Tonya Harding Sex Tape Video Gets Bump from "Family Guy"

One of the best things about the internet is that it is "information access central," like when you need to find out something about a Tonya Harding sex video tape that Peter Griffin spoke of on "Family Guy." Back in the day, before the advent of the internet and the world wide web, you would have to go to the library or call a friend to find out more about the "Family Guy" reference to Tonya Harding's sex tape video. Now, a couple decades in the personal computer age, you just jump on the old desktop (or cell phone or laptop) and type "Tonya Harding video" or "Tonya Harding sex video tape" (or some version of it) and Google or another search engine will track it down for you. Then -- voila! -- you have 1-10 of 279,000 (Google results for "Tonya Harding video") results for your query.

Not that anyone really cares about the Tonya Harding sex tape video. Or do they? There is a reason why the lead character on a primetime cartoon can say something about a Tonya Harding sex video being on the internet and then the search term "Tonya Harding video" jumps into the top position on Google Trends. Somebody is looking for it.

Or are they?

"Tonya Harding video" is not the same as "Tonya Harding sex tape," which is most often the searched for term when it comes to Tonya Harding these days. Still, it is doubtful anyone would simply look for a Tonya Harding video without there being something titillating that sparked the search.

Many people remember Tonya Harding as the Olympic skater hopeful that conspired with her husband and others to attack Nancy Kerrigan back at the U. S. Figure Skating Championships in January 1994. She was convicted of conspiracy and put on probation but has always maintained that she knew nothing of the attack beforehand to eliminate her competition.

Appropriately enough, she can be found these on TruTV as one of the joking (?) commentators on "The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest Criminals."

But in September of the same year, a sex video of her wedding, the "Tonya Harding Wedding Video" became part of the celebrity sex tape market when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, sold the tape to a tabloid soon after being convicted of conspiracy. The video depicts Gillooly and Tonya Harding having sex on their wedding night. Harding attempted to distance herself from the scandal but was unsuccessful.

Stripped of her title and banned for life from competing again for her involvement in the Nancy Kerrigan incident, Tonya Harding still managed to remain in the media, popping up over the years in various run-ins with the police, appearing on talk shows, and then appearing on Fox Television's "Celebrity Boxing."

She also wrote a bestselling autobiography, The Tonya Tapes, which was released in 2008.

But the mention of the video on "Family Guy" has produced a run on her sex tape or "video" once more. One has to wonder if Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy," and other writers on the show throw lines into the story just to see what type of internet response they can get.

And it isn't as if television audiences haven't seen this type of thing before. When Peter Griffin couldn't stop singing "Surfin' Bird" on one episode, the internet lit up with searches for the song, the lyrics, the "Family Guy" "Surfin' Bird" segment video, the name of the band that performed "Surfin' Bird", The Trashmen (refer to previous entry), and "bird is the word." When the show repeated, so did the search craze.

No, you couldn't have done that before personal computers. Well, you could have done it (except find the video clip -- unless you taped it yourself), but it would have taken hours... and hours...

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Sources:

"Family Guy," Fox Television
Google.com
"Tonya Harding Biography," Biography.com
"Tonya and Jeff's Wedding Night," IMDb.com