Only in Columbia!

For those of you unfamiliar with Columbia, MD, let me bring you up to speed.

Columbia sprung into existence in the late 1960's, the brain child of one James Rouse. It was one of the first so-called "planned" communities. It was to be perfectly laid out, logically grouping like services in their own "zones", with residences grouped into "villages", wrapped up neatly with a bow, with a large mall as the "Town Center". Located 16 miles west of Baltimore and 30 miles northeast of Washington, it is ideally located to be a commuter suburb.

The "vision" was that Columbia would be a place where people of all races, creeds, and colors could live together in peace and harmony in a little bit of planned heaven.

Naturally, Columbia has become the home of any number of moonbats. You know of whom I speak: the granola-munching "Save the Earth"-chanting Prius-driving sanctimonious dimwit hopelessly lost in the rhetoric of the 1960's.

So when I saw this, I naturally muttered, "Only in Columbia!"

Ann Geddes doesn't want a "fair and balanced" workout. But the 49-year-old worker for a nonprofit agency is having no luck getting the channel changed in front of her favorite rowing machine at a Columbia gym.

The television happens to be tuned permanently to Fox News. Geddes, a liberal Democrat and former legislative aide to a Howard County delegate, said she can't stomach the conservative lineup that appears nightly as she gets her exercise. Even though the sound is off, the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen infuriate her.

"It makes my blood pressure go up," she said.

Befitting the democratic (with a small "d") pedigree of a planned community founded on the principle of races and classes living side by side, Geddes has taken her complaint up the chain of command, from the attendant at the gym run by the Columbia Association to the new president of the giant homeowners' group.

She's had no success. Now she's going public.

Wait. It gets better.

Bob Bellamy, the Columbia Association's director of operations, said 43,000 people use the Supreme Sports Club facility yearly, and Geddes is the only one who has complained.

"She called me up and wanted me to take Fox News off all the TVs," he said, gesturing to the six big flat-screens fixed to the main exercise room wall.

Isn't that so very typical of the reactionary Left? "I don't like it; ban it!"

Understand, I'm no fan of Fox News. Their "All Neocon, All the Time" programming has gotten quite stale IMO. But who does this lady think she is, forcing HER choice of programming on the entire gym? And why can't the stupid biatch simply move down two machines where she can sit safely in front of a TV showing comforting, Left-liberal CNN?

Thankfully, the Columbia Association isn't going along with the fruitloop fascist's pogrom.

Columbia Association officials say they won't heed Geddes' request to remove Fox from the cable lineup. In order to provide choices and eliminate squabbling among patrons, they say that every gym monitor is tuned to a particular station and can't be changed. Of the 40 large-screen televisions in the general exercise rooms in Columbia's three gyms, three are set to receive Fox.

"There is no way that we can stop showing one channel because of one person," said Phil Nelson, the president of the homeowner's group, in a written response to Geddes' request.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson! At least SOMEONE has a clue over there.

The next time someone tries to tell you how the Right Wing and Christians are trying to impose their will on you, bring this up. This is more the norm than any other political or religious group pressuring for their will to be imposed.

BTW, libertarians NEVER try to impose their will on ANYONE. Remember that the next time you vote.