Cheating Chinese Cheaters

I'm so mad at the Chinese gymnastics team. Maybe I should be mad at China in general. As has been widely speculated and written, I don't think for a moment that the girls from China are 16. And the AP just found an old story that referred to one of the girls as being much younger than she should have been, if she is to be 16 presently. As I understand it though, the matter will not be further investigated officially.

And the scoring! Mom, Tom, and I watched a girl from the US and a girl from China perform back to back where they both received nearly identical scores, and the Chinese girl had 5 or 6 balance checks compared to only a single from the US girl. And the Chinese girl even stumbled at the very beginning getting onto the bar.

I thought for a while that the scoring was off -- but not knowing the sport and such it's hard to be too certain. And in the men's competition, the Chinese were performing harder routines. But tonight with the women, and with the two performances I'm referencing, there wasn't any doubt. And to drive it home, one of the announcers started her commentary on the Chinese score asking, "Should I be confused?" And the announcers went on to discuss the strange score.

This is a terrible disservice to all the girls that competed fairly. But you know, this is also a disservice to every Chinese athlete that won their gold medal fair and square. And it's an embarrassment to China. Whenever I think of China and the 2008 Olympics, I'm going to think about how they had to cheat in gymnastics; they blew their moment.

Of course, this isn't the worst thing the Chinese government has ever done. And to that point, I have to wonder when a nation of a billion people finally decide that they want a government of the people, when they finally decide that they've had enough and want a democracy, when they grow tired of the censorship designed to keep them suppressed, how hard will it be -- how hard will it be for one billion people -- to kick their government in the ass and replace it with something better?

This girl is still missing a tooth.