I must say, I am appalled

Regrettably, more than half of the Olympics has gone by with almost zero coverage on this blog. No track posts by Pat. No soccer posts by Mike. Not even a single a skulls post by Matt. However, there is one matter that must not go unaddressed.

It has come to my attention in the last few days that many male Olympic spectators--including certain YCS authors and fans--have been experiencing, shall I say, inappropriate notions while watching women's gymnastics competition. Disgusting, I know, but if you can believe it, some men have been ogling the competitors rather than admiring them for their athletic skills.

Allow me to be the first to say: You are all sick and demented. Some of those girls are only sixteen! Do you know how young that is? They're pratically babies, even though if this were biblical times they'd all have borne children themselves by now. I don't care if some of the competitors are only seven or eight years younger than you, which wouldn't amount to much when you were, say, 47 and 54. It makes no difference. Those girls are young enough to be your nieces, for God's sake, assuming you have one of those crazy families where your brother is fifteen years older than you. That's just wrong.

Just because many of them are of legal consent age, that doesn't make it okay either, except in the eyes of the state and most people living under the law. Nor does the fact that some of them are in college or old enough to be in college, and seriously, what's so wrong about a guy in his mid-20s with a college freshman because it's really not that big a thing when you think about it. Nor the fact that many of the 16 year-old girls who have baby faces clearly have potential but just need to finish developing and turn seventeen. That doesn't make it right.

And let's not forget the fact that the girls on the Chinese team are obviously not sixteen. A few barely look thirteen. I mean, if you're one of those guys with a fetish for Asian women, that's totally fine and cool by me. Exploitation of children is a different story. That's something that should never, ever be taken in jest.

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I was NOT grossed out. I only puked because of the formaledehyde smell.

Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Women's (...sorta) Team Gymnastics Final. U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson lands a sweet move. (I'll take their word because what do I know.) Color commentator proclaims:

She is monster tough!

Like I do with most things I find hilarious that no one else cares about, I couldn't help but persue the humor I found in this innocuous comment to excessive lengths. So I checked out Shawn's bio page on the Olympic web site just to see how monstrously tough she really is. Evidently, incredibly so:

During study halls, Johnson often walks animal shelter dogs as part of her school's volunteer program. She has two tabby cats, Max and Vern, who were adopted from a local shelter, and a golden retriever named Tucker.

BAD. ASS.

Lest I mock (or is it too late?), if you click to the "8 things you didn't know about Shawn Johnson" page, you will find this:

She's not grossed out by dissections... A straight-A high school sophomore, Johnson's favorite classes are literature and biology. She's dissected a frog, but found the cow's eye more interesting.

So I take it back. I never even had to dissect a cow's eye in biology class. Then again, there's no word in the second sentence that connects it to the first, so I'd like to interpret that to mean she just gouged a live cow's eye out one day and started carving it up, in which case she really would be a monster. That's sick, Shawn.

Wait, what's this post about again?


UPDATE (of sorts): If you happened to watch this competition, you'll know what I'm talking about or soon will if you watch SportsCenter. But huge, huge "props" to Alicia Sacramone of the U.S. team for putting off what I'd hope was a lifetime's-worth of crying, cursing, and breaking stuff to stick around for a reporter interview after the medal ceremony.

During the competition, she fell twice, proceeded to get shat on by the commentators (especially "monster tough" dude), and then suffered the indignity of NBC showing her on camera swallowing back her emotions during--literally--every single moment of downtime between the remaining routines.

I won't even pull the patronizing "just a kid" card (especially since she's old enough to be a young MLB, NBA, or NHL rookie) but only mention it because Mary Carillo on NBC just did. Just: That's impressive.

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