I am 62. I do 3.5 miles in an hour on my treadmill avg 6 days a week. I started regular aerobic exercise in college. I had a PE teacher there who did a good job of explaining the causal effect over time of regular exercise on long term good health. I jogged for decades, started before jogging shoes were really invented. My joints protest running now, but walking is fine.
I have over the course of the 40+ years of regular exercise never considered it an obsession. It is a staple of life, one that has me at 62 with the blood pressure I had, well, 40 years ago, and not having to take any medications for a chronic condition.
Those calling Obama obsessed might spend their time better focusing on the seeming obsession with NOT exercising by the growing majority of Americans who do NOT exercise, and are busy eating themselves into obesity and bad health through coupling lack of exercise with terrible dietary habits.
My sincerest wish right now is that the traditional media and the right wingnut keyboard commandos grasp sooner rather than later that the semantic games and faux outrages of the past 8-10 years are over, and only the diminishing 25% or so of idiots who still think Bush Jr was a great president and that the dinos lived and walked around with Adam are paying attention to this manufactured crap from the right wing spin machine.
This is why I stopped getting info from the traditional media years ago, and now get 95% of my news online. TV? Forget about it. A waste of time and watching CNN is a threat to my blood pressure.
Better I continue my obsession with exercise and actual factual knowledge and reality based judgments.
No disrespect, but Frank Rich is incorrect in characterizing President-elect Obama’s commitment to fitness as obsession, which is to “to dominate or preoccupy the thoughts, feelings, or desires of (a person); beset, trouble, or haunt persistently or abnormally.” 90 minutes a day for exercise is perfectly acceptable for any balanced human, even the President, and for some of us it’s absolutely critical for any mental health.
Posted by Maddy at December 28, 2008 09:41 AMOh yeah...no big stories out there. Just Israel mounting a possible ground invasion of Gaza, over 300 people killed, etc....
Yes, I exercise regularly, blah, blah.
Let's keep in mind that a person can be exercising and using the time to be thinking about other important things. 90 minutes seems like a lot to me, but I think I should just say ok since my exercise time is way under what it should be. Just got my recumbent stationary bike back in condition. I would like to be doing 20 minutes a day. Nuff said.
Posted by mike at December 28, 2008 10:31 AMyipe. What a lot of rather defensiveness about the 90 minutes, and what a lot of rather detailed information about exercise habits. Seems a bit obsessed, actually.
Posted by c at December 28, 2008 01:41 PM"Obsession" is a knee-jerk, bullshit, inaccurate word for Rich to have used. Shows how even he can't escape the MSM Horseshit Equivalence Doctrine, or perhaps the Dowd vapor wafting through the NYT air ...
Obsession: True for hapless Dumbfuck, still trying to live down his Yale cheerleaderhood to Poppy's captain of all the teams. A fuckin exercise moron. Plus, as a child in an adult's job, he probably wanted to get away as much as Cheney wanted to keep him away.
I doubt true for Obama. (Oh how they want him to be Bush-psycho!) Well I'm sure like any guy he has some vanity about his body and keeping it nice. And at age fortysomething, it doesn't happen by itself, we all gotta make the effort.
This bit was definitely a clunker on Rich's part, and registered when i read it .. but overall I thought the piece kicked ass .. I think he's a rare light in the NYT muck, who only keeps shining brighter.
Oh dear, I am so not looking forward to 8 years of Princess Di coverage of this couple.
Posted by the young Judith (tyj) at December 29, 2008 08:57 PM