I was talking to a friend today, and found out she was facing a predicament where some unrelenting, competitive jerks in her program were getting the best of her. I offered to “pull a Tonya Harding” for her, having meant it to be a witty remark, and to my surprise she had no idea what I was talking about.
A civilized society, in general, is one with laws, rule abiding citizens, a formed government, literacy, an economic system, etc. While I value these qualities, the criteria that sits at the top of my list is common knowledge of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story and the ability to make witty banters referencing this incident in everyday conversations. Thus, I would like to devote this blog post to first introduce the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story, then cite an example where I’ve satirically referred to it in the hopes of raising its awareness in our community, hence allowing me to refer to it without the response of puzzled looks.
Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were teammates on the 1994 US Women’s Figure Skating Team. Their relationship is perhaps better defined as rivals, as they are each other’s greatest competition. During a skating competition, Tonya Harding’s husband hired some guy to strike Nancy Kerrigan’s knee with a forklift, thus impairing Kerrigan’s ability to skate. Whether Tonya knew of the attack is of much debate, and irrelevant for this post. Harding went on to win the competition, arguably by eliminating Kerrigan from the competition. Thus, the term “pulling a Tonya Harding” refers (often comedically) to using underhanded methods -eg. striking someone below the knee with a forklift – to eliminate one’s competition.
A few summers ago, when I was working as an undergrad summer research assistant somewhere, our lab encouraged us to keep our lab benches tidy by holding a monthly competition of whose lab bench was the tidiest. Since I’m a slob, I was never in the running for the top prize, but my labmate always kept his lab bench in such a prestine yet functional state that we all thought he would be a shoo-in to win. Without any exaggeration, I’m certain had Martha Stewart herself witnessed his lab bench, she would christen it “a good thing.” Nevertheless, another person always won, despite having (in my opinion) a messier bench. As a consolation to my labmate, I satirically offered to “pull a Tanya Harding” for him so that he could win (hardy har har).
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