New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is fat.
He is. There’s no getting around it. Just like me, Christie is fat, and just like me, there’s very little he can do about it.
And this, according to far too many on the left, is either cause for endless fat jokes, or endless moralizing, or both.
It shouldn’t surprise me, of course. Fat hatred is hardly underground in our society. But it disappoints me, because tolerance is supposed to be a fundamental liberal value. We’re supposed to accept people different than us for who they are, and rather than demanding they change to fit society’s view of what’s “normal,” we’re supposed to challenge society to expand its definition of normal.
And yet, whether it’s David Sirota handwringing that Christie should be kicked off the national stage because of his fatness (but only because fat women aren’t treated well! Sirota is so very fat-positive otherwise!), or Andy Borowitz joking that a Perry-Christie race “would test whether Americans would rather be executed or eaten,” or Ed Shultz calling Christie a “fat slob,” far too many liberals see absolutely nothing wrong with attacking Christie for his weight — because, well, fat is bad. Obviously.
Some, of course, cloak their attacks in the well-worn cover of “but what about the fatties’ health?” At PoliticusUSA, Sarah Jones writes an article about Christie’s “health issues” that doesn’t seem to be much about more than his fatness:
As Chris Christie gets ready to amaze us with his Reagan Library speech tonight and the Right has worked themselves into a frenzy over his possible announcement, Ed Schultz had attorney and radio talk show host Mike Papantonio on to talk Chris Christie as a possible Presidential candidate. The bad news for Christie was Papantonio made an excellent point about Christie’s health. It’s not pretty.
Mike Papantonio posed the question, is Chris Christie healthy enough to run for President? Mike explained the importance of the appearance of health, “The less informed voter is more likely to consider appearance and health….The contrast between Obama and Christie would be startling. I mean, Christie is a red-line, 320 pound cardiac case who should be carrying AED portable (automated external) defibrillator for God’s sake!”
Mike adds, “Can you imagine the possibilities for a 5’10″ 320 pound adult with chronic adult-onset asthma! He’s like an unhealthy version of William Taft!”
[…]
But is the New Jersey governor even healthy enough to run? He has adult onset asthma and is clearly overweight.
Yes, the article does talk about Christie’s brief hospitalization for problems with his asthma. Well, to be accurate, it links to an article about Christie’s asthma and includes a two-paragraph blockquote from the article. Otherwise, it’s nothing but “Christie’s fat! And he’s obviously unhealthy! Because…well…he’s fat!”
Folks, we’ve been down this road before. Attacking Christie for his weight is not just an attack on Christie. It’s also an attack on every fat man and woman in America, a flat statement that we are not welcome on the national stage, no mater our qualifications or ideals. When we lead with fat jokes 0r fat shame, we say that it is Christie’s weight, above all else, that makes him an unacceptable candidate. And that is no better than attacking Nancy Pelosi for being a woman, or Barack Obama for being African American, or Barney Frank for being gay.
There’s a whole lot about Chris Christie that I don’t like, from his retrograde education policy to his hostility to unions to his bullying persona. I wouldn’t vote for him for any position. If he chooses to run for president, I will work assiduously to see that he’s defeated. But this would be true whether Christie was fat or thin, tall or short, male or female, black or white, straight or gay, cis or trans. It is Christie’s political views and bullying personality that I oppose. And it is those — and only those — that I will attack. And nobody who calls themselves tolerant should do anything else.
There are many, many reasons to attack Christie. And many, many ways to legitimately do so. His weight is neither a reason nor should it be a means to attack him. How about attacking him because his obviously idiotic policies are destroying New Jersey and he wants to extend that to the US instead?
Don’t worry, Jeff. All of those folks will be glad to condemn people as hopeless intolerant bigots for attacking someone for their weight. As soon, that is, as those people are conservatives and the person they attack is liberal.
Dianne, in what fashion are Christie’s policies destroying New Jersey?
RonF @2: I know there are few things you love more than saying “nyeah nyeah, liberals are bigots”, but you’re really not getting what Jeff is saying: namely that fat-hatred is something plenty of people, including self-described liberals, see as perfectly acceptable. It’s not even rising to the level of ‘okay when we do it’; it’s ‘okay’. Because you know, fat people!
@RonF —
No doubt some of the liberals criticizing Christie would be horrified if he was a Democrat. I’ll never pretend that either side has a monopoly on hypocrisy. Nor will I ever pretend that there are no bigots on my side of the aisle; there are. The difference between liberals and conservatives, though, is that liberals tend to call out bigotry on our side of the aisle, and see it as wrong. See: this post. Conservatives? Well….
Jeff:
That has not been my experience.
The blog posts would be too old to find. However, Susan Russell is a very well-known Episcopal priest and activist in fighting what she sees as unjust discrimination against homosexuals both within and outside of the Episcopal Church. A while back (as some of you may recall) the Episcopal Church elected one Gene Robinson, an out and partnered gay man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. This led to schism in the Church. As one might expect, there were people who were quite outspoken in opposition to that.
One such person was an Episcopal priest who happens to have been obese. Rev. Russell (on her blog) proceeded to feature pictures of the man (showing him in most unflattering postures) in a number of posts ridiculing him for his physical appearance and linking it to his social views. So, I called her out on it. Rev. Russell and I were not about to agree on the policies of the Episcopal Church, but I thought that her attacks on the man for being fat were in fact shameful and at odds with the principles that she seemed to espouse.
IIRC her basic response was “too bad”. And on her quite active blog with numerous commenters no one – no one – spoke up. It’s one of the reasons I stopped reading or posting there. So no – I can’t agree with you that people on the left call out bigotry any more or less than the right. There seem to be numerous quite active people on the left (a lot of activists post on her blog) who are quite happy to accept bigotry as long as it serves their needs.
I should restate — some liberals are willing to call out their own side. Obviously, some are not. Contrawise, very few conservatives are willing to do the same; you’ll find precious little opprobrium on the right for the Obama “Witch Doctor” picture, for example.
Witch doctor picture? Maybe there’s not a lot of opprobium about it because they, like me, didn’t see it.
I should restate — some liberals are willing to call out their own side. Obviously, some are not. Contrawise, very few conservatives are willing to do the same
I appreciate your willingness to restate your claim, but I have to say that this is a pretty hard thing to quantitate and I still think you have a difficult time in justifying it.
Ron – Jeff posted about it a year ago:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/08/02/but-theres-no-racism-in-the-tea-party/
There were plenty of “visual dog whistles” posted here:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2009/04/29/another-racist-cartoon-by-editorial-cartoonist-donna-barstow/
The discussion of racist cartoons of Obama here:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2009/02/19/the-new-york-post-cartoon-this-is-my-unsurprised-face/
has its first comment from… you! Arguing that it is probably not racist, unsurprisingly. So, not the “witch doctor” cartoon but one in the same genre.
The “witch doctor” thing made CNN, after all: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-09-17/politics/obama.witchdoctor.teaparty_1_witch-doctor-tea-party-express-politics-and-african-american-studies?_s=PM:POLITICS
#1 On 8/2/2010 I was at Boy Scout summer camp and missed that. In reading through it, I see that was created and distributed by one person, no Tea Party organization claimed it, and numerous organizations claiming affiliation with the Tea Party movement condemned it. So I fail to see how this supports Jeff’s claim that the right is less likely than the left to disavow such things. If anything it supports the opposite.
#2 Seriously? A Barack Obama Chia Pet is racist? Heck, here at work one of the guys actually had one and grew it out for a while. The lighting’s bad, though, and the little plants got all stringy.
#3 Yup, I made the first comment on that thread. Now support your characterization of that comment by citing from it the argument you claim I made that the cartoon wasn’t racist.
#4 I don’t watch CNN – or Fox – except briefly when I’m working out in the gym where I’m employed, when I put CNN up on the left-hand TV and Fox up on the right-hand one. At home I watch the local network news. I get just about all my political information from the Internet or from reading the Chicago Tribune (the latter more for Illinois and Chicago politics/corruption than for national news).