Tyson And Tonya Seem To Fit Together To A ‘T’

And, now, this update from the wonderful world of athletes on probation: Mike Tyson has been accused of something disgraceful again, and Tonya Harding is planning a divorce and a comeback, apparently not on the same night.

Tyson and Harding are America’s coincidental couple, linked by brutality, community service and requests for permission to travel outside their jurisdiction.

We are capable of believing anything about either of them.

And the poor Brits have only the royal family to keep them amused.

Harding has gotten married since Tyson got out of jail, so I guess it is safe to say that Tyson’s release has taken better than Harding’s wedding.

Tyson, who was convicted of a crime, has earned $65 million and has felt obligated to complain about it. Harding, who plea bargained, has earned almost nothing and has felt obligated to complain about it.

On the other hand, no one has suggested that Harding has done again what got her in big trouble in the first place.

The time is 2 a.m. Do you know where your WBC heavyweight champion is?

Sympathy does not flow naturally to Tyson, not in the way that money does. So whatever he did, or didn’t do, on the other side of midnight on the South Side of Chicago will have very little effect on his market value. Provided, of course, he does not reincarcerate himself.

And whether he is a lout or a gentleman has very little to do with what is important to the rest of us.

Our only curiosity with Mike Tyson is whether he is, to recall his own phrase, the baddest man on the planet.

It always has been just that.

As a matter of fact, a little time in the slammer adds seasoning to our interest, which may be also true of country singers, but not of figure skaters.

After all, boxing and figure skating are not that different. Both are scored by judges, the losers usually fall down and the announcers wear tuxedos.

Still, we do not demand in our fistfighters the same level of gentility as we do in our ice princesses, which is why the very little lady who caused the figure-skating explosion has gotten nothing out of it.

Tyson gets out of jail and all of boxing takes a step backwards to make room. Harding does her penance, suggests she might want to make a living and the figure-skating world suffers short-term memory loss.

If Nancy Kerrigan does not get thumped on the knee and all that followed that, Oksana Baiul is playing “Rapunzel on Ice” and Elvis Stojko is leaping over snow-blowers for tips.

One of Harding’s spokespeople - like Tyson, she has spokespeople - said that when Harding sees all this televised figure skating it is like going to a dance and not dancing, and that it hurts.

One imagines her, as we saw Kerrigan, weeping, “Why me?”

Tyson, on the other hand, can go dancing, but he better not actually do it, or he could get hurt.

Anyone who wonders what Tyson was doing in a bar does not have to wonder what he does in casinos, which are bars with croupiers. We know what he does in casinos. He brings in suckers.

Tyson recently complained that because he was in jail, he does not get the same endorsement opportunities that non-convicts do.

Maybe he and Harding could do one together, maybe for the criminal-justice system.

Like Tyson, Harding is choosing Las Vegas as the center of her return. Later this month, she will announce her plans there, favoring the one place where nonsense and insensibility not only coexist but are given their own billboards.

Is this a great country, or what?

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Bernie Lincicome Chicago Tribune