Kerrigan Sings? Don’t Ask Why - Ask ‘Why Not?’ It’s Not Enough To Be A World-Class Skater Or Have A No. 1 TV Show - Stars Just Keep Branching Out

Now here is a problem we can all identify with.

Say you’re Nancy Kerrigan, a famous and beautiful skater who was involved in a famous, ugly scandal around Olympic time last year.

Say you recovered, went to the Olympics, won the silver medal and became, for one brief and shining moment, America’s Sweetheart (until you dissed Mickey Mouse, but that’s another story). Since then, you’ve appeared in parades and on talk shows. You’ve starred in prime-time skating specials. You’ve done “Saturday Night Live.” You’re doing the Spectrum in April.

You’ve shilled for soup and snowmobiles and sneakers. You’ve done magazine covers, you’ve been in gossip columns, you’ve got more money than you know what to do with, and now you are bored, bored, bored.

What can you do? What’s left? What mysteries can the world hold for someone who’s been there, done that, and is still under 30?

How about cutting an album?

Sure, Nancy Kerrigan’s not a singer. Hasn’t had any musical training. The closest we’ve come to hearing her make music were those shrieks of “Why me?” after her knee got whacked - and, while they were poignant, they weren’t exactly the stuff of Top 40 radio.

But she wasn’t an actress or a model, either, and she’s tried her hand at both those professions.

She’s not - let us be kind - the most articulate woman to grace the public stage. Yet she’s been chatted up by every talk-show host worth his salt. And, as her publicist put it when announcing that Kerrigan had cut a demo tape of a ballad called “Shining Through” and was shopping for a record contract, “She’s been skating to music for years, so why not singing?”

If you haven’t noticed, when it comes to celebrity endeavors, we are living in the era of “Why not?”

Got a hit TV show? Why not write a book? Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser and Tim Allen did.

Got a great body? Why not make your own fitness video? Cindy Crawford, Kathy Ireland and Lucky Vanous, the Diet Coke boy, all have.

Got an OK body? Well, that’s no obstacle. Over-the-hill talk-show host Regis Philbin has made a vid, although no one would confuse him with Fabio (who, by the way, has a video of his own). And cop-slapping actress Zsa Zsa Gabor has also done the fitness thing, although no one would ever confuse her with supermodel Elle MacPherson (who, of course, has her own video, too).

Got a fading reputation as a ‘60s icon? Why not be a congressman? Sonny Bono has gone to Washington. So has Fred Grandy - you remember him as Gopher from “The Love Boat.”

Got a rising reputation as a ‘70s ex-president? Why not try your hand at poetry? Jimmy Carter’s verses are available at bookstores everywhere.

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” said Christopher Geist, the popular-culture department chairman at Bowling Green University in Ohio.

Geist pointed out that the phenomenon of the Star Who Does It All has been around for as long as there have been stars.

Back in the early days of motion pictures, the studio system pushed its stars into the bookstores with ghostwritten cookbooks, travelogues, pet books and biographies.

In the 1950s, ex-athletes took to the stage and screen. Former pro football players would find a new career as professional wrestlers.

Boxer Joe Louis made movies.

“I’m sure they weren’t great, but he made them,” Geist said.

The trend continued in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when television stars traded their scripts for sheet music. In 1967, Leonard Nimoy - television’s Mr. Spock - released an album, “The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy,” including his versions of “Gentle on My Mind” and “If I Were a Carpenter.” Twenty years later, his co-star William Shatner contributed an ill-considered cover of the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” to an album called “Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing-off.”

“I just cannot get over the fact that those people thought they could sing,” said Geist.

But really, whether they can sing - or act, or paint, or exercise, or whatever - isn’t the point, not for an adoring public, wallets at the ready, eager to snatch up any scrap of a celebrity’s life.

“Celebrities are American divinities, the American aristocracy,” said cultural critic Camille Paglia. “The minute you become a celebrity, you embark into this weird other world. People just want to see ‘you.’

“They want to see you everywhere. … It makes perfect sense to me that Nancy Kerrigan’s making an album.”

It also made sense to Steve Dougherty, a staff writer at People magazine.

Actors who try to sing “are usually pretty bad,” he said. “Their value is just as kitsch. … It’s a kick to hear them singing.”

But he agreed that today in America, actors and athletes attain a celebrity status that lets them bypass genre barriers and all of those pesky questions about whether their album/ book/video/etchings/poetry meets the standards of art.

The experts said there are two keys for celebrity crossover projects to succeed.

First, the celeb in question has to play him or herself - or at least embody the persona that the public has come to think of as his or hers. A Whitney Houston can get away with playing a diva in “The Bodyguard” because it’s no stretch for the public to believe it. And Madonna as a Madonna-esque character in “Desperately Seeking Susan” was a triumph, while Madonna in just about everything since has been considerably less.

Secondly, the celeb has to strike while the iron’s at least lukewarm. Kerrigan was hot in ‘94, but the public interest has moved on (O.J., anyone?), so it’s now or never for her album, said Dougherty.

But what if the album’s no good?

“Not important,” said Paglia.

“If Nancy Kerrigan can’t sing, it won’t matter at all,” said Bowling Green’s Geist. “People will buy the album out of curiosity. The market’s there, whether the album’s any good or not.”

And whether or not Kerrigan’s vocals intrigue audiences the same way that her ‘94 crisis did, the experts agree that the trend of the Crossover Celeb is far from over.

“Just wait,” joked Dougherty, “until the Michael Bolton movie comes out.”