Not to nitpick here, but I want to clarify something you said.
> Per above, Python is used by your OS. It's installed by default, and not uninstallable, because the OS needs it.
The OS doesn't need python. It is some package you have installed that needs python, like Gnome(py-gtk2) or KDE(py-qt), for your desktop environment or some application you decided you needed. If you don't understand what program on your server required python to be installed, then you shouldn't be administering a server. Having large numbers of language interpreters and compilers on a server can be considered a security risk, since after someone gains access, that provides him or her a large number of options of what kind of code he or she can run. Even having a C compiler is a risk, since code can then be compiled into programs already present on the system. Security should be first in mind when developing an application server.
On the other hand for a development environment, there should be nothing stopping any distribution from installing multiple language interpreter versions. The default `/usr/bin/python` or `/usr/local/bin/python` can be a symlink to python25, python26 or python27, and when the user needs to run a different version, they explicitly call the binary with the version number. This whole virtualenv method just to parse a configuration file of a program not written in python seemed a little excessive.