NOW THAT THE "class warfare' rattle has paused for a good 15 minutes among the GOP presidential candidates, the media have turned to Chris Christie to reinvigorate the narrative. The story can now be told that the ample New Jersey governor is...um...obese. Not just obese, mind you. Morbidly obese! That, plus asthma attacks, and you have a non-presidential candidate no matter how much his Republican half-loonies want none of the above who are current.
If I may speak from experience, I'd say that Christie's resistance to a national candidacy is probably the wisest decision he will ever make. As one who has labored through several presidential and gubernatorial campaigns, I will trouble any disappointed Christie fans out there with my doubts that he could survive the merciless grind. As a much younger and able-bodied political reporter, I still ended up in traction and other therapy for months with painful back spasms that forced me to write my columns face-down on the living room floor with the typewriter inches from my chin.
For reporters, such stress, bad food and 20- hour days without week-end breaks still had a slight advantage over the candidates. No one cared whether our clothes were a disaster or whether we didn't trouble ourselves with a comb. Ill-tempered? So were our working colleagues. In other words, we didn't have to look pretty and sound presidential in front of an audience.
A politically incorrect way to describe Christie is that he is just plain perspiring fat. If a tough presidential campaign wouldn't imperil him, a lot of other health issues could send him to the emergency room at any moment on the trail. Let's leave it at that, since he seems to understand that more than everyone in his cheering section. Way to go, governor.
Posts
8 comments:
Christie could carry on the tradition of our last portly Republican president (over 300 lbs.), William Howard Taft, who got stuck in his bathtub on Inauguration Day.
It would be a comedian's dream. The jokes would write themselves.
Fat jokes are really at the bottom of the comedic barrel.
To Anon; Such references are not intended to be a fat joke but rather a reality. Obesityi s a serious issue, whether you are running for president or walking to your mailbox at the end of a short driveway.
True, fat jokes are at the bottom of the comedic barrel, that being the case.....
if Chris Chistie is elected President, when he sits around the White House....he'll sit AROUND the White House.
Actually, I prefer Alex Arshinkoff fat jokes.
Winston Churchill was fat, drank too much, and smoked. FDR had polio and smoked cigarettes.
Should that have disqualified them from becoming two the greatest leaders of the 20th century?
Obama smokes too and favors 5 Guys Burgers, come to think of it.
It's not a question of whether he's qualified to be president. But the combination of morbid obesity and asthma raise the question of whether he could survive a strenuous race physically. Churchill could have campaigned from a telephone booth because it was a parliamentary system in which his party's candidates did all of the campaigning. And, of course, FDR was in a wheel chair whose fireside radio chats were his best weapon. This all may be moot because there's speculation that he might change his mind and declare his candidacy. It won't be the first time that a pol has done that.
I admit my fat jokes are utterly conditional, targeted at people I don't like, like my last boss. I also admit to loving Five Guys.
Abe, please check out this site and read the article titled "Night of January 16th". I guarantee you will be intrigued. A good friend of mine was in the production and sent me this. PLEASE, PLEASE check it out!
http://www.newspaperarchive.com/SiteMap/FreePdfPreview.aspx?img=106277043
Post a Comment