50 to DC

Rice, Rice, Baby!: My Big Fat Crush on Condoleezza (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 7/23/2003, Village Voice)

The Lexington Avenue Crunch isn't just a gym, it's a vat of eye candy. This is the joint that invented "Cardio Striptease." All the personal trainers are out-of-work models or actresses-this is Manhattan, after all-and even the members look like they got a discount for doling out a head shot. There are lots of pretty people here. I'm not one of them. But being in their company fools me into thinking I could be, and that's all the difference I need for that last set of squats.

Today, though, after six months of Crunch, I'm finding the normal scenery suddenly monotonous and unmoving. I'm sucking wind on the treadmill, needing some inspiration for that final stretch. Jane Sixpack hitting the pull-up bar usually suffices, but today I'm literally calling on a higher power. I look up (no, not that far) to a set of flashing monitors and spot a press conference on CNN. OK, so it's only another White House stiff ruminating on yellowcake, aluminum tubes, and bombs over Baghdad. But it's also my latest crush, and when I see her there I find everything that halters and spandex could never give. Suddenly those tortured laps are a stroll through mountain meadows, and I owe it all to my muse, my one, my Condoleezza Rice.

As always, Rice is sporting meticulous hair and makeup. As always, she's bulldogging through the press corps in a way that belies her dainty veneer. Not that I can make out a damn word she's saying (the volume's off), or follow the swiftly scrolling captions while finishing up. Still, I've seen this act play out so many times, I know how the script goes. My treadmill session ends before the press conference. But I'm left standing there, quite silent, quite smitten.

And smitten by what? No one confuses Rice with Beyonce Knowles, and she's a little thin for me anyway. Furthermore, she's Lex Luthor evil, man. How else to explain doing the bidding of a mental paralytic like George Bush? Or being the adopted daughter of the clan that brought us Willie Horton, "read my lips," and the slur "evildoers"? Meanwhile, I'm one part lefty, one part race-man. If you cut me I'd bleed green-then red and black, too. What could a Black Panther-sired, Malcolm X-worshiping, People's History of America-toting idealist see in a battle-ax like Condi Rice? Simply put, Rice, with her commanding presence and steely confidence, is the ultimate black woman.

When something conveys as much political advantage as putting her on the ticket would, it finds a way to happen. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 24, 2003 9:11 PM