BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Why is every style magazine, fashion website and now health initiative citing this downright ugly woman who looks like she FELL into her closet and then got PUSHED by out as some sort of ultimate female icon? Disgusting really. Trim? yes. Attractive? NO! By Geoff Earle Chicago may not be getting the Olympics, but Michelle Obama is looking fit enough to compete in the Games. The first lady took part in a triathlon of high-energy exercises on the White House lawn yesterday, showing off her skills -- and her thin new look -- at the Healthy Kids Fair. Mrs. Obama put her flattening stomach and still-curvy hips to good use when she took a turn with a Hula-Hoop. She managed a challenging 142 hula swivels, hiking up her fashionable wide belt above her diminishing waistline. She even ditched her shoes and ran barefoot through the grass on an obstacle course set up on the South Lawn. The first lady continued her heart-pounding workout by jumping rope, although her effort at double Dutch -- whi...

Cronkite Through A Child's Eyes By David Kurtz As a two-year-old, so the family story goes, I would ask my mother to hang a map on the wall behind me while I shuffled papers in my small hands at a desk, pretending to be Walter Cronkite. Around that same time, maybe a little later, when I was visiting my grandfather's farm implement store in the Bible Belt, one of the mechanics in the shop was left dumbfounded when he asked me what my favorite TV show was, and I said, apparently without hesitation, "Walter Cronkite." I'll stipulate that those anecdotes, which I have no direct memory of, probably say more about what a hopelessly geeky kid I was than they do about Cronkite or his influence. But it does give you a sense of his place in the American home in the 1970s. My own memories of Cronkite, who went off the air when I was 11 years old, are tangled up with memories of my dad: the excitement of him coming home from work, the smell of his pipe (Cronkite smoked one, ...