Fifteen years after Tonya Harding became a household name in the breaking of figure skating rival Nancy Kerrigan's knee, the retired, disgraced and disgruntled skater has returned to television to ask just how long someone must pay for her past.
At the same time, Harding said last night on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, she owes President Barack Obama a certain debt for his campaign-trail remark that he wasn't about to "do a Tonya Harding'' on his primary opponents. She maintains it helped her find work, paid appearances - "because people forget who Tonya Harding is.''
Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, remembered well in December of 2007 when he told a crowd in Vinton, Iowa, that he was not about to pull a Harding in pursuit of that first caucus victory in Iowa.
"Folks said there's no way Obama has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding," Obama joked then, alluding to the athlete who had conspired to stop her rival during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. "We decided that's not the kind of campaign we wanted to run.''
Yet, Harding voices a great deal of bitterness about all she has been through since then.
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