Tom DeLay, Playing Hurt on DWTS: ‘I’ll Dance Until the Bone Breaks’
LOS ANGELES — With only three days left until the live premiere of “Dancing With the Stars,” Tom DeLay is sitting on a balcony in Los Angeles icing his injured foot after a day of rehearsals. He says he’s determined to dance on Monday and in all possible future rounds, despite what he’s calling a “pre-stress” fracture in his foot: “I’ll dance until the bone breaks,” he declares.
As for the routine, he insists he’s not at all nervous after all the rehearsals; on Thursday, his professional partner, Cheryl Burke, told him their routine is ready for prime time.
DeLay, the Republican former majority leader of the House, is the first politician to be on the popular ABC dance show. He has been in Los Angeles for a couple weeks leading up to the show’s debut. When DeLay was the House whip, I worked for him as his press secretary and then his communications director. I flew to Los Angeles late Thursday from Washington, D.C., to cover the story for Politics Daily, and right after getting my rental car, called DeLay to hear how the he was feeling.
On Tuesday, DeLay had been examined by Dr. Robert Bray, who explained that the pain he had been feeling for a few days in his foot was a “pre-stress fracture.” A what? DeLay explained that the diagnosis is a layman’s term that the doctor used to describe, basically, that “the bone is about to break.” Ouch. I asked him how much it hurt, and there was a long pause on the phone.
He’s both Texas macho and determined to dance, since he’s been rehearsing and exercising for the show since June. “Well, Cheryl keeps getting mad at me because I won’t tell her when it hurts a lot.” But by playing hurt, he says, “we really got our cha-cha and waltz down great.”
He still hadn’t answered my question, though, so I asked him again what a bone ready to break feels like. “Well, you know, Emily, I’m 62, so these bones are just tellin’ me, ‘You gotta be kiddin’ me with all this dancing.’ ”
Bray recommended something called “relative rest,” which DeLay translates as “If you’re not dancing, don’t walk.” The doctor also advised him to ice the foot for 20 minutes after each hour of rehearsing — “ice, rehearse, ice, rehearse” — and then ice it again all evening.
DeLay is 11 years older than the next oldest contestant on the show and 37 years older than Burke, who he says describes him as “like a kindly grandfather.” But hey, he said, “Life begins at 62.”
He says he has lost 21 pounds since he started workouts in June, and is now down to 170. (Though he says his ideal weight is 160, and so he has “a few pounds more to lose.”) While others might refer to their wedding day weight as their personal gold standard, he instead says, “I weighed 170 when I was in Congress, so I’m just getting back to my whip days size.” Back then, he went to the House gym every morning before staff meetings.
“I don’t have a six-pack, though the show offered to paint one on me” he added. I laughed, but he wasn’t kidding. “Really, they said if I go shirtless, they will paint on a six-pack with makeup.”
I told him his daughter Dani would kill him if he went on national TV shirtless with a painted-on six-pack. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And Dani still is mad at me for saying [on TV] she is a professional dancer, but she is such a beautiful dancer. And she did teach that one class at the YMCA and she was paid, so that’s true!”
Also, he says the show wants to “spray-on tan me, but I haven’t accepted that offer yet.”
How is he handling being in this crazy Hollywood world?
“Well, politics is show business,” too, he responded. I didn’t follow. He explained, “It’s the same. You have to make sure you say the right thing, consider how you say things, and worry about how you look. Remember when Jennifer Dunn made me get that haircut because she said I had a bowl head? Well, how is that different than what they are doing out here?”
As I live and breathe, I think Tom DeLay has gone Hollywood. Nah, he said. He follows all the ins and outs in Washington. Then we talked about the latest on the health care reform proposals, government spending and conservative values, while I drove my rented VW bug on the 405 and he iced his foot on a balcony in Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for the next installment with photos of Tom DeLay rehearsing with Burke, the latest on his injury and his opinions on politics and policy.
