As the eulogies for Vince McMahon’s career pile up in the wake of his not-in-any-way-forced retirement on Friday, they follow the usual script of any powerful and ungodly wealthy man’s career coming to an end. His offenses, crimes, and responsibility for the misery and violation of basically countless somehow come in under his accomplishments. Because in this country, being rich is the ultimate accomplishment of all. We value someone’s bank account more than just about anything, especially women and low-level workers, and usually mistake it for some genius we couldn’t possibly attain. Even if the only “genius” involved was having all the money in the first place, it all gets muddied.
Because was Vince McMahon really a genius? Or did he just have more money than everyone else, and was left alone in the industry of wrestling where his vision and ideas were the only ones that we just had to assume were next level because there was no one else providing an alternative for decades? His lifelong insecurity about being known simply as a wrestling promoter and his failures in any other line (XFL, his bodybuilding league, etc.) tells its own story.
Is having all the money and being an unmitigated asshole prepared to do whatever to gain more money really a mark of genius? Well, in this country, yeah, it is. Because, somehow, most people like to envision themselves as just an unfortunate millionaire dealing with some hard times and if just given one chance, if they could just be as ruthless, if they could just play the game that way…
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