Well, the moment you've all been waiting for: Someone compared 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to everyone's favorite figure skating felon, Tonya Harding.
On ABC's Jake Tapper's "Political Punch" blog, Tapper said he spoke to an anonymous Democratic Party official (oh, we love those anonymous sources) who said it is not a question of whether Clinton can get the nomination (she can), but of what she'll have to do to get it:
What will she have to do to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, in order to eke out her improbable victory?
She will have to "break his back," the official said. She will have to destroy Obama, make Obama completely unacceptable.
"Her securing the nomination is certainly possible - but it will require exercising the 'Tonya Harding option.'" the official said. "Is that really what we Democrats want?"
The Tonya Harding Option -- the first time I've heard it put that way.
It implies that Clinton is so set on ensuring that Obama doesn't get the nomination, not only is she willing to take extra-ruthless steps, but in the end neither she nor Obama win the gold.
Now, Tonya Harding didn't break anyone's back, although she allowed a man to be hired to try to break someone's knee, so I guess that comparison is apt, if that's what the official was getting at. But that part that was added by Tapper doesn't make sense to me; Nancy Kerrigan was better by the time she skated in the 1994 Olympics, so her not sealing the gold has nothing to do with Harding or anything that she did. It was mostly the judges preference for Baiul. Am I nitpicking too much on an already ridiculous comparison that just made news because of the use of the name Tonya Harding? Perhaps. (And by perhaps, I mean - of course!).
Anyway, I kind of wish something would be able to bring skating the kind of popularity it saw after the Harding/Kerrigan scandal. Only I wish that this time it could be something nonviolent.
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