Hollywood praising Tonya Harding

[Anonymous]

This special is fascinating. I was only 8 when it happened and vaguely remember, but learning a lot after this and seeing the movie.

[Anonymous]

The tv special with the two Hollywood actresses saying basically the truth doesn't matter as long as they make money off the movie and get to play characters and get awards. Gross.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tonya needs to forgive her mother and quit feeling sorry for herself. She had two arms and two legs. She still sounds so sarcastic. Oh, poor Tanya had to go to a mall in Portland, Oregon to practice on the ice skating ring.

Absolutely. Tonya's mom probably had a pretty rough upbringing, herself, and likely did the best she knew how to do for her daughter.

Tonya wound up with a life so full of promise and she just tossed it all into the garbage. She was around the best figure skaters in the world, she had people wanting to help her to succeed. Instead she chose to hang around a bunch of low life imbeciles. You can lead a horse to water....

... yeah you all need to Google 'cycle of poverty'

Hopefully Tonya will do a better job for her son.

[Anonymous]

She basically admitted on tv that she knew about it. Changed her story again. Hollywood actresses also said that the truth didn't matter. You get public brainwashing when Hollywood hooks up with a sociopath liar.

[Anonymous]

In the ABC special last night, Harding criticized Nancy for being caught on tape that everyone had to wait for Oksana to put her naked up on before the medal ceremony. She wouldn't apologize last night, either. I think Tonya's whole attitude and support she received then and now, was to make Nancy look like a spoiled narcissistic privileged wealthy girl. Tonya is really even more diabolical than I realized. And she is America's Sweetheart and come back story, when we should be supporting Nancy.

[Anonymous]

Nancy Kerrigan is far from the perfect virginal image given her by the press. She was nasty to Oksana Baiul, a peevish brat in the Disney parade, and, most disgustingly, started her affair with Jerry Solomon while he was still married to wife No. 2.

America is the lane of 2nd chances and Harding deserves this chance. Rapists athletes get their 2nd Chances and so should she.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She basically admitted on tv that she knew about it. Changed her story again. Hollywood actresses also said that the truth didn't matter. You get public brainwashing when Hollywood hooks up with a sociopath liar.

This. a woman minding her business gets attacked leaving physical and emotional damage and we feel sorry for one of the masterminds of the attack who lied about it over the course of a couple decades citing the attacked woman's behavior after one of the most emotionally mentally and physically draining competitons on a worldwide stage that athletes train their lives to compete and this is after she came back from that injury?
Does this sympathy extend to muggers, thieves, stalkers and other criminsls etc who had a hard life or trashy family whose victims after the fact weren't roses and sunshine all the time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nancy Kerrigan is far from the perfect virginal image given her by the press. She was nasty to Oksana Baiul, a peevish brat in the Disney parade, and, most disgustingly, started her affair with Jerry Solomon while he was still married to wife No. 2.

America is the lane of 2nd chances and Harding deserves this chance. Rapists athletes get their 2nd Chances and so should she.

Were you even born during this time? Nancy Kerrigan wasn't putting herself out there in documentaries like Tonya Harding did. There was a black ice skate too. Debbie Thomas, and life hasn't been great for her. Why not a movie about her life?

Tonya has consistently played the victim for sympathy. She was the first woman in ice skating history to perform the triple axel. She was strong, but a bit masculine looking. She was changing the sport. That was really what a lot of the Old Guard didn't like about her. She could have focused on that aspect of the story instead of playing the victim. Women figure skating was more about making figure-8s in the ice, not jumping up in the air and doing triple jumps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She basically admitted on tv that she knew about it. Changed her story again. Hollywood actresses also said that the truth didn't matter. You get public brainwashing when Hollywood hooks up with a sociopath liar.

+1. I couldn't decide who I was more disappointed with - Margot Robbie for saying it didn't matter or Tonya Harding for continuing to lie, remaining unrepentant and playing the victim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tonya needs to forgive her mother and quit feeling sorry for herself. She had two arms and two legs. She still sounds so sarcastic. Oh, poor Tanya had to go to a mall in Portland, Oregon to practice on the ice skating ring.

Absolutely. Tonya's mom probably had a pretty rough upbringing, herself, and likely did the best she knew how to do for her daughter.

Tonya wound up with a life so full of promise and she just tossed it all into the garbage. She was around the best figure skaters in the world, she had people wanting to help her to succeed. Instead she chose to hang around a bunch of low life imbeciles. You can lead a horse to water....

... yeah you all need to Google 'cycle of poverty'

+1

Also cycle of abuse. Hopefully Tonya won't continue that. She is admittedly in a "blue collar" relationship/marriage now, but hopefully has grown up a bit, to se what to do differently with her own child. I fully realize that not all blue collar people beat their children, but to not believe how bad Tonya's mother really was, is to feed into the problem. Everyone seems to have fallen in love with Oksana's story and youth (cuteness), myself included. Tonya was a great athlete, she just p*ssed it away. I found the movie and the special interesting - it is a life that hopefully most of us will never know, so the insights were thought provoking. Doesn't mean she wasn't guilty, but it all made sense, given her background. I have always felt Nancy deserved gold, but in retrospect, she just doesn't seem very grateful or likable. Plus, it is sometimes hard not to root for the underdog, and want better for Tanya. I do believe her mother was that bad, and they might have held back a bit on how bad she really was. If you you have never seen an abusive situation, this was one.

[Anonymous]

For me, the biggest part of this is not whether Tonya deserves empathy. She does, as does Kerrigan. But whether she is so interesting and deserves so much empathy that she - rather than Kerrigan or someone else - is now the subject of a Hollywood movie told compassionately from her side and that will presumably generate lots of $$ for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oksana had injections of medicine, Olympic approved in her body. She would not have been able to skate without those injections. Nothing illegal, but she grew into an awkward adult. She wasn't a great athlete. She also played up the poor little Russian orphan girl act and skated to American Broadway tunes.

Nancy Kerrigan was the better athlete and skater.

You're crazy. I was just a kid and remember Oksana being just breathtaking. She was the only gold performance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nancy Kerrigan is far from the perfect virginal image given her by the press. She was nasty to Oksana Baiul, a peevish brat in the Disney parade, and, most disgustingly, started her affair with Jerry Solomon while he was still married to wife No. 2.

America is the lane of 2nd chances and Harding deserves this chance. Rapists athletes get their 2nd Chances and so should she.

Were you even born during this time? Nancy Kerrigan wasn't putting herself out there in documentaries like Tonya Harding did. There was a black ice skate too. Debbie Thomas, and life hasn't been great for her. Why not a movie about her life?

Tonya has consistently played the victim for sympathy. She was the first woman in ice skating history to perform the triple axel. She was strong, but a bit masculine looking. She was changing the sport. That was really what a lot of the Old Guard didn't like about her. She could have focused on that aspect of the story instead of playing the victim. Women figure skating was more about making figure-8s in the ice, not jumping up in the air and doing triple jumps.

Different poster here, but either of the other skaters could have had a movie. They just didn't do it. Nancy Kerrigan could have easily had a movie made about her debacle but she's probably too busy still sitting around screaming "whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nancy Kerrigan is far from the perfect virginal image given her by the press. She was nasty to Oksana Baiul, a peevish brat in the Disney parade, and, most disgustingly, started her affair with Jerry Solomon while he was still married to wife No. 2.

America is the lane of 2nd chances and Harding deserves this chance. Rapists athletes get their 2nd Chances and so should she.

Were you even born during this time? Nancy Kerrigan wasn't putting herself out there in documentaries like Tonya Harding did. There was a black ice skate too. Debbie Thomas, and life hasn't been great for her. Why not a movie about her life?

Tonya has consistently played the victim for sympathy. She was the first woman in ice skating history to perform the triple axel. She was strong, but a bit masculine looking. She was changing the sport. That was really what a lot of the Old Guard didn't like about her. She could have focused on that aspect of the story instead of playing the victim. Women figure skating was more about making figure-8s in the ice, not jumping up in the air and doing triple jumps.

No. The first woman to land a triple axel in competition was Midori Ito in 1988. Harding was the first American woman to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
And you're intentionally drumming up the poor Nancy story, less realistic than the rich Nancy story when the entire purpose is to compare their lives. Nancy's childhood had more in common with a wealthy girl's childhood than it did with Tonya's.

"I had a bucktooth'

'My mom just married her 5th husband and called me a fat pig and beat me with a hairbrush for not being perfect today'

Come on.

Of course Tonya COULD have chosen to be perfect. But my entire point is that most people that start out the way Tonya does don't have the fortitude to pull themselves into a different classier world. She did a terrible thing, she came from a terrible place. Those things aren't unrelated and we have a better chance at preventing future Tonya's by acknowledging that most people can't fix themselves after a start like that

I don't agree with that. You are free to disagree. Tons of rich women marry multiple times and beat their daughters for not being perfect.

Incidentally, trailer park mothers don't usually enroll their children in skating lessons. It's not really a trailer park thing. Who knows where Tonya would be if her mother didn't beat her for not being perfect. Maybe she didn't beat her enough.

Yeah well that part really isn't an opinion, it's statistics. Google "cycle of poverty'

Maybe you should find statistics on the percentage of trailer trash mothers who enroll their daughters in ice skating lessons.

NP just looking for clarification. Is it your position then that Tonya's mother couldn't have been abusive because she paid for skating lessons?

No, my position is that trailer trash moms rarely send their children to skating lessons, and rarely get involved in their children's training. So perhaps it wasn't as trailer trash as Harding would like to cast it.