Paul Ryan, Man of Steel?

I’m trying to decide what the Paul-Howard-Ryan-Roark Beltway Media cult of personality reminds me most of: A Leni Riefenstahl paen in film to the purebred Aryan, or John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand’s ponderous tome Atlas Shrugged. Both artistes inject plenty of  physicality into their male characters. There were no couch potatos in Nazi Germany; the regime was big on working out. The men, with their chiseled, “angular” faces, white skin, blonde hair, were outdoorsy types working out while striking heroic poses for Riefenstahl’s camera.

Shrug, Paul, shrug ...

In the Fountainhead, the dissident architect hero worked on his tan on the building site while showing off his musculature to the woman he would later rape. Rather than give up his cause and submit to those socialist building codes, Roark blew his project up. The court indulged him a 60-page speech to explain his (yawn) philosophy from the dock, before sending him to the Big House. As a slobbering wingnut fan writes, this budget “architect” is:

“[D]elivering that inconvenient truth (versus Al Gore the socialists’ anti-hero Global Warming mythmaker) in a role he’s coveted for years ... Ryan Roark is aware that plenty of colleagues are balking. And if the nation’s aging, fiscally strained voters reject RyanRoark’s “Path to Prosperity”? “We can all go do something else with our lives,” Ryan Roark, 41, said Tuesday.”

After all, it's a “cause” not a budget. Suggestion for Rep. Ryan: Hold a ritual “bombing” of your “Path To Prosperity” on the Congressional lawn for your Galtian fans, then deliver a speech on the well/dock of the House to explain said rejected philosophy/budget “using such time as [you] may consume.”

Is it just me, or does this peculiar wingnut emphasis on Ryan’s physicality seem, oh I don’t know, a little too homo-erotic perhaps? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, mind you, but what does the wingnuts’ hard-on for Paul Ryan have to do with the 2012 BUDGET? Or, for that matter, a workout routine called P90X. And what do the “P” and the “90” stand for … and is the “X” a large? Hmm …

The messenger is a youthful father of three with an enthusiasm for fitness who is as likely to have Led Zeppelin as Beethoven playing through the ear buds he often wears around Capitol Hill. He leads sessions of a workout routine called P90X for a few colleagues as many as five times a week. He’s an avid bow hunter who emails from the brush as he waits for deer.