Dear Dirty America

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles

I’ve felt bad for years about all the fat jokes and overweight shots I’ve taken at New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. Whether it’s about closing down lanes on a busy bridge and jeopardizing the safety of his constituents, or holding hostage for political favors the much-needed funds for ravaged areas of New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy, finally, I am thoroughly justified in criticizing this slug of a man in any way possible.

The first place to start is, obviously, with the fat.

And the dozens of miles of extra blood vessels his body has developed in response to his unbelievable size. Like a city that has to work overtime paving miles and miles of new neighborhood streets and boulevards as it grows too quickly by consuming hundreds of thousands of new members from the countryside looking to contribute their energy to the growling guts of intercity commerce, so too might you imagine the New Jersey governor’s cardiovascular system hurriedly laying down new blood vessels through the endless areas of fat cropping up around his muscles, joints, and organs.

Yet, you’ve been told that you should never judge a man by his weight. That’s an upstanding platitude to teach your children. You might tell them, “A man’s weight is between him and his heart. And his wife. And his surgeon. And his dietitian. And his therapist. And his health insurance company. And that’s it. It is no business of yours.”

Except when it’s actually fine to use every fat joke in the book for a man who is so morally and politically toxic you can see it in his physical demeanor.

If anything, I’d been portraying Christie as too soft. Figuratively. If the voting populace saw him as a good American you might want to drink a beer with, or a character similar to Kevin James on King of Queens, or as a cool friend who they could consume an entire roasted pig, along with ten pounds of rosemary roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, coleslaw, and cold beer, I saw the man as a self-important hack who spent entire days in his custom-sized bathtub while making policies over the speakerphone as easily as he blew furrows into the sides of the mountains of bubble bath suds built up on the surface of the water.

That was too soft. I should have been hammering this asshole with every cheap shot I could muster. I’d borrow from Shakespeare, too, but Elizabethan jabs would bounce right off Christie’s padded shoulders.

You don’t have to read a scholar’s work on thuggery in United States politics to realize that’s exactly what the governor of New Jersey represents. The repugnant nature of American politics today and always, past, present, and future. That’s the trouble with Chris Christie.

The man is a hog. He’s a bottom feeder. He’s a petty, filthy son of a bitch, and the evidence has become overwhelming to support those claims. He’s a bully. He feels he’s a contender. His physical size is only trumped by his ego, but his ego is only so inflated because he’s got no foundation or personal system of ethics that would prevent him from selling out the common American to the highest bidder. He’s the “anointed son of Wall Street”, and it’s damned good his political career has been derailed by his own doing.

So remember, before you hold back your tongue from cutting loose against the enemies of the hardworking people of this good nation, when you feel like a politician is a contemptible, incorrigible hack, you might as well set your sails to catch that breeze and see where you end up. There’s a significant chance your hunch was right. Because in the 21st century, you’ve got to go with your gut. The handful of major media outlets plaster thirty second sound bytes and high-definition visuals on which you must judge a man’s character.

So look at his weight. Look at his eyes. Take note about the crooked curve of his chin. Is he sweating? Does he saw at the air with his hands too frequently? Does he have a 3rd grade vocabulary? Has he bitten rough the edges of his fingernails?

And on the other side of the coin: is he too well put together? Is his suit too fresh, too clean looking? Is his hair too perfect? How’s his tan? Why are his teeth so white? Does he say exactly what you needed to hear every time they show him on TV? Who keeps his shoes so polished?

To judge these men takes an intricate set of skills. If you don’t peer closely and wage heavy-handed judgement on their first TV appearance, you’ll fall into the trap of seeing the whole lot of them as an endless stream of bustling swine. Pink, fattened flesh, snorting and groveling their way through the tight wooden chutes toward the promises of political power, their cloven-hooves slipping from time to time on splotches of pigshit spilt by the assholes who’ve come before them.

So, in conclusion, you ought to toast the governor of New Jersey for being a royal prick and yet another dangerous politician that so many citizens had wanted to have a beer with. Yes, there was a deeper connection than alcohol between Christie and much of the voters who have kept him in office. I suspect it is nestled in the comfort of casting a vote for a man who is more obese than the general populace. The man has set a new level for rampant consumption and disobedience to health and wellness. If your body is supposed to be your temple, the governor of New Jersey has made it OK to build your temple like the most expansive shopping mall in the state.

You can still toast the son of a bitch, but be thankful he’s on his way out.

[bus photo by Hurricanehink; Christie photo by Bob Jagendorf; both found at Wikimedia Commons]