What's that saying? Something about by the time you're 40 (or some age) you have the face you deserve? I don't know how old she is now, but she looks so incredibly mean and foul and stupid. Hard work, getting that face.

I could barely hear what she was saying, though because I have a game running in another tab, and the blighter won't let me turn off the sound... so I was hearing her remarks with this background of creepy, eerie, desolate white noise, which was actually kind of appropriate. At first I thought someone had edited the clip that way.

Well, if you start by thinking it's not the media's job to do celebreties a service, then this seems wrong. I think that is one of the jobs of some people in the media, but certainly not the only one. Who's exploiting whom? She says in the interview 'all publicity is good publicity,' - I have no doubt that this attention is welcome to her, perhaps even sought by her, because she believes that.

Network news broadcasts a rarely a paragon of journalistic quality, this included (Edited much?) but I would want to stop really short of suggesting it's journalists' job to protect celebrities from themselves, and from our reactions to them.

I was actually lumping celebrities in with politicians etc. as knowing thousands of times better than the average person about how to deal with 'the media', but you're right that if we look at her as a celebrity it changes things.

I've been paying a lot of attention to how CEOs, lobbyists and politicians talk to interviewers these days--that is, I've tuned out of thinking too much about what they're saying coz I kinda know where they're coming from--and just looking at the meta issues of tone, style, etc. The more I observe the more my mind is blown because there really isn't a playbook--sometimes they ignore the question and change the framing, sometimes they take it head on, etc. And if you lose control of the tone or style, your content doesn't even matter anymore, because television is such an unforgiving medium for people who lose their temper. Even if you do keep calm, sometimes you get stereotyped as too milquetoast. It really is a jungle out there.

Think of how if you wade into an argument on Metafilter for example, people react very strongly to a sentence or two you say because they bring so much baggage to the issue. Now multiply that by an audience numbering in the millions.

If you read accounts of what things were like inside the Clinton white house for example, you get a sense of what a war zone the PR side of things always is! One some level you have to admire anyone who gets "out there" and doesn't melt down.

I think Harding comes off fairly well in that video. She wasn't whining about Barack Obama; she said that because he used her name, he reminded the public of who she was, and she has got jobs from that. If anything, the editing is very choppy and a lengthy interview was reduced to one of those 90-second clips that news networks insert just before a commercial.

Her bangs have become claws that are trying to attack her face!

Ah Tonya. . .so proud she's an Oregonian. . .

I think the interviewer's reaction shots were shot after the fact.

arse_hat, standard operating procedure these days.

Jane, you know how Tom had tears in the piece the other night? Ask yourself how we were able to see them when he only had one camera and that was pointing at the girl during the interview. -- Broadcast News

I think Harding came across OK (although she does look hard and mean and worn down). She sort of had to become this Tonya Harding by dint of what that Tonya Harding led her into.

Perhaps.

You've done something really, really horrible, and the whole world knows about it. You:

1) Repent and try to atone, do good works, fade gently into obscurity

2) Play off your villainous notoriety, do the talk show/reality programming circuit, fade gracelessly into obscurity

3) Get elected as president of the United States a second time

I think some one thinks too much of her-self... So, Obama used her name, so what? Like she said, it ain't gonna do her no harm...