The Thinning of the Candidate 2014
I have been admonished lately for mentioning a prominent physical characteristic of our governor in these installments of “The Christie Chronicles.”
You shouldn’t be calling attention to the governor’s weight problem, one admonisher said. It is below my usual high standards.
I mentioned it only once, I argued.
More than that, said the admonisher-in-chief.
Okay, maybe twice or three times per installment.
Still too many, she said.
True, I may have gone too far in that last essay about how the governor had been amazingly exonerated by his own lawyers of involvement in the GWB lane closures. (See The Christie Chronicles #13). Maybe four times?
In defense, I can say I’m only being a reporter. I call them as I see them.
Talk about your lame excuses, the advocate of zero tolerance in ad hominem attacks said.
Well, I never used the three-letter word in describing our governor. I have always showed respect for the high office by using honorifics in referring to the governor, such as His Rotundity.
And I didn’t say his role model growing up in Newark must have been the New Jersey folk hero, Two-Ton Tony Galento.
He is the way he is, I say, using the current state of moral judgment on personal liberty issues.
A number of questions are raised by a ban on telling it the way it is on the governor’s due corpulence.
Writers are allowed to use simile, metaphor and other comparative tools to illustrate what or who they are writing about.
For example, people say Chris Christie looks and sounds like Tony Soprano. This negative connotation infers some kind of Mafia association. While the governor has no known family connection, of course, it is a well-known fact that you couldn’t throw a stone through the windows of the two state legislative bodies in Trenton currently investigating the governor without hitting somebody in the family’s pocket, so to speak.
It could be argued more accurately, in fact, the governor looks more like Ralph Kramden, the loveable bus driver on “The Honeymooners.” This would be good for the labor vote, should the governor ever decide to run for President in 2016. In the TV debates the governor can yell, “Pow!! Right in the kisser, Hillary. One of these days, Hillary, straight to the moon.”
The worse thing about preventing me from weighing in on the weight issue is that it precludes using what weightologists believe is a valuable guide to veracity in the Bridgegate scandal.
I had suggested in earlier chapters of “The Chronicles” that the governor’s nose seemed to be growing longer the more he denied his lack of involvement in the Fort Lee cock-up. This was especially noticeable while using the Sgt. Shultz (“I know nozzin-NOZZIN”) Defense unveiled in the historic TV press conference of Jan. 9. Well, I was wrong.
Weight is even more revealing about a state of mind as a chief executive endures all the aspersions, innuendos and other mud besmirching his reputation during the first 14 weeks of a trial by the media.
Is the alleged perp gaining weight as the weeks drag on? This will mean he is worried about something. Worried people tend to eat more to drown their sorrows. But what did the governor have to worry about? He had been exonerated by his own lawyers.
On the other hand, some people in similar situation might tend to loose weight. They lose their appetites because of their worries.
Either way, the gaining or losing weight proves a man is guilty or innocent, depending on how you look at it.
More work needs to be done on refining this theory, an exercise in dietlectics, metaphysicians, logicologists and others in the scientific community might say.
For fear of invoking the wrath of ad hominemers, I don’t dare mention the good news that the governor appears to be losing weight these days. Unless my eyes deceive me, he definitely looks thinner in his appearances at town hall meetings on his “I’m No Crook Tour.” Check out this latest evidence from YouTube:
I don’t mean to imply he is wasting away, but his numbers are going south. This is not necessarily good news.
The governor’s weight is one of his strongest political assets. Obesity today is a major problem in the nation, especially in New Jersey. New Jersey is the fast food capital of the nation. Our four basic food groups are: McDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Big Bob’s Barbecue on Route 22.
Nobody projects the need for good nutrition better than Tubby Christie.
Aside from looking like a walking heart attack, if he ever decides to run for President in 2016, he will have three constituencies: those needing to go on a diet, those on a diet and wishing to stop this madness, and the financially strapped unemployed out of work too long wrestling with their food budgets.
Chris Christie might not appeal to the organic Whole Foods crowd but he’s got the overweight vote. He’s a regular guy like us.
Losing weight is not a good career move for the governor.
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Marvin Kitman
April 10, 2014