Le jog

[tikistitch]

Jogging Politique

This summer, the late-night French television show “Cross Words” showed its panelists a gigantic image of [French Presiden Nicolas] Sarkozy running in an N.Y.P.D. T-shirt. Alain Finkielkraut, a political philosopher and sometime Sarkozy ally, threw down the gauntlet.

“Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade,” Finkielkraut said, chuckling a bit, but just a bit. “Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body.” Running in shorts was unpresidential and undignified. The president should take up strolling instead, he suggested, like Rimbaud. Libération, the left-wing French daily, asked half-seriously if running, with its emphasis on such “new values” as individual performance and the valorization of the body, was inherently “right wing.”

We think the NY Times might be off-base here. The oddness is not with the French attitude towards jogging. The reason American political candidates are so often seen squeezing into running shorts? They've just spent the last 18 months on the campaign trail, being force fed deep-fried Twinkies.