Nothing is too insignificant to make a big deal out of when it comes to the press and conservatives. If your kids look too nice, then you're suddenly The Man. An out-of-touch throwback to the 50s who wants all women to be like Donna Reed and children to be just like Wally and the Beav. If you casually ask potential employees whether they work out, then you're a creepy exercise freak.

Yep, not only is President Bush Hitler, the devil, a moron and evil, he also "has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy". Or so says Los Angeles Times reporter Jonathan Chait in his latest hit piece.

Like the simplistic moron he obviously thinks the President is, Chait assumes that because Bush asked potential Supreme Court nominee Harvie Wilkinson about his exercise habits, that someone those habits were a deciding factor in choosing the ultimate nominee. Could it have just been small talk? Or getting-to-know-you conversation? Oh, of course not! Nope, Chait wants to use this tidbit to create some kind of insight into the President, whether there's any truth to it or not:

My guess is that Bush associates exercise with discipline, and associates a lack of discipline with his younger, boozehound days. "The president," said Fleischer, "finds [exercise] very healthy in terms of … keeping in shape. But it's also good for the mind." The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly. (Consider all the perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood — or, perhaps, the president himself.) But Bush's apparent belief in it explains why he would demand well-conditioned economic advisors and Supreme Court justices.

Bush's insistence that the entire populace follow his example, and that his staff join him on a Long March — er, Long Run — carries about it the faint whiff of a cult of personality. It also shows how out of touch he is. It's nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does.

These are two of the most ridiculous paragraphs I've ever read in a major newspaper. Is Chait really trying to say that President Bush is some kind of crazy man for thinking that a) regular exercise is a sign of discipline and that b) what's good for the body is also good for the mind? Seriously, who doesn't think that?

Chait also tries to claim that Bush demands "well-conditioned" advisors? Really? The fact that he asks an interviewee about his workout habits has suddenly been turned into a "demand". In Chaitland, it's not only Presidential staff that have to workout or else, the President is also insisting that all Americans follow his example. That's funny, I haven't noticed any black helicopters swooping down to take those of us who skip a day at the gym to "re-education camps". I must have missed that part of my tax return where all Americans get to deduct the cost of their gym memberships. And, don't tell anyone, but I cheated and didn't pay my "fat tax".

For as stupid and evil and just plain wrong as members of the press seem to think Bush is, you'd think they could find something more to bitch about than that fact that he makes time in his busy schedule to work out.