Lane Kiffin Compared to Tonya Harding??

This pisses me off. Ole Miss head coach, Lane Kiffin, decided to accept “an offer to leave oxford, Miss., and coach rival LSU.” According to the author of the opinion piece, Joseph Goodman, Kiffin doing what he refers to as “the equivalent of trading in a Porsche Panamera for a Ford Pinto” (what’s he got against pintos!?) just before the college football playoffs is “right up there with Tonya Harding after taking a lead pipe to the knees of Ole Miss football this past week."

My friend, Joseph, and all the other men out there who like to casually invoke the names of women whose lives have been destroyed by tabloid media in order to make a point about some man, please, at least get it right.

We all know Tonya didn’t attack Nancy. We also know that the likelihood is high that she knew nothing about it. I believe she knew nothing about it. But we don’t have evidence either way and I’m a pragmatist, not a loyalist, and I’m also not a psychic, so I’m not going to speculate.

But more offensive even than not caring enough to get the reference right is the idea of comparing the betrayal felt by Old Miss fans over a successful man getting a new job with a higher salary, to … what, exactly? Perhaps it would be more accurate and fitting to say the betrayal to Ole Miss fans is somewhat similar to the betrayal Tonya fans and Nancy fans felt when the hero images they relied on, had been dashed. Maybe you could compare it to the betrayal felt by the U.S. Figure Skating association when the purity of their favorite ‘virgin’ had been punctured.

But even then … no. No, you can’t. And this is the kind of insidious misogyny, baked into the fabric of our culture and language so entirely that nobody even notices, that drives me batty. Because there’s no ethical way to compare the brutal attack of a woman by a man—an attack which ruined one career and reputation, greatly damaged another, and forever changed Nancy’s relationship to her body, her sport, the public, and the idea of security—to some rich dude taking a new job … unless you don’t believe that women’s bodies, careers, lives have any value.

Or have so little outside of their relationship to men that it’s totally fine to use the attack of a woman as the punchline to a joke. A bad joke.

These are the kinds of things I find when I do internet searches for “Tonya Harding” news and it’s really disappointing. Disappointing for many reasons:

1. Can’t we get another punchline? I see twenty headlines a day (unfortunately) that are more salacious than this twenty-years old incident. Also, we. get. it. And it’s tired.
2. What about journalism ethics? I don’t understand why people call themselves “journalists” if they aren’t concerned with ethics and fact-checking? Call yourself anything else but that if you don’t care. Because its an affront to to the field.
3. Men attacking women isn’t funny. It’s just not. It never will be. And anybody who thinks it is needs to take a long look in the mirror and get into therapy. The #1 reason for delighting in the pain and misfortune of others is: insecurity. Therapy can help with that. This isn’t a dig. It’s just the truth, documented by psychologists and behavior theorists and researchers, and there is treatment for insecurity.

Another article I found, re-published in June of this year (a Deseret story originally published in 2024, adds nothing new to the conversation. It’s basically a chronological ‘account’ of what unfolded, no revelations or anything, and, of course, isn’t even accurate reporting. No surprise that the author, Chris J. Miller, is a man.

He writes, "But as the investigation into the attack unfolded, Harding’s involvement in the planned attack became known. And then the association banned her."

Hold up. It was never proven that Tonya had any involvement with the attack or the planning of it. The only thing she ever admitted to (and there was never any evidence to the contrary) was knowing about the attack after the fact. Because Jeff Gillooly confessed his involvement to her. And the only reason she didn’t bring the information to the investigators immediately, was because she was afraid for her life—a reasonable fear considering the brutality of what Gillooly had just orchestrated, combined with his well-documented, ongoing physical abuse of Tonya.

The association banned her because they wanted to. Period.

One thing I did appreciate about the article (although I know they did it for clicks/$ and not for the sake of providing accessible archives), is that it listed a comprehensive list of articles published on the topic by Deseret News over the years. I don’t know if this is everything they published or if these articles are even worth a damn, but I figured I’d post them here in case anybody’s curious:

“Hardin lost title, banned for life”

“Most Utahns don’t believe Harding”

“Records indicate Harding lied about phone calls”

“Olympic figure-skating outlook fuzzy”

“Nancy Kerrigan looks back, 20 years after Tonya Harding drama”

“Tonya gives up skating to stay out of jail”

“Tonya Harding gets good rap for resuscitating woman”

“Movie review: ‘I, Tonya’ is a dark, comic take on life of skater Tonya Harding”

“MRI shows no damage to Kerrigan’s kneecap”

“Harding wins, but Kerrigan will join her in Lillehammer”

“Did Kerrigan leave Norway after threats?”

“Nancy Kerrigan skates into hall of fame”

“A notorious ice skating hitman finds redemption through his sister’s eyes”

Another day, another sloppy, misogynist article written. That’s all for now. Gotta go blow off some steam.