Photo David Weigel
Sometimes
the past comes back to haunt you. Sometimes comedians have an uncanny knack for
exposing a person’s Achilles heel. Jon Stewart interviewed
Chris Christie in early December 2012 and asked him about humility in
politicians.
Jon
Stewart: "The storm seemed like it humbled you to some extent—"
Christie:
"Of course it did—"
Stewart: "…My
point is... thinking about other people’s circumstances sometimes, while it
doesn’t seem as catastrophic as Sandy, is sometimes important to humble
politicians, to understand that maybe people aren’t mooching… lazy…[or] looking
for government to support them—"
Christie:
"By the way, all these things that you’ve just said are not things that I’ve
said. I will be very harsh on people who I think are out of line and stupid.
And I’m not gonna— and I’m from New Jersey and so are you and we don’t mince
words and everybody who watches this show knows that you don’t mince words,
that’s why there’s so many beeps—"
Stewart: (Playing
along, laughing) "...I’m a word mincer—"
Christie:
"The point from my perspective is, if somebody stands up at a town hall meeting
and asks a question and won’t let me answer it and I keep trying to answer it
and they keep interrupting. There’s two ways you can deal with this. You can be
a phony politician and say ‘well, jeez, I’m really put off by the way you’re
treating me’… or you can say ‘sit down and shut up you idiot and let me answer
the question.’ Right? That doesn’t make me non-humble, it makes me honest. It’s
saying ‘listen, you’re being an idiot and if you are an idiot I’m gonna call
you an idiot and if you don’t like it then stop acting like an idiot.’"
Jon Stewart’s
laughter wasn’t about amusement. Which Christie didn’t seem to understand. He
got a rise from the audience and that’s what he registered. In fact the seriousness of
Stewart’s line of questioning seemed to have evaded him completely.
An honest
man? It’s debatable. Because when Christie calls somebody an idiot, this is how
it plays out. He’s at a town hall meeting and somebody who is angry with his
policies because they’ve been personally affected, wants to ask a question.
Christie gives them the go ahead but everything in his body language says ‘you’re
an idiot’. His facial expression is very unaccommodating. It’s intimidating and
anybody who’s experienced that and been affected by it will know that it’s hard
to remember everything you wanted to say.
Anyway, the
person will ask their question as best they can. Christie will listen until
they’re finished. Again with the body language. Nothing about it that says ‘I
really want to hear what you’ve got to say’. Then he’ll launch. If they
disagree with anything that he says along the way he shouts them down and says ‘I
respected you enough to listen to what you had to say. So you need to respect
me enough to listen to what I have to say.’ And that’s when he calls them an
idiot and humiliates them something awful. It’s shocking to watch. It’s also
when he really comes alive. The
Ed Show has a couple of sickening examples.
In the Jon
Stewart interview Christie made as if it’s all a joke and just the New Jersey
way of doing things. But he’s not joking when it happens, and it’s not funny
for his victims. It’s about power and abuse of it.
As to
Christie’s comment that he and Jon Stewart are both from the same state, where
people don’t mince their words, it wasn’t smart. Jon Stewart is a comedian; it’s
his job to not mince words. Christie is an elected official, whose role is to
listen to his constituents and take their problems seriously.
Now Christie
is facing a hearing that has recently flooded his administration with subpoenas.
Christie first said he would co-operate fully in the interests of truth and
transparency then has hired what Bloomberg
Businessweek calls a “smash-mouth” defense lawyer – Randy Mastro. Mastro has
gone against the Mob in New York, but he’s currently representing Chevron in its civil racketeering lawsuit
against plaintiffs’ activist attorney Steven Donziger in an attempt to overturn
a 2011 multibillion-dollar verdict in Ecuador awarded to poor rain forest
residents who sued Chevron for environmental contamination. He’s fearless,
ruthless, and expensive. There must be a reason why Christie needs him.
Innocence doesn’t somehow spring to mind.
And Christie’s
problems keep piling up. He had planned to campaign for Senator Lindsey Graham
in South Carolina in Spring, but the New
York Times reports that the Senator said last week that Christie wouldn’t be welcome
because the focus would be on him and not in a good way. Kenneth G.
Langone, Christie’s biggest funder and a huge supporter, expressed disgust at
the GWB fiasco, saying “it upset the hell out of me”. He hasn’t said he’ll
withdraw his support but he has told Christie to be smarter about those he
surrounds himself with.
The man who
thought he could conquer the US with his brand of bragadaccio has dropped it and
is avoiding public speaking as much as possible. One wonders whether now he knows
what Jon Stewart was talking about regarding humility.
