Seeing RHEL/CentOS keep coming up led me to some googling and the first result for "RHEL python" is http://www.python.org/download/linux/ (about as official as it gets) which says
The IUS Community Project maintains recent versions of Python for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS. Installations are parallel installed next to stock versions of python therefore don't disrupt the functionality of critical python utilities on the system.
Doesn't that solve the issue and keep you from being hamstrung by those distros?
Not quite, because not everyone will install that stuff, or will be able to get approval from their higher-ups to install it (folks who run RHEL tend to be pretty conservative...).
The IUS Community Project maintains recent versions of Python for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS. Installations are parallel installed next to stock versions of python therefore don't disrupt the functionality of critical python utilities on the system.
Doesn't that solve the issue and keep you from being hamstrung by those distros?