as used in theatrical parlance of course, lest some readers scurry off to alert the ASPCA, the IOC or the baseball players union let me state that I am a fan of all things equine, of four legged beings in general, and it is through no fault of the 15 year old warmblooded Oldenburg beauty with milk chocolate coat, raven tail and white socks above three of her hooves, that she was purchased and made to skip dancing about in mincing crippling gates when it were noble jumpage...
that would be her natural birthright through her sire (not dam sire) the magnificent stallion Argentinus whom she is doubtless proud to boast of among the mostly gelded dressage crowd she is now made to hang with; no, we lovers of all things horsey wish her well, hale and much success out of the medals - because, for our electoral druthers it would hardly do for her matronly though svelte senior fit La Jolla Barbie owner to be scene in the next few days on the television machine clutching gold to her ample heaving professionally worked bosoms and sobbing into the bionic shoulder of her less human than droid significant other who has just been wrangled from out the steamer trunk with holes poked in it he's been secured into in chance of the chocolate mare's probable failure, and out of tomato tossing range of the average Anglo-Saxon sport-fan, that might inspire "hell ya's", spontemporaneus chantings of "USA!, USA!" and mass honkings of monster truck horns echoing through the fertile hinderlands of Alabama-in-the-Middle that would switch Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes, send old William P. to spinning and scuttle our dear 44's second term.