There was a long pause from the judges after a young American’s top notch figure skating performance in last night’s Olympics. The resulting score shifted her to 4th giving the bronze medal to Joannie Rochette, the French Canadian whose mother died suddenly two days before the competition.

Columnist Jay Mariotti, uncharacteristically dismissed talk of whether the judges were swayed by Joannie’s performance in the face of such a tremendous loss. He chose instead to focus on the chance the world grabbed to stand up for courage, grit and getting by with a little help from your friends.  

One of Mariotti’s readers commented, “USA sould have won.everybody see her performance. she got reap off and everybody seen it.live on tv so we have to eat it.”  Other things I think are creepy are ads that have babies talk and jump around as if they were adults, greeting cards that put human teeth in the smiling mouths of animals, and pretty much every reality show on tv.