LA Times: "silly" to think being in good shape helps mental performance

Hey, what do doctors know anyway? Hat tip to Little Green Footballs and Tammy Bruce:

In a piece for the Los Angeles Times on July 22, 2005, titled “The (over)exercise of Power,” Jonathan Chait notes he finds the president’s interest in exercise “disturbing.” He bleats, “What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.” As opposed to a president’s obsession with Big Macs and a certain intern?

Chait finds the fact that the president makes time to exercise “astonishing.” He then notes: “My guess is that Bush associates exercise with discipline. ... The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly. ...”

Really? Not according to the medical establishment and the surgeon general’s office, which notes the benefits of exercise. Such as? Better sleep, reduced tension and stress, reduction of high blood pressure, reduction of anxiety and depression, reduced risk of colon and breast cancer, healthy bones, muscles and joints, improved self-image, and generally improved physical health.

For the most powerful man on earth, the man on whose shoulders the fate of the free world rests, the president clearly recognizes exercise is an imperative component to his being able to do the job.

Chait tries to assert his point about the “silliness” of connecting exercise with mental acuity by arguing, “Consider all the perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood — or perhaps, even the president himself.” The last time I checked, most actresses in Hollywood are emaciated, they are not “perfectly toned.” There is a difference between being thin and being healthy — a distinction lost on Chait and Hollywood in general.

It would be easy to dismiss Chait as just another “journalist” who makes a living hating the president, but there’s more to it than that. You see, leftists harbor a personal jealousy of people unlike them.

(snip...)

President and Mrs. Bush and the Roberts family make the mistake of not pledging allegiance to the decline of culture. They insult the Left by reminding intellectually lazy Slaves to Decay like Chait and Givhan that class, decorum and respect still exist. Tradition, caring for one's family and caring for oneself are still values that prevail.

Is Lynne Stewart to be the new American beauty standard? Is Michael Moore, and the slow suicide of morbid obesity, to be sought after? Is Ward Churchill to be the New Ideal Man? Is the discipline brought by exercise and self-restraint so frightening that we would prefer to have a quadruple-bypass like Bill Clinton?

After all, if you care enough about yourself to resist a Big Mac and Krispy Kreme, you would also have the discipline to resist an intern. Unless, of course, your world is one where there are no standards, exercise is "creepy," and looking good is "old fashioned." Theirs is a world, as Bill Clinton mused, where you do what you want "because you can."

Thank goodness Americans are deciding they deserve better.

Bic Macs, Krispy Kremes, and interns...good. Caring about your health...creepy. Thanks for the clarification, Left Coast.