So let me get this straight. Michael Jordan is retiring, again. And Tonya Harding isn't, again.

Now tell me again why we fought World War II.

When (MJ's) finally gone, (Tonya Harding will) still be there -- trying to catch on with the Mets, the East Coast Hockey League, Cirque du Soleil or the syndicated version of 'Weakest Link.' She'll be with us forever.

Of Jordan's retirement, much has been said already -- it's about time, this is a great blow to the NBA, there go the Wizards, and blah-de-blah-de-blearghhhhh.

But the stunning silence about Harding's inclusion on the undercard of the Mike Tyson-Charles Durning bout in Memphis is simply baffling.

I now wish to refer to the greatest lesson I was ever taught, by a magnificent avatar, guru and all-around kick in the hinder named Dave Burgin, who once said (at least he said it to me, and he was sober when he said it, so it must have been important) that the most important question a journalist can ask is, "Who asked for this?"

So we ask it now -- who asked for Tonya Harding, again?

Or, to paraphrase, "Who the hell asked for Tonya Harding, again?"

You see, while we normally are willing to give Richard Gere the benefit of the doubt when he says that everyone is redeemable, we suggest that he did not mean to include Tonya Harding as a prizefighter. And if he did mean to include her, well, what could he have been thinking?

And to be put on the undercard of a Tyson vehicle, which has already been devalued enough, is beyond comprehension.

While Tyson has tacked his public image back to the left with the heart-wrenching remark, "I'm tired of being stupid," it seems clear that Harding isn't going quite so Eliza Dolittle on us. Her craving for notoriety has reached such extremes that she is willing to become a carny sideshow act for an audience that has lost its taste for the bearded lady and the two-headed goat.

I mean, we have outgrown the idea of Manute Bol as hockey player, haven't we?

Yet Harding survives, and finds a new sucker ... er, entrepreneur, to bankroll her latest attempt to attach herself to the farthest fringe of the American cultural scene.

Yipes!

Why this didn't bother us before, say, when the announcement was made, we cannot say. Boxing fades in and out of our consciousness as it struggles to avoid the same fate as horse racing or Roller Derby, and this is NFL, college football, college basketball, NBA, NHL, figure skating, international soccer and Sopranos season.

But when Jordan announced that he was retiring for the third time from his second sport (or fourth time from his third sport, if you want to include golf), it suddenly hit us that this is not the retirement we were looking for at all.

Harding is that unique American character, one whose very name invokes a singular response -- "What idiotic stunt is she connected to this time?" It's never, "What charitable event is she participating in," or "What instrument is she taking up?" or even "Whatever happened to . . . ?"

She turns up, it's something nobody asked for, and then she vanishes again -- like when your pipes go bad, but before you decide to call the plumber.

And yet, we expend far more energy wondering why Jordan keeps at it, or what he intends to do in this retirement that will satisfy him more than what he did in the last few. Sounds like misplaced exertion to us?

Fortunately, Jordan will still be on active duty when Harding has her fight, whether she faces Winona Ryder, Laila Ali or Vladimir Klitschko. She'll slip back beneath the radar while we worry about whether Jordan can browbeat the Wizards into seventh, or even sixth place.

But when he's finally gone, she'll still be there -- trying to catch on with the Mets, the East Coast Hockey League, Cirque du Soleil or the syndicated version of "Weakest Link." She'll be with us forever.

Once again, our priorities have failed us.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com