WWE Removing "Attitude Era" clips due to Linda McMahon's campaign?

[The Hoov]

WWE announced late Thursday that it was removing "dated and edgier" footage from its official website and media platforms, a day after co-founder Linda McMahon's political opponent used clips in an attack ad.

"To better reflect our current family-friendly brand of entertainment, WWE is removing some dated and edgier footage from digital platforms," said Brian Flinn, WWE's Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, in a statement. "Some of this footage has been misused in political environments without any context or explanation as to when it was produced. This damages the corporate reputation of our company. WWE is well within its rights to protect its intellectual property for fair use."

Flinn said the footage removal is not related to an ad released Wednesday by Rep. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat running for Senate against McMahon, which featured WWE footage while slamming her for allegedly off-shoring profits to avoid taxes and failing to provide health coverage for their performers. Rather, it is part of a re-branding effort.

While WWE held a PG-14 rating for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s when she was running the organization with her husband, Vince McMahon, its current content is rated PG or G.

This is extremely frustrating for me personally. The Attitude Era of 1997-2001 was a tremendous part of my childhood. I grew up worshiping people like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Mankind and D-Generation X and it seems like to me they are just trying to "Benoit" my memories. This will not stop her opponents from digging up old clips, I mean YouTube and DailyMotion is chock filled with clips. If anything it'll have negative connotations with her campaign, like "If she's hiding this, what ELSE is she hiding?"

I find it highly offensive that just because these exist and Linda and Vince are running a vanity campaign to be a part of the Senate for no particular reason other than to be there that a period of wrestling, quoted by numerous people in the wrestling community as being the single most important era in the history of Professional Wrestling, has to be unceremoniously swept under the proverbial rug to protect the redundant and hypocritical campaign. In 1997, I was 7 years old. 1998, I was 8 and so on and so forth. The product was edgier and less quote unquote "kid friendly" and yet, did I grow up to mass murder a group of elderly people in a mall? No. Did I decide to flunk out of school and become a lousy, good-for-nothing bum who leeches off of the Government? No. Am I even remotely emotionally scarred from watching the Attitude Era growing up? No. I'm a normal human being with decent moral values. Why do we have to water down the product to a "PG or G" rated television show? Why do we feel the need to coddle our children? But, most importantly, why do the WWE feel the need to take a great big giant shit on an entire generation of wrestling fans and wipe it completely out of existence for no other reason so Linda can inevitably lose her stupid Senate race?

"Stand Up for WWE".....but only when there's no curse words or mild violent content.

 

[Undertaker]

I have always disagreed with what WWE becoming a PG company and quite frankly I have never understood why they decided to change. Viewing figures have been down, PPV buy rates have dropped and the money going into the company has decreased significantly. Being PG takes a lot away from the company because it means they cannot do anything which is in even the slightest controversial. Hopefully one day this all changes and we are able to go back to the great product WWE created back in the late 90's and early 00's. As a long time fan I find it quite boring now watching WWE unless it's WrestleMania. There are barely any decent brawls, hardcore matches and blading has all but completely gone. I would imagine if Linda McMahon's political career goes down the pan everything should return back to normal.

 

[Chris]

You can still have a quality wrestling program that's PG, I've always said that it isn't the problem. This, for instance, has nothing to do with the fact that they're PG now, just that Linda senate run continues to make wrestling fans mad and fuck with our program.

 

[PHX]

This is pretty stupid and pointless not to mention funny how they're trying to act like this isn't a reaction to the Linda Campaign. You can take down whatever you want fact remains it happened and they will still use it against them.

 

[Rated R Superstar]

I don't agree on the blading thing. Honestly, it's a safety hazard, yes it was always awesome to see blood and shit. But that shit can produce AID's if not watched.

As for this whole bullshit thing. It's utterly Blue. Welcome to fucking politics where smear campaigns happen damn near 24/7! I honestly don't see how he past should be looked upon anyway.

 

[The Cork]

lol what difference will it make, the footage is available all sorts of ways.

It's not as if they can rewrite history, or bring the hundreds of dead wrestlers back. Shit happens, maybe the best thing would be to stop burning money promoting a pipe dream.

Vince is a goddam animal though, seems like nothing can knock his ambition to take over the world.

 

[Dod Draper]

It's frustrating that one woman's desire (or maybe Vince's too, I'm not gonna pretend to know) to run for senate is affecting the way WWE is ran.

With that being said, it won't make much difference at all. It's more a matter of what else her campaign can affect.

 

[Troy]

I find it odd though that a businessman like Vince would make poor business decisions all to help his wife get a senate spot. I understand that he would want his wife to succeed but it does surprise me that he would make business decisions based on that. In the end though I guess that is the fun thing about owning your own company, you can pretty much do what you want with it.

 

[Deezy]

The Attitude Era is gone, deal with it.

Alot of the things done back then were not all that great to begin with. This is more about Vince and co. seeing an oppurtunity to get into a senate and find ways of not having to pay taxes or ever having their employees become unionized.

Also, PG isn't all that terrible, I for one haven't seen much outside of hiring a midget that placates their product to kids. Everyone just blows things out of proportion, like the lack of blading....Good, Steve Austin and many others have to get blood transfusions because of staph infection resulting from dry blood on the canvas. OMGZ NO CHAIRS 2 DA HED!!! Good, how many undocumented concussions over that time frame? How many peoples lives have been affected from it. No swearing? Good, I don't want my little nieces and nephews acting the way I did when I was a young man. Kids of the 90s were alot older then they should've been and that was by design.

Parents got smart to this and put a stop to it, you act like WWE is the only thing to be watered down. Look at all the shows from the 90s and compare them to now.

 

[DeathChamberzMusic]

There was wrestling before and after the attitude era. And being the anti bully make a wish for the troops type they want to be they feel PG is the best way to pull it off. Attitude era also shortened many a career with the bumps these guys were taking

 

[Dod Draper]

[video=youtube_share;URo4kzNK_7Y]http://youtu.be/URo4kzNK_7Y?t=5m[/video]

5:00

 

[Troy]

As we noted last week, WWE began taking down "racier" footage from the past online to fall in line with their PG and G rated programming.

The move was made after a commercial campaign from Linda McMahon's opponent in the Senate race for the State of Connecticut began using clips to knock McMahon's run as head of WWE.

WWE began pulling clips from their own website and other digital platforms including Youtube.com, citing copyright concerns.

In response, the Democratic Party of Connecticut began uploading the videos to another video site and issued the following press release:

WHAT LINDA MCMAHON DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE: CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS ROLL OUT NEW CAMPAIGN TO HIGHLIGHT MCMAHON’S RECORD THAT THE WWE IS TRYING TO HIDE

the WWE is scrubbing the internet of sexually explicit material from Linda McMahon’s tenure as CEO

WHAT LINDA MCMAHON DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE: CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS ROLL OUT NEW CAMPAIGN TO HIGHLIGHT MCMAHON’S RECORD THAT THE WWE IS TRYING TO HIDE

(Hartford, Connecticut) In response to news that the WWE is scrubbing the internet of sexually explicit material from Linda McMahon’s tenure as CEO, the Connecticut Democratic Party is launching a new campaign to highlight the truth about McMahon’s past. The fact is that Linda McMahon made millions marketing sex, violence, necrophilia, and abusive treatment of women to children – all at the expense of the health and safety of her own workers – and is now spending a fortune on attacks and lies to try and distract from her record.

To kick off the campaign, today the Connecticut Democratic Party is re-releasing a video that highlights the type of programming Linda McMahon marketed to children. The video includes footage of wrestlers engaging in lewd sex acts, including one scene in which a wrestler has sex with a corpse.

To watch the video, click here.

“Linda McMahon made millions peddling sex, violence, necrophilia, and abusive treatment of women to kids – all at the expense and safety of her own workers – and is now spending a fortune on attacks and lies to distract from her past,” said Nancy DiNardo, Chairwoman of the Connecticut Democratic Party.
“Despite the WWE’s best efforts to play cover-up, they can’t erase Linda McMahon’s past. Why would Linda McMahon’s WWE cronies be trying to body slam the truth? Because Republican candidate Linda McMahon is afraid of it. We’re going to make sure Connecticut families have the facts and know the truth about Linda McMahon’s record.”

Update: The video has been pulled due to copyright violations.

It baffles me how some seemingly smart people that have been elected by the people to represent them in government can't understand that concept of a television show. Did they attack Reagan when he was running for office for his movie roles because Reagan killed people in his movies. Surely murder is worse than necrophilia! Someone needs to dumb it down for them and slowly point out that this is a scripted television show. I is saddening and actually quite scary to think that elected representatives can't understand the concept of a television show.

 

[Slim]

Man you hit it so hard on the head there... its like... it is very troubling that they are using a TV show for their basis of attack.

 

[ThatGuyFromNukemHigh]

Its politics, they will do whatever it takes to slander their opponent in an attempt to make themselves look better.

 

[Troy]

It would be so easy to shoot down by the media and by WWE. All they need to say is it is a scripted television program which has bad guys and good guys, they can figure the rest out.