Tonya Harding's New Book, "The Tonya Tapes," Who Cares?

Fourteen years, a drunk driving stint, and a domestic battle later, Tonya Harding opens up about her life after being banned from Olympics. Harding, with the help of author Lynda D. Prouse, has written a book. Why, oh, why?

Just to refresh the reader's memory of just who Tonya Harding is, she was the one in the 1994 Olympics that was involved in the clubbing attack on Nancy Kerrigan, who was her rival in the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. So why, after all these years, does anyone care what Tonya Harding has to say about her life?

Maybe if this book was published even remotely close to the year in which the ice skating scandal occurred, one might want to pick up the book just to satiate some odd curiosity about just what kind of person would help organize such an attack. We might have cared about Harding's so-called painful upbringing in which she tells about an abusive mother who allegedly hit and emotional abused her.

But now, after fourteen years, will the book sell? Are there actual fans of Tonya Harding out there? Are there people out there that have any grain of need to know more about Harding that they don't already? I couldn't really tell you. I'm more interested to see how Harding's opponent, Nancy Kerrigan, is holding up after the scandal. So why am I bothering to write this article?

Harding was on the Today show on May 15th and I have to admit that I sat and stared at my television screen, unable to unglue my eyes. Why? I'm also the kind of person who slows to see all the gruesomeness of a car wreck or to watch an ugly creature behind a plate of glass. But will my curiosity lead me blindly into the bookstore to pick up a fresh copy of this woman's book who supposedly just wants to be understood? Uh-uh, no.

I'm more or less just wondering why. Why, oh, why is this girl rehashing to the public all of her dirty laundry? Why can't she just disappear? Why can't she just let go?

And, if you were like me and more curious as to what Nancy Kerrigan has been up to, I was researching her, and even though her website was under construction, I found out that after the ice skating saga, Kerrigan has continued skating in ice skating groups such as Ice Capades and has established the Nancy Kerrigan Foundation for the visually impaired.