FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy has fallen foul of intellectuals and critics who see his passion for jogging as un-French, right-wing and even a ploy to brainwash his citizens.| Doesn't own a bicycle, does he? |
"Is jogging right-wing?" wondered Liberation, the left-wing newspaper.
Alain Finkelkraut, a celebrated philosopher, begged Mr Sarkozy on France 2, the main state television channel, to abandon his "undignified" pursuit. He should take up walking, like Socrates, the poet Arthur Rimbaud and other great men, Mr Finkelkraut said. "Western civilisation, in its best sense, was born with the promenade. Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation."
| "Besides, it's really hard to run with a Gauloise in your mouth." |
Until "Speedy Sarko" won office, French heads of state shunned physical exercise in public. The late Francois Mitterrand was privately partial to golf, but the reflective stroll was his public trademark. Jacques Chirac, Mr Sarkozy's predecessor, was famous for his energy, but in public he moved at walking pace and in suit and tie.
Jogging caught on in France, as elsewhere, in the 1980s and eight million claim to indulge. But Mr Sarkozy has rekindled a French suspicion that the habit is for self-centred individualists such as the Americans who popularised it.
| Jogging is, of course, about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the Right. French intellectuals had always held sport in contempt, while totalitarian regimes cultivated physical fitness |
Beyond the self-promotion, some commentators see something sinister in the media fascination with le jogging de Supersarko. The "hypnotic" daily images of presidential running are not innocent, said Daniel Schneidermann, a media critic. He said Mr Sarkozy used the video images of his jogging as "a major weapon of media manipulation". And some experts have questioned Mr Sarkozy's running style and say that he is not helped by being overweight.
| Wonder what they thought of Clinton's belly-hanging-out jogging jaunts? |