 'RAPE'-rape" line) when, in actuality, it was explicitly a forcible rape case as well. Not to prolong this derail, but it frankly astounds me that so much of Hollywood can't line up fast enough to kiss Polanski's rear end, when (as you say) he quite literally forcibly raped a teenage girl.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:44 |
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Not to prolong this derail, but it frankly astounds me that so much of Hollywood can't line up fast enough to kiss Polanski's rear end, when (as you say) he quite literally forcibly raped a teenage girl. He got a lot of sympathy handwaving he absolutely didn't deserve because of the whole Manson family murders and all. He should be in prison, the only reason he isn't is because his wife was murdered (and he fled to France after accepting a bs plea deal) But this doesn't have anything to do with the sex pest at hand so I'll leave it at that HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Feb 24, 2024 |
# ? Feb 24, 2024 00:57 |
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HonorableTB posted:He got a lot of sympathy handwaving he absolutely didn't deserve because of the whole Manson family murders and all. He should be in prison, the only reason he isn't is because his wife was murdered (and he fled to France after accepting a bs plea deal) Tom O'Neil's Chaos paints Polanski as a really nasty guy and basically says Polanski treated Shannon Tate not that differently than the way McMahon treated Janel Grant.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 03:14 |
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post hole digger posted:Tom O'Neil's Chaos paints Polanski as a really nasty guy and basically says Polanski treated Shannon Tate not that differently than the way McMahon treated Janel Grant. I'm not shocked by this. Roman Polanski is a thoroughly disgusting person through and through and it pisses me off that he gets away with it because he's protected by equally disgusting people in power, like former Culture Minister Mitterand of France, who gave a statement in support of Polanski in 2009. Mitterand admitted in his autobiography to engaging in sex tourism to Thailand where he paid for sex with boys who were almost certainly underage.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 04:03 |
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In the public eye, I feel like the Polanski case is kind of similar to Patterson in that a lot of people might be willing to let their crimes go due to them being at least fairly good at their jobs. Repulsion is a great film, as is Chinatown, and even going as far forward as The Pianist. Great works of art can affect you personally, and it's hard to let them go even if you know their creators might be awful people. I'm not being so blasé as to wheel out the "separate the art from the artist" argument without any irony or introspection, but it's difficult and I don't really know how to properly confront it. You can always look for new things to enjoy, certainly, but who's to say those hypothetical new creators won't be terrible people also? Online publishing, Youtube and indie wrestling have all had more than their fair share of scandals. And that's before you even consider that most people aren't creating and have never created things as special as Repulsion, or 45 Mercy Street, or Fitzcarraldo, or the Black Triptychs, the list of difficult great art is practically endless. I have some amount of sympathy for wrestling people who struggle to condemn Patterson and the like on the back of all this, albeit not that much. Of course, wrestling is a trashy entertainment that's benefitted from being closed off from any sort of respectability or scrutiny for decades. And I would argue that even if Bitches Brew is a great album, you kind of still have to acknowledge that Miles Davis was a horrible person. Whether you can still enjoy the works in question probably comes down to you and any privilege you might hold, but yeah, wrestling probably shouldn't be a major priority in any case.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 04:21 |
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Yeah, it also needs to be stressed that even though Vince was much closer friends with Patterson than he was with Terry Garvin or Mel Phillips, Patterson probably doesn't get brought back if he was nearly as unimportant as they were. The quality of the week to week booking on WWF TV fell off a cliff while Patterson was gone, and there are plenty of people in the business who think that Vince never would have been nearly as successful without Pat's giant wrestling brain propping him up. Phillips was a mediocre ring announcer who was incredibly replaceable on the ring crew. Garvin, though he had decades of wrestling experience including helping out in the office in Kansas City and Amarillo, was basically just interchangeable middle management.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 05:21 |
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HonorableTB posted:He got a lot of sympathy handwaving he absolutely didn't deserve because of the whole Manson family murders and all. He should be in prison, the only reason he isn't is because his wife was murdered (and he fled to France after accepting a bs plea deal) His plea was to be probation plus time served. Thats it. For drugging and raping a 13 year old. The judge was going to ignore it and sentence him to 50 years and I dont blame the judge at all
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 06:03 |
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Duke Pukem posted:His plea was to be probation plus time served. Thats it. For drugging and raping a 13 year old. The judge was going to ignore it and sentence him to 50 years and I dont blame the judge at all Just pure insanity. I want off this world
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 06:44 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi608b0BH3w
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 20:56 |
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Craptacular! posted:Thank you for all the information that definitely moves it from 'probably' to 'well yeah', but for the majority of that it kind of its into what I'm saying was that from the fifties to the end of Reaganism, being gay in large parts of the country was illegal, and in the context of that era you either lived in a big city with a queer scene or you lived essentially in the darkness and frequently did things that were Not Good, and would still be illegal today but also back then your entire existence was illegal. Gay men from that generation often had a reputation/stereotype for unwanted advances and attempted assaults, in large part due to coming of age in a time where you had to break rules because the rules were written so that you died lonely and alone. A good number of men were from that men are/were molesters, but the system at the time was producing molesters. That said, you don't need an act of a legislature to tell you to not be sexually involved with children; that's just some good old human consciousness where what's right and wrong is evident and law only provides specifics.
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# ? Feb 24, 2024 21:17 |
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Dave Meltzer is declaring he does not believe all of the accusations against Vince. https://twitter.com/davemeltzerwon/status/1761596091227926969?s=21&t=SaqpS1xrgMxCHjY_Is7JiA
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 18:14 |
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MassRafTer posted:Dave Meltzer is declaring he does not believe all of the accusations against Vince. Oh Dave, don't do this..
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 18:55 |
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dave thinks matt riddle is a stand up guy and a wrestling prodigy that no one gets so this isnt a surprise. never have hopes that anyone has a respectful stance on a topic thats this sensitive or similar or you will be let down
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 18:59 |
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I want to know what Vince has done for Dave to give him the benefit of the doubt
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 19:10 |
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KungFu Grip posted:never have hopes [...] you will be let down
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 19:11 |
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Fighting with twitter eggs all day and night will torch your wavering old brain meat.
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 19:29 |
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Dave's known more about the inner workings of WWE for forty years than any other journo and has chosen to never a big fuss about it
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 19:29 |
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Dave wanted to cite one of Elgin’s puppet tumblr sites as proof Elgin didn’t do no misdeeds.
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# ? Feb 25, 2024 20:06 |
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I guess Dave knows who fills his dinner bowl.
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 11:16 |
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https://x.com/iamjohnpollock/status/1762131761427882073?s=61&t=XvrQwNe2ohQa_fKBAbwFNg https://www.postwrestling.com/2024/02/26/nick-kiniski-speaks-out-on-proposition-by-wwf-official/ Nick Kiniski ( son of Gene kiniski) is also reporting harassment and unwanted advances from Terry Garvin in the 80s. He took it right to Vince, who did nothing and stopped booking Nick altogether.
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 16:16 |
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CopywrightMMXI posted:https://x.com/iamjohnpollock/status/1762131761427882073?s=61&t=XvrQwNe2ohQa_fKBAbwFNg https://twitter.com/gregmep/status/1762195109901140290
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 21:14 |
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It's gonna be loving crazy when they eventually try to put Vince in their HoF.
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 22:18 |
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TheKingslayer posted:It's gonna be loving crazy when they eventually try to put Vince in their HoF. All I know is John Cena will happily induct him
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 22:22 |
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Who the gently caress cares about what a front for sex trafficking says should be memorialized.
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# ? Feb 26, 2024 22:29 |
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Nick Dinsmore has a podcast where he related a story that Mark Carrano followed Nick's future wife into the women's bathroom and basically barricaded himself in the bathroom as he tried to force himself on her, but couldn't because she stayed on the other side of the bathroom as he tried to hold the door closed. Says it was reported to HR and nothing happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6GUXNluWfM&t=22s I do not recommend watching the Nick Dinsmore podcast, but that was a relevant story at least. Edit: Also says a trainee of his was put in an uncomfortable situation by Johnny Ace and all he is willing to relate is the words used were "grooming words." MassRafTer fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Feb 27, 2024 |
# ? Feb 27, 2024 00:15 |
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SirPhoebos posted:Who the gently caress cares about what a front for sex trafficking says should be memorialized. arena owners should.
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 01:53 |
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MassRafTer posted:Nick Dinsmore has a podcast where he related a story that Mark Carrano followed Nick's future wife into the women's bathroom and basically barricaded himself in the bathroom as he tried to force himself on her, but couldn't because she stayed on the other side of the bathroom as he tried to hold the door closed. Says it was reported to HR and nothing happened. if the guy with the 90mile high forehead is getting into it everyone was
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 02:14 |
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Suplex Liberace posted:if the guy with the 90mile high forehead is getting into it everyone was Barrios was co-President of WWE alongside Michelle Wilson from 2008 to 2020 and I don't think traveled/was backstage very much at all. Which is not to say that he didn't see/do some poo poo in Connecticut. Carrano was around even longer (identified in a 2005 WON as "a close ally of John Laurinaitis" who had been recently promoted), and by 2012-2013 (the first time Laurinatitis got demoted for harassing a woman and resulting in a payoff/NDA) he became head of talent relations and an on-air "talent relations executive" on Total Divas. His name came up a lot in CM Punk's lawsuit-causing podcast, and mostly got mentioned in the same way that any head of talent relations gets complained about (everyone who got released during his tenure was sure it was him, not Vince or HHH who disliked him). Though he was in the news briefly after being accused of telling Paige and Alberto del Rio they had to stop dating, and later Miro implied that Carrano was trying to get him off of Total Divas for unclear reasons. He finally got fired a few years ago, whether as a scapegoat or not, as being the guy who sent Mickie James (and several other women) trash bags full of their gear and belongings after they got released. WWE then replaced him with Laurinaitis again.
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 02:50 |
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I've mentioned aspects of the Performance Center abuse scandal before but I think it is worth posting the entire reddit post by divajanedoe a verified female developmental talent.quote:First, please understand that it is of the utmost importance that I maintain my anonymity, and hopefully by the end of this you will understand why. I have told some of my story to a reporter, but it seems that unfortunately they were yet another outlet who has been told not to touch this story. Please bear with me as I've never used reddit before. The female advocate was believed to be Jane Geddes who at one point was a SVP in the company but got demoted and was out of the company weeks before the scandal broke. But I've never seen any wrestling reporter actually report on that.
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 05:53 |
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It's high-key frustrating to read more and more stories about WWE being gross when a significant amount of wrestling fans just don't care about any of it. Even when they aren't Fedpilled, they seem to think you are the weirdo for caring too much about WWE being a rape/abuse factory instead of just letting people "enjoy things."
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 06:36 |
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MassRafTer posted:I've mentioned aspects of the Performance Center abuse scandal before but I think it is worth posting the entire reddit post by divajanedoe a verified female developmental talent. didn't austin's initial letter mention her along with another released woman as the point person they were trying to deal with before she got sent back to stamford?
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 06:44 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 05:46 |
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STONE COLD 64 posted:didn't austin's initial letter mention her along with another released woman as the point person they were trying to deal with before she got sent back to stamford? She is one of the people it was addressed to. quote:Memo To: Canyon Ceman, Dorothy Brill, Jane Geddes
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# ? Feb 27, 2024 06:49 |