Jimmy Roberts finally ventured into somewhat unfamiliar territory tonight, bringing us up to speed on the women Olympians from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan while making some larger points on the status of women, in the Olympics (where they didn't get to compete in 1896, in case you'd forgotten from the last time it was mentioned) and generally.

As inoccuous as the piece was, two points came to mind watching it.

1. I don't think any of the NBC family of networks deigned to show any of the competitions where any of these women competed. If it wasn't for this moment, the opening ceremony would have been the only time we saw them (if even then).

2. There are several female US Olympians - May and Walsh, Jenny Thompson, and Amanda Beard are notable - who whenever they are mentioned by a studio host come up over their shoulder in what appears to be a glamor shot. Inge de Bruijn of The Netherlands, by comparison, looks like they just dragged her in from the pool. So we've got nationalism and sexism, kind of the Reese's Cup of socially questionable behavior - "you've got sexism in my nationalism!" and so forth.

In unrelated news, either Tom Hammond has short term memory problems or he thinks we do. He's a little too fond of repetition. When noting the finalists in women's pole vault, he reminded us twice within 3 minutes that no Americans were going. He also likes to remind us about 100 meter dash silver medalist Lauryn Williams' parents (divorced, she's an 8th grade teacher in Detroit, he's devoted to his daughter, and needs dialysis every other day related to a long-term case of leukemia).

From a color commentary volume perspective, there's a tight medal battle going between Carol Lewis (track), Rowdy Gaines (swimming), and Cynthia Potter (diving). I mean, they all do a good job, but don't need to be turned up to 11 to do so.