Forget about the White House shakeup, Karl Rove testifying before a grand jury, the administration's firing of a CIA agent for allegedly leaking classified information or the fight over hideously high gas prices. The real story this week was about the Bush twins, damnit! And this time, they weren't even doing anything wrong. In fact, they managed to drag their butts out of bed (unless, of course, they stayed out all night) and get to the gym by 6:15 a.m.
By now, you've probably heard about my little scoop on what I've dubbed "Spingate" -- the cringingly embarrassing but delicious moment in time last Thursday morning when a spin class instructor at the tony Sports Club/LA in downtown Washington made fun of President Bush, impersonating some of W's more memorable gaffes and malapropisms, all in front of Jenna and Barbara, who just kept on spinning. (How Glenn Makl didn't see the twins, we'll never know. But we fully believe that he did not.)
And by now you may have heard that Jenna's boyfriend, Henry Hager, called and had a little chit chat with club officials about maybe, uh, reigning in those loose cannons on stationary bikes.
I broke the story in my column "Heard on the Hill" in Roll Call newspaper on Monday. When a source first called me about the incident on Friday, I assumed Makl must be among the 57 percent of Americans who disapprove of Bush's job performance. And I figured, he'll soon be among the 4.7 percent of Americans who are unemployed. But so far, Makl is still on the payroll and is still slated to teach his 6:15 a.m. Thursday class.
In a nutshell, here's what happened: In class LAST Thursday morning, Makl was, as usual, giving away the CD of music he brought to class. And a little something extra: a compilation of his fave video clips, including a "best of" Bushisms, which is laugh out loud hilarious. [HERE IS THAT PORTION OF THE DVD THAT WAS AWARDED TO THE LUCKY WINNER.] That's when he impersonated a few of his favorite presidential malapropisms, including Bush's infamous "fool me once" speech and his mangled comment about how "too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country."
That's when several people in the spin class who knew that the twins were there were cringing. Three regulars stuck around after class to see whether Makl was just clueless, or crazy. Clueless, it turns out.
Didn't see you who was in class, you moron, they asked in so many words. Makl thought they were yanking his chain and was "mortified and "horrified" to learn that they weren't, sources say. But at least he couldn't be accused of being a liberal Bush basher. We later found out that Makl is a Republican who voted twice for W, and twice for Daddy, the former President Bush.
As far as we know, the story is over. The club has apologized, though it's unclear whether the twins will keep their memberships to Sports Club/LA, which, we hear, lobbied the twins very aggressively to join recently. But it was a fun story, and it got lots of play in other newspapers and blogs, on the airwaves and on the tube. I ended my three days of milking this story dry in Wednesday's column, when I wrote about Makl's tangential connection to this town's made-for-the-Silver Screen lobbying scandal:
"In the less-than-six-degrees-of-separation-from-Jack Abramoff department, Makl is married to Joy Langford, a lawyer at Chadbourne & Parke, the firm that represents -- you got it -- Big Jack.