THE POLITICAL PIN

I can find no record of any politician every becoming a professional wrestler. But more than a few baby-kissers have followed the reverse story line. Perhaps the most insightful description of Abraham Lincoln was delivered by 19 year old William Green, who, in the fall of 1831, described his 6' 4”, 185 pound co-worker this way: “He can outrun, out lift, out wrestle and throw down any man in Sangamon County.” Green clearly saw Lincoln's need to win respect. Then in the summer of 1832, Lincoln took on Lorenzo Dow (Hank) Thompson, a fellow volunteer in the Black Hawk Indian uprising. In their match Thompson “threw down” Lincoln: twice. It was the rail splitter's only defeat in 12 years as an amateur wrestler. And it was after that drubbing that Lincoln switched to the law and politics.

Gimmick - The character portrayed by a wrestler.

The most successful wrestler turned politician was probably James George Janos, who was a U.S. Navy Seal, then a professional wrestler using the “gimmick” of Jesse "The Body" Ventura (above), who then used that moniker to become a film actor and then the Governor of Minnesota – putting a lie to F. Scott Fitzgerald's contention there are no second acts in American lives. Twice. His careers highlight the similarities between politicians and professional wrestlers. Both are roles in melodramatic morality plays, based on reality. Both require dedication and concentration from performer and audience alike. And both roles can leave the performer bruised and bloodied, or even paralyzed.

Angle - A fictional story line which usually begins when one wrestler attacks another, which results in revenge.

Consider Jerry O'Neil “The King” Lawler, who holds 168 professional wrestling “championships”, and was most famous for pile driving comedian Andy Kaufman head first during their 1982 match in Memphis, Tennessee. Twice. Kaufman went to the hospital, and Lawler went back to wrestling professionals. Now, Memphis had avoided political drama since New Years Day, 1940, when Mayor Watkins Overton was replaced by Ed “Boss” Crump, who was sworn in at the train station during a snow storm, and who immediately resigned in favor of Vice Mayor Joe Boyle, who the next morning was replaced by the City Commissioners with Walter Chandler. Thus Memphis had four mayors in under 24 hours – something of a melodramatic record. “The King” Lawler offered Memphis a return to that sort of drama, but the voters rejected the idea. Twice. In 1999 Jerry Lawler captured just 11% of the vote for Mayor, and a decade later he won only 4% . And that was the end of of his political career.

Burial – The “worked” (faked) lowering of a popular wrestler, forcing him to lose in “squash” (short, one sided) matches, as punishment..

World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer, Robert Lee “Bob” Backlund (above), had a 30 year career in wrestling, all of it playing a bow-tie wearing white-bread hero, telling his few fans he was “sick and tired of you plebeians throwing garbage out the windows of your car.” It was not exactly a blood curdling war cry. His “Cross-face Chicken Wing” move won him championships. Twice. But by the late 1990's his WWF boss was urging him to become a “heel”, (a villain). When he refused, “I was told I wasn't worth marketing," So Bob decided to make the cross over to Congress, running in 2000 for the seat from Connecticut's 1st district (below), against the incumbent Democrat, John Larsen.  Who had never been a wrestler.

Mark – From the carnival term: a person who enjoys professional wrestling as if it were un-staged.

Most grapplers, making the shift from wrestling theater to political theater, choose to run as Republicans, for some reason. And in recent history, they have all failed. Bucklund won only 28% of the 211,000 plus votes cast in the district, losing 59,331 to 151, 932 for Larsen. After his loss, Bob Bucklund became a bail bondsman, and then opened Buckland Energy (above), delivering fuel oil. He says he is thinking about running for Governor, which may be just about the last thing the Connecticut Republican Party needs after suffering Linda McMahon. Twice.

Shoot Screwjob - when the finish is changed without informing the losing wrestler.

Linda (above) was a North Carolina tom boy. Straight out of high school she married Vince Edwards, whose father was co-owner of Capital Wrestling Corporation. While Vince learned the business, Linda put her B.A. in French to use, translating intellectual property contracts into English for a Washington, D.C. law firm. By 1976 the couple had hit hard times and was reduced to food stamps, until Vince put together a deal to buy a sports arena in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. He filled it by starting a sports management company. In 1982 Linda and Vince bought Capital Wrestling, and changed its name to the World Wide Wrestling Federation. Within a decade they guided the industry into its “Golden Era”, with nationwide pay-per-view events, and marketing contracts for action figures of their “faces” and “heels” . Then in the 1990's financial over extension, “gas” (steroid) scandals, a series of sexual harassment lawsuits, and the infamous Montreal Shoot Screw job brought the empire to near collapse. It was Linda's adroit ancillary contracts which helped save the WWWF.

Sandbag - To make a throw much harder by letting your body go limp, which makes the attacker appear weak or unskilled.

In 2010 Linda McMahon announced her intention to spend $50 million of her own money on a run for a U.S. Senate seat. She beat out two Republican rivals in the primary, but lost the November election by 11%. The winning Democratic incumbent, Richard Blumenthal, spent less than $9 million. In 2012 Linda spent another $50 million trying to capture Connecticut’s other Senate seat. Her opponent this time, Democratic Representative Chris Murphy, spent just about $5.5 million. This time Linda lost by 12%. It is unclear if the underlying problem was being associated with professional wrestling, or being associated with the Republican Party. But afterward, Linda assured the Huffington Post that even after spending $100 million for no pin, she was satisfied. "I thoroughly enjoyed campaigning,” she said. And even a political fib can be charming when delivered in a sweet North Carolina drawl.

Blade - (N) The object used by wrestlers to cut themselves. (V) Cutting to get blood in their matches.

But maybe the most interesting transition from wrestling to politics has been made by the Japanese wrestler Skull Reaper A-ji, who practiced the Mexican lucha libre (free fighting) style. Luchadores (fighters) wear masks whose designs recall ancient Aztec animal-god traditions, and can become more than a costume element for the wearer. They appeal not just to furry fandom types, or anthropomorphic animal lovers.  According to psychiatrists and social psychologists, the mask produces “deindividuation”, which involves desensitization to pain, anger and fear, increased awareness of your surroundings, and an accompanying boost in self confidence.

Dusty Finish - In which the “face” (hero) appears to win a big match, but the decision is reversed by the ref. Refers to wrestler Dusty Rhodes, who booked many such finishes

Until 2004 Skull Reaper worked in the clothing industry – at what, I have no idea. That was the year he joined All Japan Pro Wrestling. He had his first match in September of 2005, at the Oita Event Hall, in front of 1,200 of his home town fans. But there does not seem to have been a follow up match, which may explain why on 24 February, 2013,  Skull Reaper stood for election to the Oita municipal council. Oita (above) is a fishing and manufacturing port of a half a million citizens, on the north coast of Japan's most southern main island, Kyushu. It is famous for its factories and its epicurean favorite, de fugu chiri – poisonous puffer fish liver.

Cheap Heat - The incitement of a negative crowd reaction

There were 55 candidates for the 43 available spots on the Oita counsel, so name recognition was important. And a name like “Skull Reaper” must have of stood out on that list, even in Japanese characters. The 44 year old blond headed masked “face” collected 2,828 votes, making him 40^th, out of 43 new councilmen. But, on 6 March, 2013 a plenary meeting of the Oita council was held, and they overwhelmingly voted that Skull Reaper's mask violated the rule “A person entering the floor shall not wear articles such as a hat or cane.” He would not be the masked avenger of Oita

False finish - A pin fall attempt which is kicked out just before the referee counts to three, which builds crowd anticipation.

Refused entry in the council's first general meeting on 11 March, Skull Reaper told the press he was frustrated. “If I take my mask off, I’m an entirely different person. I will not take it off.” But time, and perhaps negative press coverage, changed his mind. And on 19 March, Skull Reaper was admitted into the Council Chambers, sans mask His name plate (below) still reads “Skull Reaper A-ji” because that was the identity the citizens voted for.

Highspot - A top-rope move, or a series of maneuvers perceived as dangerous.

And perhaps this sacrifice helped his wrestling career, because on 18 May, 2013, Skull Reaper finally got a second match, pinning Hideyoshi Kamitani, at the Asaukura Amagi Sport Center, in just 11:46. It almost makes me wonder if all politicians should be not required to wear masks to match their theatrical persona. 

Gold – A championship belt.

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THE POTTY MOUTH CONSPIRACY

I believe Matt Welsh when he insisted years later he thought the "whole thing was a tempest in a teapot..." But honestly, that might be just the way he remembered January of 1964, not the way he lived it.  Because when the letter from the small town of Frankfurt, promoting a conspiracy theory, landed on the desk of the 41st Governor of Indiana, Matt Welsh wasted no time in spreading it as far and as fast as possible. That's what most politicians do. They spread panic.  It's almost their job description.

Frankfurt (above), a town of 15,000 exclusively white citizens, 45 miles due north of Indianapolis, was very much in the news that January because of the Hoosier obsession with high school basketball. 

 On Saturday, 28 December, 1963, Frankfort High School (above) had hosted a holiday invitational tournament in their new $4.5 million building and basketball arena (above right). The Frankfort "Hot Dogs" were eliminated in the afternoon game. That evening the team from Anderson, Indiana, met the reigning state champs, the Muncie Central High School Bearcats in what Indianapolis News sports writer, Corwin "Corky" Lamm,  described as "A Basketbrawl".

During the final seconds of Anderson's upset win, a frustrated Muncie player slammed the ball into his opponent's face. The sight of blood emptied the bleachers. Players and fans went at each other with their fists. Somebody even punched an Anderson cheerleader into the bleachers. Frankfort police quickly got things under control, but according to Lamm, the principle causality was  "... one black eye for basketball". At the core of the hysteria which followed, but which was barely mentioned in the press, was that while the entire Anderson team was white, 3 of the 5 starters for Muncie Central (below) were African-Americans.

Interestingly, this seismic headline and editorial producing event was not mentioned in the perfidy letter to Governor Welsh, even though the letter was written less than 3 weeks later, and the author attended Frankfort High School, infamous scene of the "basketbrawl". Rather the writer of the letter postmarked 17 January, 1964 professed to be concerned only with an immoral musical machination which began 8 months earlier, and 1,500 miles away.

At about 10:00 a.m., on Saturday, 6 April, 1963, the 5 members of the rock and roll group The Kingsmen gathered in a recording studio at 411 Southwest 13th Street in Portland, Oregon. 

The local group had been playing together for about 2 years, with 18 year old Jack Ely  (above left) singing through his new dental braces and playing rhythm guitar. Mike Mitchel (above right front) played lead guitar, Dan Gallucci was on the organ, Bob Norby (above right rear) was on bass guitar and the group's founder, Lynn Easton, reluctantly played the drums. They had pooled their funds to pay the $36 fee for a 1 hour use of the equipment and a recording technician, because they were proud of their rock-and-roll rendition of a calypso song written by a Los Angles musician named Richard Barry - who no longer owned the song, having sold all rights 3 years earlier for $750.

Backstage during a show in 1957, Barry had quickly scribbled the lyrics to a easy going R&B love ballad he called "Louie Louie" - no comma between the names - on a roll of toilet paper. Seriously. The song told the story in Jamaican English of a young man forced to leave home to find work. "A fine little girl, she waits for me, catch a ship across the sea, Sail that ship about, all alone, Never know if I make it home...3 nights and days I sail the sea, Think of girl, all constantly....See, see Jamaica, the moon above, It won't be long, me see me love, Take her in my arms again, I'll tell her I'll never leave again"

The Portland studio mostly recorded voice-overs for commercials and documentaries. and had never recorded a rock band before. The Kingsmen formed a circle around Jack Ely, one microphone for each instrument's amplifier and a single mic suspended from the ceiling for the vocal - this was before multi-track recording. 

After playing "10 or 12 bars" to set sound levels the technician and studio owner Robert Lindahl (above), moved Jack "about 10 feet back" and then they "laid down" a single 2 minute 40 second version of the song. The band thought they were still rehearsing. Ely was yelling to be heard above the amplifiers and drums, and he started the last verse too early. Half way through the song, Easton dropped a stick. But at the end Lindahl announced, "Great! Wonderful! What do you want to put on the B side?"

According to Ely, "We pressed 1,000 copies. The five of us got 20 each to pass out at school...The rest went into distribution, and nothing happened for months." But the slowly growing sales so impressed New York based "Wand Records" they signed on to distribute it. But Wand, as part of the racist division in American music, handled almost exclusively African-American artists. And as guitarist Mike Mitchel explained, "They had no idea we were white. By the time they found out...the song was climbing up the Billboard chart." In fact the Kingsmen's one take version of "Louie Louie" sold 12 million copies. When they later released it as part of an album, the cover did not include a photo of the band.  For obvious reasons.

What the recording had was energy and spontaneity. What it did not have was enunciation. Teenage musicians across the country listened to the popular record over and over, copying the music, but the more they listened, the more versions of the lyrics they came up with. According to Mitchel, "Some students at Tulane University called Lynn's house one afternoon and said, 'We've heard the record and these are the words we hear. Is it true?' And then they sang some dirty lyrics. That was the first time we learned that some people thought the lyrics were obscene because, in the northwest, it was a well-known song that had been played by many groups."

But nobody in Frankfort, Indiana (above) had ever heard the song before, lest of all the student who signed the letter to Governor Welsh. But he or she was certain what they were hearing was "so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter. ” However, students at Miami University in Athens, Ohio produced an obscene version of the lyrics, which compelled Jack New, Governor Welsh's executive secretary, to obtain a copy of the record - thus increasing sales by one more. According to Welsh "We slowed it down and we thought we could hear the words." At the time Welsh had no doubts, saying the supposed lyrics made his ears tingle. The Governor's Press Secretary, James McManus, assured the Indianapolis Star, the obscenities were "indistinct, but plain if you listen carefully."

But Governor Welsh did not bother to contact anyone at Wand Records, or even the band members in Portland, Oregon - whose families were available by dialing directory assistance. Instead Governor Welsh sent a letter off to his "friend", President of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, Ried Chapman (below).

Later Welsh insisted, "At no time did I ever pressure anybody to take the song off the air. I suggested...it might be simpler all around if it wasn't played." Eager to help his friend, Chapman dispatched telegrams to stations statewide "asking" them to not play the record. 

Overnight "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen (above)went from the 4th most played song on Indianapolis radio, to zero. A few days later the Indianapolis Star called Portland and reported,"Young Singers Dismiss As Hooey Obscenity Charge in 'Louie Louie.'" Lynn Easton was quoted as saying, "We took the words from the original version by Richard Berry and recorded them faithfully. There was no clowning around. " 

But the editorial board of The Star refused to let go of the conspiracy, denouncing "...some stations" which have "decided to fill their programs with a cacophony of noise, and a collection of musical garbage. Call it what you like--folk music, rock 'n' roll, bop, hip or what-not." The paper offered no suggestion as to who should decide what was music and what was garbage, but the implication was clear.

Two Marion County prosecutors were assigned to investigate the dirty record. They played it at the standard 45 revolutions per minute, sped it up to 78 and slowed it down to 33 and a third. Their assessment was "the record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging cymbals."  Jungle rhythm sort of says it all, doesn't it? But it was not obscene. Surprisingly the 1 February edition of "Billboard, The International Music - Record Newsweekly", endorsed their own cabal - "...some shrewd press agent may also be playing an important role in this teapot tempest. Exactly whose agent is hard to pin down at this point."

That January the United States Attorney General, Robert Kennedy got an almost identical letter, originating from the parent of a student attending Sarasota High School in Florida. "...My daughter brought home a record of "LOUIE LOUIE"... The lyrics are so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter." Fifty years later it is reasonable to suspect an organized movement to suppress the "jungle rhythm". 

But in January of 1964, Kennedy did what Governor Welsh should have done first. RFK ordered the F.B.I to investigate. At the same time the U.S. Post Office and the Federal Communications Commission also launched investigations. 

As the Associated Press reported, "All three agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics were even after listening to the recordings played at speeds of 16 rpm to 78 rpm."

The foolishness of the entire matter was made plain when on 1 February -  the same day as the Billboard article about the supposed "Louie Louis" conspiracy - announced that the  song "I Want To Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles hit number one on the charts. It would stay there  for 7 weeks. 

The "45 "single record sold 10,000 copies an hour in New York city alone. Nationwide it sold 5 million copies that spring. And it was replaced for another 2 weeks at the top of the Billboard chart by "She Loves You", also by the Beatles. It was the beginning of the British invasion, and the reign of the "Fab Four".  The Kingsman's "Louie Louie" was the last American record to top the charts for months.

Frankfort, Indiana won no advantage in being the source de main for the "Louie Louie" conspiracy theory.  Nor did it gain any advantage from the press coverage of the "Basketbrawl"  These events, which seemed so important to community leaders in 1964,  gained the town nothing. In the forty plus years since the 15,000 residents of "Gem City" -  so called because of its early investment in electrical lighting, - grew to a town of about 16,000 people. 

There are still almost no African-Americans in Frankfort. But the population is now only 72% white, with Hispanics making up 27%.  And 11% of all of them live in poverty. Winning the Culture Wars in Frankfort may not be the cause of its failure to grow and prosper,  but clearly racism and fear has not helped the town. As the clearly enunciated clearly not obscene lyrics to the Frankfort High School fight song say, "All hail to dear old Frankfort, to the blue and the white that floats upon the breeze....may her glory never, never die."  But there are times when it looks like the town just might.  And that truly would be obscene.

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