Michael Karolchyk Needs to STFU
I cannot believe that this idiot is opposing the appointment of Dr. Regina Benjamin as Surgeon General… because she’s overweight. While I’m no fan of Neil Cavuto (or Fox News), it’s to his credit that he’s having none of it.
The only mystery is why Fox even gave this creep airtime to rant. For the record, THIS is Michael Karolchyk.
“Can…can I just smash her right now?”
“No, Michael, not now.”
“But, I really want to.”
“Not yet, Michael.”
It was a late-summer afternoon and Michael Karolchyk, a chocolate pie in one hand, stood in the family room of a LoDo penthouse loft, in front of an overweight actress smiling wearily from a faded floral-print couch. Karolchyk—already notorious for yelling into a bullhorn and throwing cupcakes at clients—was filming the latest commercial for his unorthodox, vulgar, and suddenly booming Anti-Gym business, but the script still wasn’t outrageous enough.
He returned the woman’s grin, his blue eyes in a cocky, fixed stare. Looking more through her than at her, he let out a deep, booming, attention-grabbing laugh that made everyone in the room stop, look, and worry.
He was giddy at the thought of slamming a pie into her face.
“Leave the pie out for now, Michael. I know you’re dying,” the director called, sensing the uneasiness swell. “God, we’re so far off the script right now.”
Karolchyk silently scanned the faces looking back at him. He had paid these people, and dammit, they were going to listen to him.
“I want to push her into the couch.”
“Mike, if you push her, that’s going to cross the line.”
“But that’s what I want to do.”
This was the second of three spots, and he wanted it to be his masterpiece. The actress, Sophia, was to sit on the couch, eating the pie and lamenting that only drunk men would sleep with her. She had a beer-stocked refrigerator to prove it. Karolchyk was to jump out of the fridge looking tough and goofy, call Sophia fat, and slam the round pie into her round face. He had only two requirements for the commercial: Filming had to be quick, and the finished product needed to be “evil as shit.” He stood under the hot lights, liquefied whipped cream running down his broad forearm, dripping onto his size 13 feet.
“Can I pour a beer over her head?”
“It’ll be considered insulting. Remember, she’s going to get hit with the pie.”
Daylight was fading in the loft. Karolchyk was getting restless.
“I just want to slam this fucking pie into her head!”
But despite hundreds of clients and expansion to a second location, the music suddenly stopped for the Anti-Gym. Agents from the Internal Revenue Service came in Jan. 28 and shut the place down, seizing the assets. The IRS plans to auction the assets off next month, but many of the gym’s records ended up in a very insecure place — the dumpster right outside on Curtis Street.
Files filled with personal information were deposited out in the open where anyone could walk off with them for any purpose. CBS4 showed one former Anti-Gym client the information about her that was found in the dumpster.
“This is pretty personal information and it’s pretty embarrassing too — pretty embarrassing — wow,” she said.
Anti-Gym wellness questionnaires were filled out by other clients revealing what medications they were taking, including birth control and anti-depressants. These too were found in a dumpster outside the gym.
Many clients of the gym shared private details of their lives with their trainers. Some of that information ended up in writing later left in the trash for anyone to see. There’s a woman who hoped she didn’t have lymphoma. Another had breast cancer; while another revealed she had breast augmentation.
There were also notes that seem to be by a trainer about his clients, including some very negative words with expletives.
“I’m glad I didn’t give them very much of my business, and if that’s the type of stuff they write about people, that’s a testament of where the company is at right now,” a former client told CBS4.
This is the physician he’s criticizing:
Benjamin in 1995 became the first black woman and the youngest doctor elected to the board of the American Medical Assn. Last year she received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for treating patients in the Gulf Coast region regardless of their ability to pay.
Benjamin, 52, founded a rural clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., a town of about 2,500. Many of the residents lack health insurance, and about a third are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Alphonsine Lyons, director of medical operations at Mostellar Medical Center in Alabama, said that many of the patients, unable to pay for their treatment, like to show their appreciation by bringing the doctors “delicious lunches” — cakes, smoked fish and shrimp.
Since starting the clinic in 1990, Benjamin has worked to rebuild it three times: in 1998, after it was devastated by Hurricane Georges; in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina; and after an early-morning fire in January 2006.
During the rebuilding, Benjamin made house calls to patients in her pickup truck, according to news accounts. She mortgaged her house and maxed out her credit cards to rebuild the clinic the second time, Obama said in introducing her at a Rose Garden ceremony.
…Benjamin called the nomination “a physician’s dream” and said: “I want to ensure that no one, no one, falls through the cracks as we improve our healthcare system.”
Benjamin holds a master’s in business administration in addition to a medical degree.
In a 2006 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she said she had “wanted to figure out how to provide cost-effective medical care to people who can’t afford treatment financed by insurance or the government.”
Fitness is my life, and like Karolchyk, I believe it’s important to walk the walk and encourage others to do the same. But that’s as much as we have in common. Frankly, he disgusts me: he’s a fitness troll who enjoys intimidating and humiliating others (especially women) under the pretense he’s doing it for their own good. No, Dr. Benjamin isn’t at a perfect weight, but she’s hardly the first medical professional to have that problem. And it has no bearing on her capacity to do the job: she’s a dedicated, accomplished woman, as well as a far better human being than a parasite like Karolchyk could ever dream of being.
July 26, 2009
Total crap from this guy. Sensationalism and abuse is not the type behavior that cries for credability.
If Regina Benjamin is qualified to be Surgeon General, then her weight should have nothing to do with it.