A 10.0 in cluelessness

Say this for USA Gymnastics: At least their dismounts are spectacular.

This after Mary Bono stepped down five days -- that's "days", as in, "days" -- after being named interim head of the ruling body, on account of she was compromised to a fare-thee-well. First she gets caught in a photo trashing a Nike logo because she didn't like its Colin Kaepernick ad campaign, Then it came out that she worked for the same law firm that helped provide cover for Larry Nassar, the convicted abuser who preyed on young gymnasts for decades with the complicity of multiple entities, chief among them Michigan State University.

So to review: USA Gymnastics hired someone who publicly smeared a powerful sponsor and worked for the people who helped facilitate Larry Nassar's crimes. Great hire there, folks.

Nuclear cluelessness always makes for great theater -- hello, MSU and Penn State -- but it's also an ultimately unrewarding study into how humans arrive at such cluelessness. In other words, "What the hell were you thinking?" is a question with no satisfactory answers.  All you can do is mark it down as one of life's great unsolved mysteries.

And so who knows why USA Gymnastics tapped Bono, except that it once more highlighted the incompetence that allowed a sexual deviant to run free for so long. Bono's predecessor, after all, lasted only nine months before being forced out. Yes, they're very good at dismounts, the USAG.

Bono, of course, went them all one better. Her statement upon stepping down was not, shall we say, conciliatory. Instead she responded by defending herself against what she called "personal attacks" from some of the most prominent figures in the sport, among them Simone Biles and Aly Raisman.

Never mind that both Biles, who pointed out the dubious wisdom of trashing moneyed sponsors, and Raisman, who questioned the hiring of someone who worked for the law firm that helped keep Nassar in the abuse business, were both as right as rain. And never mind that this wasn't exactly the time, and certainly not the place, to play the aggrieved party the way Bono did.

Astounding. If these people were an event, it would be the uneven bars.

Or perhaps the unbalanced beam.