Fitness club folly...

If you’re young, single and your keyster spends a good part of the week parked in an office chair, chances are you try to fight off the office slug love handles with a gym membership.

I count myself as one such card carrier.

However, I was reluctant to join the club of gym rats and neurotic sweat fiends, fearing that a Globo Gym might turn me into a hamster on a wheel and cut into my outside jaunts through the neighborhood.

That fear quickly subsided as I flashed my shiny new membership card to the excessively cheery front desk lady during the first visit to my new sweat shop. Little did I know that the gym is such a party for curious eyes. How can anyone get a workout in with so much hilarity surrounding you?

When you actually unplug your ear buds, stop counting curls and take a peak around, the gym becomes a breeding ground for comedy.

There’s the bookish, gray-haired lady with 3-inch thick glasses clutching her 300-page novel as she walks in circles around the indoor track. How she manages to stay in her lane, flip the pages and retain what she reads is a tight-rope act that puts Ringling Brothers to shame.

And shame is the first feeling that pierces my cerebellum when I see a fortysomething man, glued to a Nautilus machine, sweating through a pair of jeans. One of the unwritten Golden Rules of Sport is: Never wear jeans to Little League practice, never wear jeans in high school gym class, and never, ever wear jeans to the gym. It screams incompetence. You could be one of the most uncoordinated, weak, stamina-less lots in the building, but if you rock Nike cross trainers, mesh shorts and a charity 5k T-shirt, your struggles with chest presses are glossed over. But by wearing jeans, judging eyes might stare you to death on the Stairmaster.

On the other end of the fashion spectrum is the Sweatinistas, a breed of young female, most likely single and most definitely attention-craving, who hop on treadmills and ellipticals dolled up like they are headed to Prom. Earrings sway, pearl necklaces dangle and eyeliner inexplicably avoids bleeding. I find myself conflicted: My inner monologue flows with snarky quips at the sight of the overly decorated Sweatinista, but, at the same time, I appreciate the outward display of bachelorettehood. If I wasn’t drenched in sweat and gym stink, I might float a suave comment her way at the water fountain…

However, one species of gym dweller I avoid approaching is the Woahmen. Woahmen are defined as fortysomething ladies who work out under the illusion that wearing spandex and tank tops designed for their granddaughters is a good idea. Listen Woahmen, as much as I try to sympathize with your struggles to let go of youth, wearing more loose-fitting apparel might allow for a more pleasant gym outing for all of us. Outside the gym, our culture has been oddly celebrating your lust for Round 2 of your twenties by calling it “Cougarhood.” Inside the gym, you’re just nasty.

Then there’s the thirtysomething behemoth at the bench press who you swear you saw hauling school buses over his shoulder on ESPN. With each lift, this brute fills the whole room with grunts of primal manliness. He’s the obvious king of this kingdom, and the unspoken “There’s no crying in fitness clubs” rule does not apply to him. You catch yourself daydreaming a walk down the street in his shoes for a fleeting second, but then common sense prevails: What woman would ever want to date a guy who could toss her car up the block when they argue?

The breed of gym dweller who I always want to reward with a head nod of respect in between reps is Joe. Joe is that guy or gal who never wastes a second of gym time, whose sweat forms a small pool of hard work next to him/her. Joe doesn’t flaunt a wife beater or a two-piece bathing suit, but rather a plain white T-shirt and a bland pair of Russell Athletic shorts. Joe smiles and might say hi at the water fountain. Joe is not spellbound by his/her muscle mass, nor preoccupied with the contour of his/her glutes. At any moment, Joe might mouth the words to the song playing on his/her iPod. Joe knows that, despite popular opinion, life won’t be much easier even with a tight six pack, so he/she does 100 crunches rather than 400.

Here’s to you, Joe, for making me feel welcome in a world filled with such odd creatures.

Why is the media enabling Blagojevich?

I have found a new, hard-to-pronounce reason to never become a politician: Blagojevich.

The former Illinois governor’s wicked intention to “sell” a vacant U.S. Senate seat is trumped only by his narcissistic megalomania and pathological lying, played out in the public square recently thanks to ratings-craving TV news producers.

As he was taken from his home on Dec. 9 by federal agents, he told NBC, “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi and tried to put some perspective to all this, and that is what I am doing now.”

This wackjob sounds like a dream case study for a psychology student.

The Illinois Senate voted 59-0 not only to impeach Blagojevich as governor, but barred him from ever holding public office in the state again.

With such a firm repudiation, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why reputable media outlets were validating this man with a platform through which to feed his delusions and further tarnish the sometimes questionable credibility of American politics.

ABC’s “Nightline, CNN’s “Larry King Live” and several other supposed bastions of principled journalism featured Blagojevich in extensive interviews on telecasts in the days leading up to the decision on his impeachment.

I understand the Shakespearean tragedy and morbid fascination surrounding a U.S. governor gone corrupt. But with the unemployment rate in the country rising past 7% and with the government set to write a $800+ billion stimulus check funded with taxpayer dollars, so much journalistic energy should not have been spent on Blago from Chicago.

A two-minute summary of his trial and a few comments from the man would have sufficed. The fact that he has been elevated to an iconic status – which was exactly his sick intention – is sad.

Warren Buffet, the pragmatic billionaire investor, once said: “To a degree, people read the press to inform themselves, and the better the teacher, the better the student body.”

If the teacher is distracted by a corrupt politician with a bad hair cut and missing moral fibers, how are the students supposed to know what is important to learn?

Drowning in a new kind of patriotism

The piercing ring of the cell phone in my ear at 4:30 a.m. was not caused by a giddy friend who wanted to restate in a slurred shout his undying man crush on me as he stumbled home from an after-after party.

The noise was actually planned, and the phone alarm sprung me from a makeshift bed that laid on the ground of a friend’s house in Dupont, a short jog away from where Barack Obama would stand at a podium later that morning, and, in so doing, write a paragraph in the next edition of grade-school history textbooks.

I felt compelled to travel to Washington not as a masochist who enjoys traffic jams or moving five feet in 30 minutes among a sea of people. I also didn’t make the trip to rustle my pom-poms for the home team, even though I did vote for Mr. Obama.

I endured the mayhem and the nostril-numbing cold to see why everyone else was there.

Standing on the National Mall at 6:30 a.m., knowing there were four hours until the festivities kicked off, I realized I had a lot of time to search for my answer...

Two friends from Brazil who recently opened an eatery in the area were there to celebrate the induction of a more global U.S. President.

White twentysomethings who were high school friends from Pennsylvania reunited to see a politician who had inspired them to become more participatory in government.

A black family from Alabama braved a long bus ride to see a man who reflected a new beginning for them. Tears would later trickle down the faces of the mother and father as Obama spoke of how “a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

I was particularly struck by the fierce sense of pride black families displayed, shown by the portraits of the Obama family they wore on shirts and the sense of ownership they asserted through their language. Jan. 20 was more than an event on their calendar; it was an obligation, a celebration, a vindication.

The most poignant and telling moment of the weekend for me came on Inauguration Eve, when I was strolling around the Capitol, drinking in the pre-game vibe.

A young black boy, no older than four, was playfully running in circles near the front steps of the building when his father yelled to him.

“Come on, buddy, we need to get to our hotel,” Dad said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for all of us, and you’re going to be able to say you were here to see it.”

The expectations placed on President Obama, especially from the black community and sometimes from media members intoxicated by romanticism, are astronomically high, to the point of being unfair.

But the man does signal a profound changing of the guard in America. The disparity between older and younger voters in the 2008 presidential election was the widest ever recorded, according to a recent Newsweek story. In addition, by 2050, whites will make up only 47% of the U.S. population, the same story reported.

And that young black boy I saw on the steps of the Capitol who is a part of this shift will have at least one role model to channel motivation from.

As I surveyed the crowd on the National Mall that morning, I realized that some have already started channeling. And that can only be a good thing.

This one is different...

There was the same sweet gray-haired lady who needed three shouts in her good ear before she could decipher my full name for polling place verification. There were the same deeply investigative news stories claiming voters were frustrated with long lines. And there were the same “I Voted” stickers that kindle civic shivers of pride within you every time you look down at your shirt post-vote.

But this Nov. 4 was different.

It was different not because the head of state switched political party affiliations or even because the first African-American was voted into office.

It was different because about 130 million of us cast a ballot, the highest voter turnout since 1968. It was different because “apathetic, self-infatuated” 18- to 29-year-olds made up 18% of the electorate, while voters age 65 and older represented only 16%. It was different because older black women at Grant Park in Chicago and twentysomething white men at Times Square in New York wept as they watched the president-elect speak.

Something different was going through our minds this time around. As Buffalo Springfield crooned, “there’s something happenin’ here.”

Out of all the rhetorical flourishes that were cascading out of commentators’ mouths after Obama reached 270 electoral votes, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw struck a chord that I think adds an apt caption to the polling numbers and tears of joy.

“When this family takes up residence in the White House and he puts his hand on the Bible and becomes President of the United States,” Brokaw said, “there’s going to be a cultural and political change in America, and I’m not sure that we fully understand how sweeping it is going to be. People are going to want to go to Washington and work for the government in a way they haven’t in the past 20 years…And that’s what this country needs. It really does need a re-enlistment of citizenship, people raising their hands saying, ‘Count on me. I’m willing to come to Washington.’”

My grade school Social Studies textbooks would gush about the U.S. as the land of opportunity, a melting pot of pluralistic virtue, using language that roused the warm-and-fuzzies in idealistic schoolchildren.

But textbook ideals most often do not carry over into real life.

Whether you love him or hate him, Obama, however, does connect these ideals with reality. He is now larger than life, a breaking point on the timeline of history, a walking demonstration of progress who breathes new life into our country’s unique ideals.

Will that repair the financial crisis? Absolutely not. Will that end global warming? Nope. Will Russia and North Korea all of a sudden sing kumbaya with us? No sir.

But the spirit he stirs is not just hot air. It’s powerful. It makes politics seem more relevant and accessible. By electing a black man president 43 years after giving blacks the unqualified right to vote, we’ve shown the world that we actually strive to apply our ideals.

With all that said, it’s easy to romanticize this story. The truth is that Obama has set some sky-scraper-high expectations for himself, and he inevitably will let down those who think he can do no wrong.

But the impromptu celebrations seen in the streets of this country and around the world crystallized for us that this Nov. 4 was unlike all the rest.

Here’s to hoping it inspires another generation whose civic satisfaction is not limited to the stickers handed out every Election Day.

Fair journalism is sexy? DGergs is a hit with the ladies...

‘Tis the season for political talking heads to babble ignorantly about Joe the faux Plumber and how Wall Street is destroying Main Street.

One man on CNN always seems to cut through the hyperbole to offer candid and tempered analysis. He is a 66-year-old political vet who has worked on the campaigns of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He will never admit to a thrill running up his leg or imply a certain candidate is an Arab extremist.

He is David Gergen.

I admire the guy, and I admit his native North Carolina “aw-shucks” honesty is endearing to this political junkie. However, Jessi Klein, a comedian and blogger for the Web site “The Daily Beast,” takes her admiration to another level when she confesses her passionate love for the man.

I don’t usually include other people’s work in this blog space, because, as is customary for many writers and artists, I simply feel my material is better than all other people’s. But love is the greatest muse, and Mrs. Klein’s white-hot romantic tinglings toward DGergs need to be shared. Enjoy:

The romance began late at night, with a glass of red wine and an episode of The Situation Room.

I can’t hold in the truth any longer. My feelings are too large to live just within the confines of my heart. I need everyone to know:

I am passionately in love with David Gergen.

Our (mine and Gergen’s) love story is in some ways ordinary. We were friends first. I would see him hanging around the channel — sometimes on AC360, sometimes on The Situation Room — and was always vaguely aware of a little pang of happiness whenever his large, wonderful head would appear in some kind of split-screen box.

The moment I realized my feelings were more serious was in late September, right after the first presidential debate. Gergen was on for hours, and I found myself on the couch, riveted, a glass of Cabernet by my feet, hands wrapped around my knees as I leaned forward to capture every word, every thought, every—oh, be still my fluttering heart, was that a little chuckle?

And then all of a sudden my face felt hot. I was blushing. I was loving David Gergen.

How do I love David Gergen? Let me count the ways.

I love his low, quiet voice. That unmodulated buttery whisper that sounds like it’s elbowing its way past a cough drop that’s permanently lodged at the back of his throat. You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that’s just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy.

I love the way Gergen makes me feel calm, even when he’s making dire predictions about the future of our country. I love the way he knows everything and then formulates an opinion about everything that’s always right. I love that his eyebrows only move when he gets mad, and I love that he almost never gets mad. I love that he looks like a handsome baked potato. I want him to analyze my life with the same subtle intelligence he uses to analyze politics. How can I make my kitchen brighter? Should I email that dum-dum of a guy I know or just leave it in my draft folder? Should I get a bob or is my hair better long?

I love that his name is Gergen. Gerrrrr-gen. I don’t know the real origin of the name, but it’s a quirky, comforting sound with an onomatopoeic quality to it. Like the little pleasure noise you make under your breath when you’re home in your pajamas and you hear someone on the TV making consistent, rational sense.

Mrs. Klein’s original crush admission can be found at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-15/im-in-love-with-david-gergen/

The Quarter Century Address

One score and five years ago today my father and mother brought forth on this continent a funny-looking creature with a full head of black hair and a propensity to drool and nap.

Some things never change.

Conceiving him in love (suspiciously around Valentine’s Day), they dedicated him to the Mister Rogers proposition that all children are created equal, especially those who enjoy talking to a middle-aged sweater snob through a TV screen.

Now he is engaged in a personal civil war, an inner clash testing whether his boyish idealism and youthful simplicity can endure the Joneses and pressures to sacrifice adventure for stability.

He realizes success is no longer as finite as a test grade, a trophy or a piece of scrolled paper etched with calligraphy. For a few, success means reaching a certain societal status. For some, it means finding The One and starting a family. For others, it means making strides down an envisioned career path. For still others, it means uncovering an elusive truth that sets you completely at ease in your own skin. For him on his Silver Birthday, success is a “To Be Determined.”

Even with the continued uncertainty, 25 years have shown me that age tends to do two things: it installs in us an autopilot button and it instills in us a know-it-all attitude.

It’s easier as you get older to go through the motions at work, distance yourself from friends who’ve propped you up in the past and lose sight of where you came from. It’s also easier to feign omniscience to impress or bloat the ego.

What can combat these traps that foster superficiality and distance yourself from your less fake pre-25 self?

Failure.

It’s harder to deal with it when you get older, but that’s when it becomes the most meaningful.

Approach the fun gal at the barbeque and ask her on a date. Suggest your new product idea to the boss. Join that community group without knowing anyone in it. Explore that new career option. The worst that can happen is failure, but out of it comes a risk and a challenge that continually stretches you and keeps you vital and hungry.

Fellow October 18er Mike Ditka, the screws-chomping, WD-40-drinking former coach of the Chicago Bears, once said: “Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.”

Iron Mike wants us to fail.

My Quarter Century resolution is to fail more often and not shy away from situations where failure is possible. How else can you grow, while staying true to who you are, in the next 25 years?

Has Clark Kent degenerated into a blithering idiot?

It’s less than one month until the most pivotal presidential election in recent memory, all you Joe Six-Packs, Change-oholics and coveted ones in between.

With an economy on the brink of a dark recession, with Social Security and Medicare costs guaranteed to skyrocket as the boomers retire (leaving today’s twentysomethings to pick up the tab), with a damaged reputation on the world stage, why is it that our first reflex when digesting political TV news is to grab the popcorn and not the thinking cap?

As a former newspaper reporter, I will admit that I am harder on my journalistic brethren. But we all should be. They shape our opinions of the candidates. What they talk about on camera is what we talk about around the water cooler. And it seems they are more interested in provoking fights, massaging their egos and selling their brands rather then informing voters. TV journalists need to press the candidates on the tough issues, such as how they will afford what they effortlessly promise, not wave poms-poms or hoist high-fives.

When Fox News personality Sean Hannity sat down with John McCain and Sarah Palin recently, the anchor acted like he was shooting a campaign ad:
HANNITY: But think of how this war has been politicized through the prism of your experience in Vietnam. The leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said, “the surge has failed, the war is lost.” Dick Durbin compared our troops to Nazis. John Kerry said our troops are invading Iraqis’ homes in the dark of night, you know, terrorizing women and children. These are verbatim quotes. And Barack Obama said they are “air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” My question is, you know, what does that — that’s poisonous rhetoric, but it goes on, what does it mean? How do you stop that if you’re elected president and vice president?

The war has been politicized, Mr. Hannity, because you and other biased cable news “reporters” keep framing questions with an “us versus them,” “I know the answer before I ask it” attitude. It’s like crediting a home run to candidates before they have even stepped up to home plate. How does that make them better or keep them accountable?

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who fluctuates between Jon Stewart fake journalism and Tim Russertism based on his mood, is just as guilty of brownnosing with certain candidates and fostering a toxic perception that journalism divides along political party lines.

OLBERMANN lollipop question to Obama: Let me switch over to Iraq and people's reaction to you and Iraq and Iraq as a subject in general. Your predictions about the surge, your language about the surge, seem to have turned out to be just about 100 percent on the spot. Simple facts: whatever is done to lessen violence against American troops and others in portions of that country, the Iraqis are still not paying for this war fully, either with money or personnel. And Mr. Bush has just been advised not to bring any more of our troops home this year…If you are right, why have the Republicans and the conservative media been so effective in suggesting that you were wrong and somehow you need to atone for that?

Journalists’ mission is not to be chummy or accommodating, but Olbermann and Hannity are among the best at it. How do they even introduce their careers at dinner parties? They’re too newsy to be entertainers, yet not objective enough to be journalists.

Helpful political journalism does not need to wow with intellectualism or amaze with theatrics. Journalists should be persistent and cut through the memorized stump speeches, but they don’t need to quote Socrates or sprinkle in SAT words to do it.

Rob Caldwell of WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, would not let McCain escape with clichés during the candidate's reasoning for selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate.
NBC’s Matt Lauer proved he is not only good at preparing turkeys and petting kittens when he pushed Obama to be honest about how he is going to pay for improvements to health care, education and energy with an economy spiraling toward Great Depression severity.

To sum it up, valuable journalism that you can take to the voting booth involves firm, common-sense questions. Are they sexy? No. Will they get your face festooned on a Times Square billboard? Unlikely. But they will send the right candidate to the Oval Office.