Vive le Jogging! An English Defense of Running

The French have the English beat when it comes to food. But when it comes to sport…? Or common sense…?

Boris Johnson is a member of Parliament in the U.K. In a recent commentary in The London Telegraph, he provides a humorous and critical review of the rising tide of anger among French intellectuals aimed at the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for participating in that most Right-wing leisure activity of jogging. (?!)

By trotting around the Elysée Palace with naked knees and in a sweat-drenched “Lake Havasu Spring Break 1992!” t-shirt, President Sarkozy, fellow Frenchmen claim, is committing cultural suicide. And the French, according to Johnson, so bothered that President Sarkozy is a jogger, become indistinguishable from their cartoonish caricatures that fill the editorial pages of the WSJ.

Would the beret-adorned instead prefer that their state leader sport Spandex and shaved legs atop le bicycle…?

Run With It!
J.R. Atwood