WHYYYYY WHYYYYY MEEE!!! - a podcast by Andrew, Ed, and Zak

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where after a brief in-person pause we are here to put out the torch on these Winter Olympics with a look back on the scandal that embroiled the 1994 games involving Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan and a collection of goons straight out of the blackest of Hollywood comedies. Presumptive Olympic favorite and so-called America’s sweetheart Kerrigan arrived to a national trial run and left the victim of a telescopic baton-assault to the leg concluding a plot “masterminded” by Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and friend/Harding bodyguard Shawn Eckardt. What ensues is a controversy that made women’s figure skating front page news around the world and the lead story of those forthcoming Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The assault and the eventual Olympic results wherein Kerrigan takes silver and Harding misses the podium altogether take a backseat in the conversation to an examination of the contrasting pre- and post-Olympic lives of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding and more importantly the deeply problematic manner in how the media and public estimate what constitutes the feminine ideal, both then and now. But first, being back in person, a trio of proper rants: where Andrew orates the hopeful epilogue for the Saudi Golf League with a look at Phil Mickelson’s characteristically brazen comments defending his support for the mercifully doomed golfing off-shoot; Ed sizes up the prospective Republican nominees in the running for Michigan’s Attorney General position in light of their shared and woefully archaic stance opposed to a landmark 1965 Supreme Court ruling; and finally Zak attempts to reconcile Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s doping violation with American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson’s ban from last summer’s Olympics and the forever inequities of the IOC.

Further episodes of BBCollective

Further podcasts by Andrew, Ed, and Zak

Website of Andrew, Ed, and Zak