Working Out is Okay for Barack…but not Bush

Special thanks goes out to GGL for bringing this story to my attention. Last week on Philly.com there was a story talking about how President-Elect Barack Obama makes time to work out during his transition period. This is just a small clip from the article, but it sets the stage for the end of this entry…

He’s not in the White House yet, but gone are the hours he once spent reading novels, watching television, and obsessing over the daily transactions of Chicago’s sports teams. He eats out only once every few weeks.

But one habit endures: Obama has gone to the gym, for about 90 minutes a day, for dozens of days in a row. He has always treated exercise less as recreation than as requirement, but his devotion has intensified in the last few months.

Personally, I’m glad that Obama is going to the gym because I think the image of a young, fit President is also part of what Americans need right now. Our young people need a national role model that exhibits integrity and healthy behavior, both of which Obama has to offer. However, on the “comments” section of this particular Philly.com article there was an interest note. Here is the full text of that comment:

A former WP writer named Jonathan Chait said this of GW Bush’s workouts in an opinion piece for the LA Times headlined, “The (over)exercise of power.” Recounting how President Bush ran 3.5 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed, “Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? … What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.” So Bush working out was “creepy” and B Hussein working out is defined as, “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.” Nice to see the in the tank media hasn’t lost its ‘touch’ and can be counted on to do puff piece after puff piece on the messiah, B Hussein Obama. 2008-The Year Journalism Died.

Now the guy who posted this comment may have a bias against Obama, but he brings up a good point. With the help of Google, I went out and found that Los Angeles Times column where Chait went after after President Bush regarding his workout habits. Here’s a piece of it for you:

Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise. His full schedule is not publicly available. The few peeks we get at Bush’s daily routine usually come when some sort of disaster prods the White House Press Office to reveal what the president was doing “at the time.” Earlier this year, an airplane wandered into restricted Washington air space. Bush, we learned, was bicycling in Maryland. In 2001, a gunman fired shots at the White House. Bush was inside exercising. When planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, Bush was reading to schoolchildren, but that morning he had gone for a long run with a reporter. Either this is a series of coincidences or Bush spends an enormous amount of time working out.

The story gets a little bit more interesting when you put all of these pieces together, huh? I agree with the commenter when he says that 2008 was the year that journalism died. Between the destruction of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the media and the utter love affair that the mainstream media had with Obama during the election, could this gym story be the dot on the exclamation point declaring the end of the mainstream media as we know it?