Gabby Douglass encounters the world!

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2012

Teen-ager learns what counts: On Saturday, Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce won the women’s 100.

Unless you bought Sunday's Washington Post! On page one of Sports, above the fold, the Post featured a huge color photo of two sprinters in that race.

Neither one was the winner! In the Post photo, America’s Carmelita Jeter was shown nudging out Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown—for second place! The winner was absent from that large photo, although she did appear in two other photos, which were much smaller. (About one-eighth the size.)

In these peculiar ways, we learn which things really count. In this case, an American finishing second was much more important than someone else finishing first.

(For the record, Jeter gave a superlative interview after the race. For whatever reason, NBC didn’t interview Fraser-Pryce.)

In a similar way, Gabby Douglas is getting a chance to learn about which things count. At age 16, Douglas can win gold medals as much as she wants. What really counts is her hair!

In this Washington Post news report, Douglass responds to all the smack about her troubling hair style. We’ll only tell young Douglass this:

In the future, don’t run for the White House! At that point, top “journalists” will kick the daylights out of your hair, as they did with Giuliani, Gore, Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Romney before you.

By that time, it will likely be Ashley Parker doing the honors. She will be taking the place of her mentor, the hair-obsessed Maureen Dowd.

Certain things count a great deal in our press corps. Crazy proposals, not so much! But the “press corps” does care about hair!

Bald spots, comb-overs, too much hair! Such character problems all count!