Longest exercise session ever

This morning I went to the health club to do my regular elliptical machine routine (36 minutes, with cool-down).  In addition to the TVs for each machine, they have huge ones dominating the room that people can look at while exercising.

The one dominating my line of sight was set to Fox, although at first I didn't realize this.  Then two minutes into my session, they started broadcasting the hagiographic Chris Wallace interview with Bush that I had seen mentioned, probably on-line.

No sound for me, but for the rest of my time I couldn't look up without seeing indecently huge, reverential close-ups of that vacant, fatuous face.  Blush makeup had been layered on him with a trowel, and it was gleaming everywhere.  He kept furrowing his brow to simulate Deep Thought, or laughing at things he was saying that I seriously doubt were funny.

I've never had a workout that felt so long.  People snipe about "Bush hatred," but when you think of all he has done to our country and the world, one would have to be a lot more forgiving than I am not to find the sight distasteful.

Scarcely any commercials, though when at last they came they've never been more welcome.  I could actually look up.

One thing about Bush is that he only says two or three things a year.  Privately as well as publicly, I gather, he keeps saying them again and again and again.  He's been saying repeatedly for several years now that you can't judge a president until long after he's dead.  I gather from what I've read about this interview that he was trotting out that one again.  This was also, I gather, a prime session for the incessant self-comparisons to Lincoln that he reportedly harps on privately as well as in public.

Not that his intimates deserve much sympathy, but it can't be all that enjoyable for anyone to keep hearing this stuff.

At half past the hour came the commercial break.  I was hoping they were done with him, but no such luck.  Apparently they needed a full hour for him to say everything enough times.  Meanwhile Fox was flashing on the screen the tough criticisms they were asking him to comment on, one by John Bolton and another by Peggy Noonan.  Talk about your full range of viewpoints.

When he came back on after the half-hour break I was in my cool-down phase.  So I took one of my towels and draped it over the left side of my face, blocking the view.  Now at last I could look up and see nothing worse than frayed white fabric.