Sports Club/LA and Bush twins caught in political spin

The same day the Bush administration canned spokesman Scott McClellan to repair its broken spin machine, Dubya’s daughters Barbara and Jenna got involved in their own spinning controversy.

According to Rollcall.com, an indoor cycling (a.k.a. Spinning) instructor at Sports Club/LA in Washington, D.C., was tossing out unflattering quips of George W. Bush during a morning class on April 20 as quickly as the music was thumping, not realizing the First Daughters were in the room pedaling their little hearts out.

Considering that the posh health club which employed the instructor had apparently spent quite a bit of lobbying time getting the Bush daughters to join, we can only assume, one, the club forgot to tell instructor Glenn Makl the daughters might be talking a class or two (oh, riiight, uh-huh, yeah…), or, two, all that pedaling at such high RPMs for too long caused brain damage from lack of oxygen. Either way, this is one clueless instructor. The chain of Sports Club/LA prides itself on its roster of celebrity members so they are supposed to be used to this and know to tread — or spin — carefully.

But it didn’t stop with the cracks during class. Seems Makl likes to hand-out CDs to students after class. This day, he did a special edition that included not only music but Bush-isms.

In the story for Rollcall.com, reporter Mary Ann Akers wrote: “It happened toward the end of the 45-minute class, during the last two cool-down songs. Makl held up the Bushisms DVD and said it contained one of his favorites: the infamous fool-me-once speech. Makl impersonated Bush: Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me, can’t get fooled again.

“By this point, a couple of spinners who knew the Bush twins were in class were cringing. But Makl let her rip again. Also on the DVD, he said, is the one where Bush says, Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their, their love with women all across this country,” Akers wrote.

Fortunately for Makl, the gaffe didn’t get him fired. Sports Club/LA is in fact staying quite mum on the topic, likely because it is now doing some heavy damage control internally since it doesn’t want to chance losing the Bush daughters. (Don’t you know an attendance-mandatory instructor meeting was on the agenda after that?) While we can’t see how having them as members is such a big deal, losing them as members over something like this would be the ultimate in bad publicity — as if this story leaking out isn’t bad enough.

As for Makl, we’d suspect his next workout DVD might be called something like, “100 ways to teach a class with both feet firmly planted in your mouth.” We’d also imagine IF the Bush twins take another class with the hapless Makl, it won’t be so hard for him to recognize them, simply because the rest of the bikers will all be wearing darks suits, shades and packing heat.