Ice Saga Is No Fairytale

You don't need to be a seer to predict one of tonight's top stories on TV. Come hell or high water, there will be a segment on the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.

We might call the affair Wounded Knee, if that name weren't already taken by some trifling affair involving the loss of several human lives. But the Kerrigan-Harding incident has proven that the American press and public, their thirst for blood slaked on the ubiquitous undercurrent of random violence, have decided that mere carnage is not sufficient qualification for an enduring spot in the news and popular imagination.

As we have lately seen, a mere bruise will outshine several deaths, if it springs from a strange enough plot, Wounded Knee II continues to dominate the headlines, even after an intervening killer coldsnap, paralyzing blizzard, and deadly earthquake have ceased to be interesting.

The media frenzy this story has touched off raises the interesting question of why this particular act has proven to be so enthralling. "Why me?" screamed a recent Newsweek cover featuring a tearful head-shot of the slightly-maimed skater. "Why this story?" might be a better question. The incident has been proclaimed a "tragedy" over and over again; yet no one is dead or even seriously wounded. The animus of the plot--namely, hindering one's competition by underhanded means--is by no means extraordinary. In North America's other on-ice sport, certain players are retained specifically for this purpose, and these "enforcers" perform to the delight of the same crowds that are now so sanctimoniously clucking their tongues over the Harding-Kerrigan plot.

Sabotaging the competition is a venerable American tradition, from la Cosa Nostra putting sugar in rivals' gas tanks, to Nixon's dirty tricks operatives harassing the McGovern campaign. Should the public, then, really be devastated when something similar, though less serious, happens in the competitive world of figure skating?

It is the conceptual contradiction between the gracefulness of the act of figure skating and the cynical cunning of the attack which is the key to the story's appeal. A recent report on a network newscast featured aspiring skaters holding forth on how often skates are stolen or deliberately damaged. We are hardly surprised at similar cheating in other arenas, but somehow it is more difficult to reconcile this with a sport best associated with the spritely enthusiasm of Scott Hamilton. Success in figure skating, as in any other sport, promises substantial financial rewards. And people, graceful or otherwise, often will stoop to Stygian depths for lucre.

Even more, the case fits into an almost satisfyingly easy moral mold; the dissipative Harding, the embittered loser in the last Olympiad, and the exalted Kerrigan, the winner, could just as easily be the Wicked Witch and Snow White. The public's fascination with the case is not unlike the rapt attention that little children pay to morally simplistic fairy tales.

The public should grow up. The saga of Wounded Knee II is no fairy tale. It is a completely predictable product of a violent society that rewards the end of success without paying much attention to the means. Harding was portrayed as somehow morally inferior even before any incriminating evidence came to light, simply because she hadn't succeeded while the fallen Kerrigan had. When a society rewards winning with such extravagance, it is no wonder that some will try to buy it any price.

Benjamin J. Heller's column appears on alternate Saturdays.