Even the exercise column in Sunday's New York Times — which runs under the heading "sweat" — can't seem to avoid politics. From the latest such column:
Befitting the neighborhood's liberal climate, some of those present expressed skepticism about the Memorial Day Murph's military undertone.
Samir Chopra, 45, a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College, was drinking a Brooklyn Summer Ale on the sidewalk after finishing a near-complete version of the Murph.
"On my blog, I've described the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika as a bunch of mass-murdering war criminals," he said. "I came here not to support the military, but to be with all my friends." Those friends, he added, included a number of Iraq war veterans.
It's news to me that the Gowanus neighborhood in which this gym is based has a "liberal" climate. It seems to me that describing "the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika as a bunch of mass-murdering war criminals" is not "liberal" but radical, or extreme. Anyway, it's not the sort of thing that would make you want to send your kid to Brooklyn College to study philosophy. Shades of Timothy Shortell.