The media on thin ice.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Mistreatment of Tonya Harding - Pundit Watch - Column - Column

Forget Bill Clinton's trip to Europe and his NATO for Juniors proposal. Forget Whitewater. Definitely forget Chiapas. No one cares. The biggest story of January was a fairy tale about two figure skaters, one the Wicked Witch of the West, the other a cross between Dorothy and the Good Witch. Next in importance were Lorena Bobbitt's self-defense techniques, the Los Angeles earthquake, Michael Jackson's payoff to a fourteen-year-old with whom he allegedly had pajama parties, and - last but not least - Bobby Ray Inman nutting out in public.

New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman pardoned Taro, a.k.a. "the death-row dog," Dan Quayle wormed his way back into TV by pitching potato chips, and Oliver North announced his intention to run for the Senate he once lied to. (Just for the record, Charles Krauthammer characterized North as a "charming rogue," while Fred Barnes proclaimed him "a marvelous candidate.") We all brace ourselves for the post-holiday slump but this, my friends, is some kind of new low.

I finally agree with George Will about something: He likened Bobby Inman to Captain Queeg and expected to see him whip out those telltale ball bearings any second. But while Inman - whose pre-withdrawal press coverage hailed him as a cross between Moses and Winston Churchill - puled about the biased and carnivorous media, the real feeding frenzy was going on in Portland, Oregon.

The same press that let Inman slide went after Tonya Harding like pit bulls. I've lost count of how many times over a several-week period it was predicted - specially by NBC News - that Harding's arrest was imminent, only to have the story proved false the next day. While the pundits deliberated over whether Inman was right about the media's cannibalistic tendencies, they never once noticed the totally irresponsible way that Harding was savaged.

Harding's guilt or innocence isn't the point here. Whether you'd like to have a beer with this young woman, or be her best friend, is irrelevant. The point is how Harding has been used as a warning to other women and girls, especially those from "the wrong side of the tracks." It is a warning about knowing your caste and staying in it. A faith in predestination has haunted the Harding stories, as if she indulged in a sacrilege by thinking she could break out of her Spud City world and actually become an "ice princess." In the smug, "see-we-told-you-so" tone of the coverage, the Harding story served as a perfect rationalization...