Zidane, Why?

Why did Zidane do what he did? And let me ask two provocative questions: 1) Despite the fact that a football player can probably hit people pretty hard with his head, don't y'all think that Italian player hammed it up a little bit? Wasn't that fall a bit too acrobatic? 2) Don't you think the Italian player must have said something really, really inappropriate to to elicit such a reaction? Wouldn't a fair reaction from the referees have been to investigate what was said? Surely a verbal attack can, in theory, deserve a yellow card if a physical attack can deserve a red one? I'm not excusing Zidane -- I think it would have been far better if he'd turned around and headbutted a ball into the goal rather than headbutting the Italian guy. I think Zidane played right into his hands -- I think this was the Italian strategy: to get Zidane ejected. And Zidane gave him what he wanted.