MSNBC interviewed Tonya Harding on Clinton's alleged "Tonya Harding strategy"

[DeepModem Mom]

Media Matters for America: Citing "her infamy within American politics," MSNBC interviewed Tonya Harding on Clinton's alleged "Tonya Harding strategy"

On the May 15 edition of MSNBC Live, while previewing an upcoming interview with former figure skater Tonya Harding, anchor Tamron Hall stated: "Well, remember when there were those reports out that Hillary Clinton would use the so-called 'Tonya Harding strategy' to perhaps take out Barack Obama? Well, we're going to talk to the real Tonya Harding about her place in history and now her infamy within American politics. Yes, really, Mika." MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski responded: "Oh, my God." Hall said: "That's ahead on MSNBC. No, really. Really, we are." Brzezinski added: "I can't believe that. It's great."

During the interview, Hall stated: "Obviously, big presidential race, and the 'Tonya Harding option' actually came up in the news. Reportedly that was one of the options that Senator Clinton's campaign was looking at and that they would do anything to take out Senator Barack Obama. Your name became synonymous -- or is synonymous with taking out the other person. I know you had to have heard this. What did you feel, and how do you feel when even your name comes up in a situation like politics?" Harding responded: "Well, you know what? Whatever people said, it doesn't matter. It's their opinion. But I think that there's more important issues that we need to deal with in this world and that they need to focus on the candidacy at hand and hopefully help this country." Hall pressed on, asking Harding, "But did you cringe when you heard this, though?" Harding said, "I just heard about it just a little while ago, and I just thought that it was really sad that they have to talk about me and not the problems in the world."

The assertions that there were "reports out that Hillary Clinton would use the so-called 'Tonya Harding strategy' to perhaps take out Barack Obama" and that the "Tonya Harding strategy" was reportedly "one of the options that Senator Clinton's campaign was looking at" echo the headline of a March 25 blog post by ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper, which read: "Democratic Party Official: Clinton Pursuing 'The Tonya Harding Option.' " Tapper's post did not, in fact, match the headline, which suggested that a Democratic Party official claimed Clinton was "Pursuing 'The Tonya Harding Option.' " In the post, Tapper quoted an anonymous source saying of Clinton, "Her securing the nomination is certainly possible -- but it will require exercising the 'Tonya Harding option' " -- not that Clinton was actually "pursuing" such a strategy. Tapper referenced his blog post during his appearance on the March 25 edition of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. As Media Matters for America noted, numerous media figures repeated the reference -- some going so far as to assert that the purported "Tonya Harding option" was a specific strategy adopted by the Clinton campaign....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805150005?f=h_latest

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Sounds like it was Hillary who got "kneecapped". Yet she can still run.

Blame your intended victim for the things you're planning to do to him/her -- it's kept the Republicans in power for a couple of decades, so it ought to work for Democrats. And the architects of the "narrative" have been developing a preemptive strategy of blaming Hillary for any possible Obama loss in the general election. Nobody can see that coming? I dan't think so. Guess who is behind these "kneecappings" -- it's the press. They love violence and conflict in all forms. "If it bleeds, it leads." A routine primary sparring match has been sold to us as the crime of the century.

"Tonya Harding", indeed. If there had been talk of an "OJ Simpson Option" or a "Mike Tyson Option", there would have been hell to pay. It will take all of about one week for the Democratic Party to reunify, and Hillary will immediately put her shoulder to the wheel for Obama. (In the unlikely scenario that Hillary wins the candidacy, I'm sure Obama will do the same.)

The entire pseudo-civil-war has been a wishful fantasy of the press.

HRC and BHO had a good fight, and it seems that Obama is winning the shake-out. The press will try to keep the drama as high as possible for as long as possible, but the only Manichean struggle is in the minds of the press and the more "dedicated" (or perhaps, "fanatical") followers of the respective candidates. The primary fight was a rather genteel affair; the only way the media was able to sell us on the idea that it was bloody and destructive was to hammer the idea into our skulls over and over. A lot of the younger voters, lacking previous experience from other campaign seasons, bought the story lock, stock, and barrel. My guess is that they will quickly realize that they'd been had.

We're going to win in November. We're going to hand the Republicans their collective asses and keep them sidelined for a decade or more. Both the Obama AND Hillary contingents will advance, as well as every other interest group that got passed over in the fray.

This will be our era.

--p!

[aquart]

2. I don't believe they will "quickly realize" anything.

There is not and never has been the smallest question in my mind that the Democrats will take this election. Partly because the mess is so big that the Republicans no longer want to be associated with it.

But the Obama faction will react with an ungracious "told ya so!" rather than a "thanks for your help," judging by their current sickening charmlessness. Unless you believe they are as good at lying as their idol.

Prepare yourself for four years of exacerbated racial division as every attempt to question or disagree with Obama is met with a charge of racism or Uncle Tomism. And don't forget that women were leading the charge of hellacious disrespect toward Senator Clinton. What is the feminist version of an Uncle Tom? An Aunt Pitty Pat? " "For a widow to appear in public at a social gathering - everytime I think of it, I feel faint.""

[Dogmudgeon]

3. It's not the whole Obama faction

Just the crazies -- most of whom seem to hang out here and at dKos.

The reaction that I don't look forward to is when the far left turns on Obama, probably around 2010. When they realize that Obama won't be ushering in the progressive Millennium, they will fall on him like the Roman Senate turned on Caesar -- or the Democratic Party turned on Hillary Clinton.

And why not? They -- we -- have turned on every Democratic president we've had in this century. Even FDR and JFK were condemned for being "fascists". FDR was a Capitalist roader; Kennedy was a war-mongering anti-Communist; Carter was ridiculed and called a liar more frequently by Democrats than Republicans, and even the man whom the Obama fans are falling over themselves to praise, Teddy Kennedy, was widely disparaged in the 1970s and '80s.

The rhetoric used against Hillary by the left has been very similar to that which was used against Al Gore. Michael Moore once accused him of killing a little girl by proxy. It's a case of "Same Shit -- Different Campaign." It will be Barack Obama who gets called an "Uncle Tom" by legions of outraged yuppie liberals cracking wise that "Barack Obama is the best Republican president we've ever had". That old "joke" just doesn't go away. I expect Obama himself to be a much more substantial president than his followers fantasize he will be -- which is why they will turn on him.

We of the left are strong self-sabotagers. We will find a way to ruin this moment, blame those whom we unjustly victimize, and turn to a new set of fantasies. It's amazing we've gotten anywhere at all. If it wasn't for the few committed and determined reformers in this country, Old Glory would have a field of 50 swastikas instead of stars.

--p!

[aquart]

4. I don't know about the "turn on him" part.

It wouldn't surprise me, because they tolerate so little dissent of any kind. I do find them frustratingly totalitarian in that way. But they have so much invested, that I have to look at the loyal Bushies to gauge the future behavior of the Obama acolytes.

"Progressive millennium," LOL!

Look at what I've found to comfort me:

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6015449&mesg_id=6016798>

I came across it last night and I'm full of wonder at how apt it is.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Well, it's regressive behavior

A lot of politics is like that. The Obama crazies are just a little easier to see it in. The larger number of Obama supporters are not crazy. And nobody's really that kind of crazy over Hillary, although in 1993, I knew a number of good lefties who professed considerable lust for her.

Did I say "regressive"? With respect to your quotes from Frazer, maybe that should be "atavistic". There is a tremendous hunger for leadership and for a return to the good feelings of the 1960s. It was our Golden Age. What made the 1960s feel good was because it was the first generation in 40 years to grow up without much material want. A sense of unbidden optimism and freedom kicked in at the end of the 1950s, after Joe McCarthy and Martin Dies had been reined in and the civil rights movement expanded our sense of what it meant to be American. There was a sudden liberalization in society, and JFK was deemed to be the symbol for it. And we've been pining for that "kick" ever since, but the social conditions are far different now. It is likely that they will soon be the opposite of the way they were in 1960 -- loss of affluence, less social freedom, and little cause for optimism, the result of climate and energy crises.

I took est training in the early 1980s and I saw the same damn thing; even half the jargon was the same, and Werner Erhard was selling "transformation". And it was the same crowd: yuppies looking for an emotional fix. They yearn to lose themselves in a movement. The fact that it's our professional, intellectual, cosmopolitan class that is so attracted to the cathartic group experience is cause for concern. These are the people who control what goes into our common culture, and they are suckers for public magic.

The sorcerers have been getting high on their own supply.

Obama himself has reportedly been bristling at his exaltation. It conflicts with his self-image; he's an activist, not a sorcerer or a con artist. He hates the "rock star" comparison, but when 75,000 adoring fans turn out to see you speak, it's hard to unplug the amp. He's good at mythopoesis, but not at godcraft. It helped him leapfrog over the entire Democratic pack and command the adoration of a love-struck press, but I suspect that he's begun to realize that he's riding a tiger.

The good news is that most of his supporters do not buy into Barack Obama Superstar, and the Democratic Party is fielding a presidential candidate, not a savior. Perhaps we can address this rough spot in the American psyche before someone lacking in scruples takes up political sorcery. Barack Obama is an intelligent man with a good grounding in history; who better to seize that teachable moment?

--p!