Olympics, Kids and Chinchillas

Poor Alicia Sacramone. After yesterday's women's gymnastics team competition, much focus was placed on the poor young lady and her big mistakes. The underlying point was that her mistakes cost the U.S. team the gold medal. I don't really understand this because the Chinese beat the Americans by 2.375--a signficant margin of victory. While I'm not a gymnastics expert on scoring, I don't see how, even adding back the deductions for Sacramone's fall off the beam and on floor exercises, how she cost the U.S. the gold? Even if none of the American girls hadn't stepped out of bounds, I don't think the total sum of all the deductions would have made up the difference. Thus the Chinese girls definitely earned their gold, and we shouldn't diminish the Chinese performance by blaming Sacramone and implying the Americans "gave it away". Now if only the Chinese girls were actually the required 16 years of age to be eligible to participate...

Then, very late last night (at least on the East Coast), Andrea Joyce interviewed (or should I say grilled?) Sacramone on her performance and its impact on the team. Exactly how many different ways can one ask the same question about the girl's mess-ups? Why didn't you ask her when she planned to commit suicide? Very cruel.

Anyhow, after the interview ended with Sacramone near tears, NBC cut back to Mary Carillo in the studio. Clearly distraught after watching Sacramone suffer through Joyce's interview, Carillo blurts: "Uh, it's a killer... it's a killer watching... I mean they're just kids... as a parent... this is why some people just raise chinchillas." Buwahahaha! I love it!