Maybe he just likes jogging

This article on recent criticism of Nicholas Sarkozy's jogging habit makes little sense to me. I don't really understand how healthy physical activity can be an exclusively "right wing" activity. Sure, fascist art has tended to glorify athleticism--but one need only look at Hermann Goering's paunch to view the divide between theory and reality. Furthermore, it's not as if every Soviet or Communist Chinese country hasn't produced posters extolling physical fitness. Often through the honest labor of the proletariat, to be sure, but that's pretty much ignoring every Olympic poster produced by those countries, to give an example.

Nor do I understand where anybody gets off on advising a person, with no personal contact with the individual concerned whatsoever, to replace his chosen, and presumably enjoyed, physical activity with a more "dignified" pursuit. My lack of comprehension is presumably why I will never be a successful philosopher, or editor of a left wing French newspaper. As long as it keeps me from spouting drivel like the following, I can't say I'll mind missing out on those career paths:

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.

Anyone who has engaged in a challenging physical sport, or anyone who believes that Western civilization (inasmuch as that label means anything) begins with the Greeks and Romans, would laugh at that statement. If one absolutely has to draw a line between joggers and sensitive, spiritual walkers, I choose activity over sedentary, self-satisfied spirituality.