When asked to rank different forms of popular entertainment, modern culture critics might put professional wrestling somewhere between amateur pornography and dogfighting. Enjoyment of this grand tradition is liable to get you marked as a hopeless rube or even a symptom of malignant cultural pathologies. Right now, this takes the form of the analysis that professional wrestling is shot through with, and also a feature of, “toxic masculinity.” It has indeed been a bad few months for the image of professional wrestling. I would have said that it has been the worst few months were it not for the time when an active World Wrestling Entertainment star killed his wife, his child, and himself. 

Here’s the quick catchup: Vince McMahon, the longtime boss of WWE, has been accused of sexual assault and sex trafficking, which follows revelations about millions of dollars being paid out to various women as part of a series of nondisclosure agreements. This is especially bad for WWE because McMahon was not just the actual boss behind the scenes but played the boss in the storyline. Thus, old footage of him being a nasty old lech on live TV is now racking up countless views online.