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Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
In Which Tonya Harding Is Still Around, And Mad at Barack Obama
The Top 5 Failed Crossover Attempts by Olympic Stars

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drewtopianism
10/20/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
Brent Corrigan... *le sigh* #richardheene
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Liberace
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
what about chaunce hayden? #richardheene
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roberttupilo000
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
There is such thing as bad publicity. It's now called "Heene Publicity"
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Seeräuber Jenny
10/20/09

@roberttupilo000:

The Balloon non-Bump?

(With a nod to Stephen Colbert.) #richardheene
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Matt Cherette
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Julia Allison yet. #richardheene
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random_play
10/19/09

@mattchew03: Hey, Julia is "awesome" and "successful". She has many "sponsorship" contracts. Also, as far as we "know", she's never killed anyone or made ""gay porn".

Also, she does "cartwheels".

#ironicjuliafans #richardheene
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PontiusPirate
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
You can't spell "embarassingly pathetic desire for attention" without G-E-R-A-L-D-O #richardheene
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lobstr
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
+5 points for hung jury whilst discussing a gay porn scandal... #richardheene
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Airvault
10/19/09

@lobstr: Gah! Beat me! #richardheene
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Dave J.
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
I think every person who's been on any season of "The Real World" (with the exception of the first several seasons, maybe) should be tied for first on this list. #richardheene
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Airvault
10/19/09

@Dave J.: It was all down hill after Seattle. #richardheene
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Tremonius
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
Clifford Irving

The Rolling Thunder Review and Hurricane Carter Benefit Dance

Dohbya

Jim Garrison

Oliver Stone

Dick Clark and Ed Backupman

Neocons

Anybody named Simpson

Admiral Byrd

Milli Vanilli

Anything labeled Bigfoot

The USS Maine

Tonkin Gulf

Anyone named Hearst

Aimee Semple McPherson and co...

And, to top it off, the biggest swindle involving the greatest loss of life and treasure the earth has seen: God #richardheene
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Peter Feld
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
I am sorry. You are mocking my one and only sports hero. Tonya (not Tanya) was never found to have had any involvement with the Kerrigan attack, other than impeding the investigation that followed. She just fell in with a bad crowd! (Like so many of us.) She plead guilty and apologized for interfering. As far as hurting skating or its fans, all I can say is she converted me. I watched the Lillehamer Olympics with my heart in my throat. When her laces broke, it felt like it happened to me. And I was so glad the judges let her regroup and skate later in the program. because her performance was dazzling. If she hadn't gone into it with a weak score from the short program, who knows how she would have ranked? After all, we are talking about the first American woman to execute a Triple Axel in competition. I realize this site makes fun of people, but there should be some limit. #richardheene
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Mike Byhoff
10/19/09

@Peter Feld: I don't think 'pick your battles' has ever been more applicable. #richardheene
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CumaeanSibyl
10/19/09

@Peter Feld: Have you ever seen her on TV? She's on one of those "World's Dumbest Criminals" shows, which I watch regularly because I have no taste. And, while she may be sweet-natured and physically talented, she is also 100% moronic hick trash and I can't stop giggling whenever she opens her mouth.

If I'm seriously not allowed to make fun of Tonya Harding, just shoot me now. #richardheene
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Feh Am Legend
10/19/09

@CumaeanSibyl: See, that's kinda the amazing thing about Harding's story, and why she's an interesting figure in the world of figure skating (of which I admittedly know nothing; I read a couple of profiles back in the day).

She is obviously of, erm, sturdy stock and had, shall we say, a different aesthetic to the art of figure skating. She was not well liked mostly because she wasn't a delicate, refined little flower. But grace and routine are only a percentage of the scores, the rest for technical difficulty, and Harding always won on this front. She could land several difficult moves per routine. The reason she got as far as she did before her white trash-ness completely derailed her career was not because the sport loved her but simply because she could technically skate circles around most anyone else. Tho' by the time she got around to conspiring to knee-cap Kerrigan I recall she was less able to skate like that. Hence her drastic measures.

I wouldn't call her a tragic figure; I would bet she was culpable in the assault and her fame-whoredom is well documented. So ridicule away. But her story, up to a point, is a compelling one in a 'Bad New Bears' sort of fashion. #richardheene
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filthy tongue
10/19/09

@Peter Feld: I'm indifferent to Tonya, but I recognize that her notoriety at the time of the Kerrigan incident helped promote figure skating like nothing else. Scott Hamilton and all of the Stars on Ice/skating tour promoters made a lot of money off of her bad behaviour, albeit indirectly. #richardheene
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Peter Feld
10/20/09

@CumaeanSibyl: You're allowed. But remember, she was just a sweet girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Somewhere I can't locate is a quote from Jesse Jackson circa 1994 defending Tonya. He called her an "abused daughter, abused wife... her insides must be like broken glass. But she keeps on smiling and keeps on skating." Yeah, that. #richardheene
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Flippyjack
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
My quest for infamy is hurting only me. #richardheene
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TheBusinessGuy
10/19/09

In reply to Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's
Is anyone going to mention Orson Welles and the "War of the Worlds" radio hoax on October 30, 1938? Faking a series of breaking news bulletins and then live wall to wall coverage on CBS (complete with "experts," eyewitnesses, and live remotes, Welles and his Mercury Theatre On the Air staged a chilling invasion of the Earth by destructive Martians. Six million people heard at least part of the program, close to two million believed it was true, and hundreds of thousands took some form of action because they believed Martians had landed and the end of the world was at hand. The police sequestered Welles and his actors in the CBS studio for several hours but couldn't find a law they had violated. This was headline news for days, and led to FCC regulations about hoaxes on the air. Who was hurt? Well, the people who panicked, and the police and other authorities who had to calm them. (The mayor of a large midwestern city called CBS to say that his police were scared, and he threatened to punch out Welles.) What were the results? FCC regs, and Citizen Kane. #richardheene
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Tremonius
10/19/09

@TheBusinessGuy: First of all, it was not conceived as a hoax. It was the dramatization of the H G Wells novel, after all. The beginning of the program offered a disclaimer for idiots, and it was an unforseen circumstance that the early portion was not universally heard because the commercial allowed dial twisting to Amos 'n Andy. It has also been suggested the mass hysteria has itself been hyped, much like the steady stream of mythical suicides on Black Tuesday.

This Mercury Theater broadcast did much for the career of Orson, it must be admitted, but forever after Mercury became a notorious contaminent. You win some, you lose some. #richardheene
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Baroness
10/19/09

@TheBusinessGuy: Well, the "hoax" difference is that it was the Mercury Radio Theatre program it was on. Of course that would be hard to know if you came in the middle of it, but radio schedules were in every newspaper. Not that you would check if you were panicking about Martians I suppose. It's a great tale, but I think the actual level of panic has been exaggerated and embroidered into myth. There's no way to prove "two million people believed it".

And the press was pretty sensationalist then as now. It was in the paper for days because it was indeed a compelling story that sold copies. I love the tale, it's part of our mythology now, but I don't think that many people headed for the hills. I've never read any account of anyone's grandparents or parents fleeing in panic, except for contemporary newspapers, who were not above making things up. #richardheene
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TheBusinessGuy
10/19/09

@Tremonius: Actually, Welles admitted late in life that he had indeed wanted to do something that exposed the public's willingness to believe anything they heard over the air, and everyone involved agreed that it was Welles's idea to do the show as a newscast rather than just a straight adaptation of Wells's novel. As to how many people panicked, obviously it is tough to be exact about such things even today, but the numbers commonly used come from a study by a Princeton psychologist done shortly after the broadcast, and I don't think they have been seriously challenged. Certainly no one died as a result of the broadcast, but if you look at the newspaper coverage over the next week, you can see the panic was widespread. A small correction: the Mercury's radio competitor was The Chase and Sanborn Hour on NBC, featuring the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. (Yes, folks, a ventriloquist on the radio. The past is another country.) Bergen was so popular that CBS threw up its competitive hands and put on an unsponsored highbrow show--The Mercury Theatre--up against it, one that captured a tiny fraction of Bergen's audience. One of the immediate results of the broadcast was that Welles got a sponsor: Campbell's Soups. The Mercury was far from contaminated, and indeed Welles uses the Mercury brand on Kane and on later films and radio shows.
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Tremonius
10/19/09

@TheBusinessGuy: Oh, that's right, it was actually Candy Bergen's daddy and stepbrothers who were on the other station, not Amos 'n Andy. But I do remember why everyone switched over to see what else was on. It was because of a special guest of Bergen's which did not fit the medium. Marcel Marceau. #richardheene
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Tremonius
10/19/09

@Baroness: I just wonder if some of the worst sources are friends and family. My Daddy was working as a bellboy in Manhattan back in the Depression, and he told of how the boys were ordered to walk the inside hallways away from the windows so they wouldn't be traumatized by all the dropping bodies.

A myth, as it happened. But a good story! #richardheene
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Tremonius
10/19/09

@Tremonius: He also observed a mob hit. Cut over a couple blocks, said nothing about it to anybody above my station, and that was years after. #richardheene
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TheBusinessGuy
10/19/09

@Tremonius: Good line about Marcel Marceau. #richardheene
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braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.
10/19/09

@Baroness: Interestingly, the hoax was repeated several years later in, I think, Argentina, this time with the specific intention of being a hoax. The result was catastrophic; the military was mobilized and sent out of town, so when the civilians realized what had happened, got pissed off, and set the radio studio on fire, there was no one to put it out.

Several people died, several more were badly burned or injured as they tried to escape the building.

I don't remember that guy's name; I heard about him on NPR. #richardheene
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Tremonius
10/20/09

@braak: His name was Argentina Turner. Became a rock group of some note in his dotage. #richardheene
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zefal
03/05/09

In reply to In Which Tonya Harding Is Still Around, And Mad at Barack Obama
Shouldn't Obama have said, "I'm not going to pull a William Ayers and pipebomb my opponents" instead of using a Tonya Harding reference?
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Mediahohoho
03/05/09

@zefal: Well, he could have just as easily said, "I'm not going to pull a Karl Rove and kneecap democracy."
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el smrtmnky
03/04/09

In reply to In Which Tonya Harding Is Still Around, And Mad at Barack Obama
love the two shot at :52! i can't wait for joe the plumber to leave his wife and marry this awesome piece of americana
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Clarence Rosario
03/04/09

In reply to In Which Tonya Harding Is Still Around, And Mad at Barack Obama
She got robbed on that Oscar nomination for The Wrestler.
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SidAndFinancy
03/04/09

In reply to In Which Tonya Harding Is Still Around, And Mad at Barack Obama
Can someone please tell me why I should Kerrigan?

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nellicat
03/04/09

@SidAndFinancy: You're skating on thin ice, buddy.
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Clarence Rosario
03/04/09

@SidAndFinancy: That made me laugh pretty Harding.
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Six People Whose Quest for Fame Was Worse Than Richard Heene's

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