The New Yorker Radio Hour - Susan Orlean on the Trail of Tonya Harding

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

 When the Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was kneecapped in an attack by friends of her rival Tonya Harding, the scandal riveted the nation; twenty-four years later, it’s the subject of the new film “I, Tonya.” In 1994, the New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean went to Harding’s home town of Clackamas County, Oregon, to report a story that was published as “Figures in a Mall.” Orlean read from the piece and talked with David Remnick about the enduring relevance of the story at a time of rising class resentment in American culture. Plus, Nicholas Thompson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, explains the imminent vote by the F.C.C. that will likely end government regulations on net neutrality. Internet service providers hold near-monopolies in many areas. If the F.C.C. ends its net-neutrality regulations, what will I.S.P.s do to consumers? New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent. I think it would be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties. There's a sort of country-city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next. From one World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The case of the skater, Tanya Harding, and the kneecapping of her Olympic rival, Nancy Kerrigan is still like some kind of catnip for that tabloidy part of your brain. Kerrigan won a bronze medal at the last Olympics,

and after winning two big competitions last year, she was considered the favorite for a gold medal at the upcoming Olympics. Doctors say there is a chance her knee could heal quickly enough for her to compete at Lillehammer next month. Neither Kerrigan nor her parents, though, could understand how or why anyone would want to harm her. 24 years later, a new movie about Harding has just come out. I'll revisit the story with Susan Orlean, who reported from Harding's hometown, just as the scandal was breaking. That's later this hour.

On December 14th, the Internet, and everything you do on it, is very likely to change. The commissioners of the FCC are going to vote on regulations about net neutrality. And if you think this doesn't concern you, you might want to listen. Net neutrality means that your Internet provider can't change. your data speed to favor certain websites, or charge you different rates for different content. And this has been a principle since the founding of the Internet. But now, over the objections of websites great and small, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, and Kickstarter, the FCC may be set to do away with its regulations on net neutrality entirely.

Here to walk me through what that would all look like is Nicholas Thompson. Formerly my close colleague is editor of New Yorker.com, and now he's the editor of and chief of Wired Magazine. We've known each other for quite a while, and let me just say that net neutrality is your subject, not mine. And I want to know why is it such an important issue for anyone who uses the web? So net neutrality is the principle that all the information that flows over the pipes that make up the internet are treated the same.

So when you go to a browser and you type in something, information flows over fiber optic cables and it flows up your computer and you can see it. And one of the great things about the internet is that for the most part, since it's existed, the people who control the pipes have had to treat all the information the same. So no matter what video service you want to use or what type of political news you want to read or whether you want to go to a startup that's competing with the people that on the pipes, you can read that information. So when net neutrality is gone, which is something that Ajit Pai, the head of the current FCC has proposed, you'll no longer have to be. that guarantee. So it's possible that say Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner Cable could say, you know what, we don't like that video service. We're going to make it hard for that information to get over the pipes to you. Or you know what? We don't like the political views on that website.

We're going to make it hard. You know what? We don't think people should read the New Yorker because the New Yorker has been critical of us. So we're going to cut off the New Yorker. Now I'm interested. Yeah. Why is this in anyone's interest to get rid of net neutrality? Well, it's in Verizon Comcast and everybody else's interest. So what do they get out of it? They can charge. They can say, you know what, we're going to cut the New Yorker off from its readers unless you pay us, unless you become part of some package deal. Now, it wouldn't happen with the New Yorker.

But let's say I'm Comcast, and I want to start a video service. And I really want people to use that instead of Netflix. Well, then I can just slow down Netflix or I can cut off Netflix. Or you give it preferential. Preferrential. Preferrential. And then people have to use my service. And the reason this is a problem, is because we've screwed up this other part of government regulation.

Who do you get your internet access from? You probably get it from Verizon or Comcast. There aren't many options. In most cities in America, you have one option, two options. And we screwed this up because we allowed so many mergers. We weren't able to foster competition. So there is no competition in broadband access. So you need to regulate the people who control the pipes

because consumers don't have any choice. Is there any relationship between this initiative and the Trump administration's decision to stand in the way of the AT&T Time Warner merger. Well, the funny thing is that... Because they seem to contradict each other. They do contradict each other. So we don't know why Trump is standing in the way of that merger.

We think it's because he doesn't like CNN very much. I know. So from my perspective, it's kind of amazing. Because he's mad at CNN, he's actually doing something in the public interest. Right. So if you're concerned about there being a competitive, competitive internet, you would want there to be lots of ISPs, lots of companies that provide

the pipes so consumers could choose. We don't have that. Too many mergers, too much conglomeration, not very good regulation. So you do want things like blocking mergers and blocking these companies from getting ever, ever larger. We're heading back kind of to where we were with Ma Bell, back when we just had AT&T. In a kind of monolithic world. Yeah, we're heading back towards a monolithic world of the people who provide.

your internet access. So I want one of two things. I don't want net neutrality, a rule that says the small number of companies you have, those monopoly providers, they have to treat everything fairly. Or I want competitive broadband, but we're heading to a world where we don't have either. So essentially this creates a kind of two-tiered internet, one for the rich and one for everybody else. Well, we don't know what we'll create, right? We don't know exactly how when net neutrality is gone, what the ISPs, the companies who control the pipes, what they'll do. We don't know whether they'll cut off access. We don't know whether they'll favor their own services.

We don't know whether they'll end up deciding that certain kinds of political arguments are okay and they'll let that through and certain kinds are not. So they say, hey, just relax. They claim they won't be bad actors, right? We won't be bad actors. We agree in net neutrality. It's in our interests. But just take away this heavy-handed regulation. But history proves otherwise.

History suggests otherwise. Yeah. When they're not in those moments where there isn't strict regulation, we've gone back and forth, sort of different kinds of net neutrality regulations since, more or less since the 1970s. And when there have been moments where there have been openings, the telecom providers have been happy to take those openings. So what Ajit Pai has proposed is to get rid of the strict net neutrality rules and to say, okay, well, the companies will have to disclose what they're doing and then to push some authority onto the FTC, which does have the. ability to react if a telecom company does something bad. But what's Ajit Pai's ideological impulse here? Well, the strongest justification I can give for what Ajit Pai is doing would be A, we believe in

free markets. We should just let the markets do what they want to do. Let's get the FCC out of this business. And if you're a free market ideologue, that makes sense. The second thing is, hey, take your foot off the broadband providers. Give them a little more freedom. If you give them more freedom, they'll invest more. Comcast will build faster pipes. Internet in the United States is really quite bad compared to other developed countries. So maybe if Verizon and Comcast had more freedom and can do whatever they'd want. They'd improve service and not raise prices. Yeah, or they'd make... History doesn't show that happens all that often. These are the least liked companies in America, according to most consumer surveys, because

they don't have a great history of taking their extra profits and making things better for it. So Silicon Valley's hardly ever embraced governmental... oversight. So why aren't they cheering this proposal? Well, Silicon Valley doesn't want this. Silicon Valley definitely wants there to be net neutrality. And they want there to be net neutrality because they don't like the idea that, wait, so we're going to have to pay Comcast to have people come and read our site. But what's interesting is they're a little more conflicted now that they're big than they were than they were small. They're not so idealistic. Well, it's not, yes, they're not so idealistic, but their interests have changed.

So when Google was a small company, it really wants there to be a level playing field. Now that Google is a big company, I don't know, maybe a system where the rich have a huge structural advantage could be good. So what impact does this all have on, forgive me, democracy? Well, it could have no impact. If Ajit Pai is right and all it leads to is more investment by the telecom companies, in fact, it could be good. If more people had more access to more information and the Internet worked better, democracy might find it. better. Most likely, it will lead to fewer people having access to information and democracy working a little bit less well. You'd like to think that the way the internet should work,

it should be a great equalizer. It should get information out to people. It should help them register to vote. It should help them be educated about issues. And that doesn't always happen, as we saw in the last election. And in fact, it may be going in the wrong direction. But in general, more internet access should make democracy work better. And so if net neutrality leads to less good internet access with more restrictions, more meddling by the telcos, that would be bad. What's the recourse the public has except at the ballot box? The only recourse the public has is to flood the FCC with comments, which is kind of interesting because they did flood the FCC with comments, but there are also all these

bots that flooded the FCC with fake comments. Fake comments. So suddenly, the most commentant upon issue in American civic life, it turns out there are tons of bots interfering with it. So as a side note, that would be a pretty good reason to delay the vote that's now scheduled for December 14th to figure out what was going on. If we're going to have comments and actual democratic discussion of this thing that's really important for democracy and it was flooded by bots, maybe you should slow down and figure out what the bots were. It's an argument that Democratic senators are making right now, but unlikely to be a persuasive argument. A writer for Gizmodo said that nothing short of an extinction level event will prevent the repeal of net neutrality rules.

Are they right? No. I mean, are there things people can do to preserve the rules? Yeah, there are a whole bunch of things people can do to preserve the rules. So the first thing you can do to preserve the rules is people can call their congressman before December 14th, and Congress could pressure the FCC or you can. Will there be lawsuits? Yes.

That is the fundamental way. There are going to be lawsuits. And there are a lot of legal scholars who feel that what Ajit Pai has done is so radical that the courts will look askance at it. And so almost certainly the day after this passes on December 14th, we'll pass on a party, line vote, three to two, there will be lawsuits filed and it will take a while. Where would you put the odds of congressional legislation to codify net neutrality, get it locked into place? Do most members of Congress even understand the web? Are they interested in this subject? I don't think many are interested in it, as we saw, as we see any time their hearings about technology,

there are a lot who don't really understand what the internet is or how it works. I think that what's going to happen is it will be tied up in court. And if the Republicans control the House and the Senate in the next election, it will get rid of net neutrality. If the Democrats flip it, they'll swing it back. I mean, net neutrality has shifted a whole bunch. We had kind of weak net neutrality laws under Obama that were then in danger in the courts. And then in 2015, Tom Wheeler, Obama's FCC chairman, surprised everybody by putting in place this really strong regime. And now, Ajit Pai is flipping it all the way back. If political power shifts, you could see it change again. Is there some sort of structural original sin of the internet which led us to where we are today? Yeah, there are a lot of original sins of the internet that have complicated effects. So the internet was set up very much to be decentralized, to allow anonymity, and to allow people to do what they wanted. And so that's a good thing in a lot of ways. It's what gave the internet that Wild West feeling free.

On the other hand, it's what has made it so easy for people to harass other people or to attack other people. You've seen a real shift in the way the people who control the internet think about the internet. You've seen a shift from, this is a place where we want to encourage free speech. This is a place where we want to encourage the ability for people to go anonymous and do what they want. To this is a place where we need to be really careful how people treat each other. Maybe we need to put in some more rules and restrictions. So in some ways, the fundamental sin of the internet is what... we're trying to defend here.

And so ideally what you could have is an internet where there is openness, where there is freedom, where you can have opportunity, but also where people treat each other well. And so the hope would be that net neutrality would kind of deal with the first part. That was Nick Thompson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. One of the big movies to come out this season is I, Tanya, which tells the story of the figure scale. Tanya Harding. I told the FBI that Tanya was in on planning it, which she was. But the plan was to mail some letters. Tanya didn't know about the assault, because it was never supposed to be an assault. Just letters.

If you're rusty on the details, Harding won a U.S. championship after becoming the first American woman to land a rare triple axle, a really difficult move. Her top competitor was a skater named Nancy Carragge. named Nancy Kerrigan, and the competition was not at all friendly. Kerrigan beat out Harding in 1992, and in January of 1994, in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, Harding's ex-husband was accused of conspiring to break Carrigan's leg in an attack with a police baton. Two weeks after the attack, but before Harding herself was directly implicated, New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean went to Harding's hometown to report a story that was published as

figures in a mall. Here's Susan reading from the piece. On the morning of the meeting, January 25th, as on most mornings since all the bad news, members of the Tanya Harding fan club went to the Clackamas Town Center, the mall in Clackamas County, Oregon, where Tanya Harding skates,

to watch her practice. The ice was empty, except for Tanya, who was bent over in the corner fixing a skate. She was wearing a stretchy black sleeveless cat suit over a stretchy gray tank leotard. Every contour of her body was outlined in black, her meaty back, her strong upper legs with their blocky muscles. She stood up and started down the length of the rink, her skates cutting feathery grooves in the ice. Her lips were pressed tight, and her chin was thrust forward. Her expression was wan and stubborn.

Her ponytail fluttered out behind her. No other part of her seemed to move, but she was crossing the ice with tremendous speed. At the end of the rink, where a hundred or so people were gathered, she turned sharply, bent her leg, and then spun until the ice beneath her skate began to make a sizzling sound.

Suddenly she stopped, skated toward the other end of the rink, spun again, pulled at the waist of her cat suit, then circled the ice once more. For an hour, she practiced pieces of her program, a spin, a leap, a movement of her leg or hand. The pieces were never fused together into something fluid or pretty.

They were just explosions of motion between long, silent moments when Tanya would stand alone in the huge blank rink, kicking at a frosty patch or tightening her skates. She didn't look happy, but she also didn't look rattled or embarrassed or shy. At the end of the hour when she stepped off the ice, the fan club members told each other that she seemed composed and steady. Susan, you never got to interview, Tanya, but where did things stand with the investigation when you first arrived? When I first got to Oregon, there had already been the conversation between the conversation between the,

FBI and Jeff Galooly, Tanya's ex-husband. It was already clear that in some way she was involved, whether it was directly or passively, since Jeff was talking to the FBI and basically admitting that he'd been involved. Now, who else was a player in the story? There was a Sean. Sean Eric Eckhart, who is a self-describe international espionage expert, and when I say self-described, I'd like to emphasize the self-described. There was never any evidence that he had any expertise. He worked nominally as Tanya's bodyguard. Sean was the most active party in this whole scheme to kneecap, Nancy Kerrigan. When you arrived in Oregon, what was your plan? What were you looking for. The thing that really bothered me is that Tanya was repeatedly described in the press as being from Portland, and I knew that she was from a Portland adjacent area, but one that couldn't have been more different. Portland is a half-hour's drive from here. It is an old compact city that was

settled by Yankee merchants who fashioned it after Boston. Portland is the largest city in Oregon. but it is of very little consequence to people like Tanya and Jeff and Sean who live in and rarely leave Clackamas and East Multnomah counties. News reports that say Tanya is from Portland have missed the geographical and sociological point. The world that Clackamas County is part of starts somewhere in the Great Plains, skips over cities like Portland and Seattle,

and then jumps up to Alaska, a world where people are plunked down on harsh or austere or overgrown landscapes and might depart from them at any moment, leaving behind only a few houses and some gear. The winter weather in this part of Oregon is gray and drizzly, and the light is flat and filtered through a low ceiling of clouds. Occasionally the clouds bust up, and it will rain in spats. You can be driving around and the rain will pour on your car, but not on the car behind you.

The most monumental thing in Clackamas County is Mount Hood, a mostly dormant volcano, which is 11,235 feet high, and is snow-covered year-round. Mount Hood has several active, constantly creeping glaciers. Otherwise, the only ice regularly found in the county is the same. skating rink at the mall. How much closer do you feel that you got to the story by reporting it there? What did you learn that maybe you didn't know going in from all the constant coverage that was just going on and on on television? Well, the first reveal was the sense of grievance that I came across in so many of the

people I met there. And they all had a powerful sense. of being misunderstood, degraded, discounted, and that Tanya, to them, was a hero, not because of what she had done, but because they felt that this was another example of people of their ilk being overlooked by the more elite culture that dominated and certainly dominated figure skating. Meaning you sensed a certain sense of resentment, the kind of thing that we've been hearing a lot about in the last couple of years. Absolutely. It's a feeling that they're worth more than society gives them credit for. And in the case of Tanya, I think she embodied that.

She was a really exceptional skater, and the conventional figure skating culture rejected her. They also didn't like the fact that she wasn't pretty and she wasn't feminine. She was boxy and bulky and muscular and had frizzy hair and wore inexpensive costumes, some of which she made herself. Nancy Kerrigan, even though she was from a working class family as well, looked a lot like Jackie Kennedy. She was thin, she was long-boned and long-muscled, dark-haired, very hard. pretty, even though Nancy Kerrigan went from being a sort of princess hero to also then being portrayed as a whiny baby. And this is partly why I think we're so fascinated by the story even now is these archetypes that were shifting. Aren't they misogynistic archetypes?

On the one hand, you've got trailer trash girl. That was the implication for Tanya Harding. And for Kerrigan, it was, you know, whiny ice princess. They're absurd, misogynistic, and really what's amazing is they're based on the most trivial facts about these people. I had gone to a meeting of the Tanya Harding fan club while I was in Clackamas County. So this passage is from a conversation I had with the members of the club. Trailer trash is what they call people out here. one woman said to me.

She sat down and started tapping on the table with her fingernails. They were long and burgundy-colored, and each one had a different small image painted on it, a shooting star, a sun, a lightning bolt. She said, there are plenty of people who think we're scum because we live out here on the east side. Well, I live in a very non-scum neighborhood.

It's actually a so-called good neighborhood. but it's always going to be thought of as trash because it's he sighed. She tapped. Her fingernails clicked. Lightning bolt. Star, Sun. I wouldn't say trash, another woman said. I would say...

I would say she paused. Well, my heart just went out to Tanya when I first saw her skate. I just see that little gal out there, the abused child spanked by her mother with a hairbrush. And when they would do the up. close in personals for the Olympic skaters, they showed Tanya in her jeans at her little house, fixing her car. And I could just feel her sink. When I started the club, the people I heard from were women with abusive husbands and Vietnam vets who had come home and felt displaced, and they'd

see that little gal and feel really good about themselves. So it's funny that people would think of her as trash. Schum, the nail woman snapped. That's what they call it. us. It's a class difference. That's what all this mess is about Tanya. She's just a regular Clackamas County girl. In my opinion, she's a modern gal, what we would call a tomboy. She can hunt. She can fix a car. She calls herself the Charles Barkley of figure skating, and she's right. She's a stud. Susan, you just saw the movie, I, Tanya, which is coming out. Did it get it right? Did the film get it right? The film is remarkable, and it was something that I went into very skeptically. I thought I don't want to see a replay of this saga,

and I thought it was absolutely on the nose and fascinating on top of that. As far as giving you a sense of the world that Tanya emerged from and the possible justification that these people had, believing that it was their due to see that Tanya got the respect she deserved. It really is about pride and abuse and feeling frustrated, feeling you cannot get a break in the world. So you sound like you had great sympathy for in some way. I don't think people should go around kneecapping their rivals.

I would like to make that point, just as a starter. You don't sympathize, but I think it's really useful to understand it. Now, your piece ends with a visit to a church. The pastor was a young man who knew Sean Eckert, and when Sean bragged him about the attack, he went to the police, breaking the case wide open. Well, this is, I suppose, a case for always doing more reporting than you think. Reverend Saunders had not been seen in weeks. I knew that he was a pastor at a church that met in a holiday inn, and they met very early in the morning.

I was resisting going. Finally, my repertorial sense of duty overcame my resistance and laziness, and I woke up early. and drove to the church, and lo and behold, it was the first public appearance he had made. It's the first rule of reporting. Always show up. In the newspaper box outside the Holiday Inn, the headlines were still all about Tanya.

Inside, 19 people were gathered to worship, and a big bearded man holding a zebra-striped electric guitar began strumming and singing in a tender voice. The room was new and drab. The floor felt hollow. Outside, it was pouring. When he finished, Jean Saunders came to the front of the room. He is a handsome, fleshy young man with small, crowded features. He was wearing a dress shirt and suspenders and holding an open can of Mountain Dew.

He said, I know you've been wondering a lot of things. Some of you have known where I've been, but mostly you've known that I just needed to take a break from the publicity. We got calls from around the world. We got calls from Japan about this. I want to tell you folks a few things. First of all, you know that I am not Sean's pastor. I think some of you read something saying that he was with us, that I was his pastor,

and you were thinking, hey, we don't know this guy. Well, we were classmates in school. I'm not his pastor. He chuckled. I suppose he could use one now. people nodded and bumped each other with their elbows. It's been tough for me because I've had to neglect you and the church business during all of this,

and I've had to make choices. I shouldn't say this in front of our treasurer, but I was offered $50,000 to tell my story to a television show, and I turned it down. From the back of the room, someone said, Reverend, we could sure have used that money, and everyone laughed. Jean said, well, I turned everything down. We'll just have to keep fundraising for ourselves. But, you know, that was real temptation. Why'd they do it, Reverend? He looked down, kicking

lightly at the carpet. Bitterness, I think. Bitterness that things weren't going their way. A ruddy-faced man flipped his study guide open to Luke 14. All the answers are right here, he whispered to He ran a fingernail across the page to where it said, Wanting a new car or hoping to be successful in your career is not wrong in itself. It is wrong only when you want these things just to impress others. He closed the book and then closed his eyes. Gene finished speaking and shook everyone's hand and said he would be back every Sunday unless things got too distracting again.

That was the New Yorker Susan. Orlean. Her story about Tanya Harding figures in a mall ran in the magazine in February of 1994. You can find it at New YorkerRadio.org. Next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, staff writer John Lee Anderson was granted a rare interview with the president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, who could be on the way to making himself the dictator of Venezuela. What would it take for democracy there to end altogether? It's an essential story, and I hope you'll join us. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music

by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Rianne & Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Mithelie Rowe, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Corey Shreple, Johnny Vince Evans, Eric Malinski, Emily Mann, and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.