Johnette Howard in the Washington Post, January 8, 1994, two days after the assault upon Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan:

Coarse as it sounds, what happened to Nancy Kerrigan Thursday afternoon is not that out of the ordinary—not if it is taken in its correct context as the sort of violence that is perpetrated by men against women every day, in myriad ways, in places a lot less well-lit or noticed than this week's U.S. Olympic skating trials.

More than an act of a madman or an isolated incident—which is what the Monica Seles attack previously was called—Kerrigan and Seles's cases have infinitely more to do with what happened to former Navy distance runner Kerryn O'Neill last month when she and ex-Navy quarterback Alton Grizzard were slain by George Smith, a classmate who then fatally shot himself because he was angry O'Neill had ended their engagement some weeks previous.

All three cases aren't about what this world is coming to; it seems to me to be about how this world has always been. At least for women.

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