October 8, 2009
New Jersey Politics: Time to bust out those fat jokes.
Talk about politics getting dirty, now we’re making fun of people for being fat:
It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping out of an S.U.V. in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once.
In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones that Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid getting traffic tickets.
In the ugly New Jersey contest for governor, Mr. Corzine and Mr. Christie have traded all sorts of shots, over mothers and mammograms, loans and lying. But now, Mr. Corzine’s campaign is calling attention to his rival’s corpulence in increasingly overt ways.
Mr. Corzine’s television commercials and Web videos feature unattractive images of Mr. Christie, sometimes shot from the side or backside, highlighting his heft, jowls and double chin.
Meanwhile, Mr. Corzine, 62, is conspicuously running in 5- and 10-kilometer races almost every weekend, as he did last Saturday and Sunday, underscoring his athleticism and readiness for the physical demands of another term — and raising doubts about Mr. Christie’s.
Next, he and a fellow fitness buff, Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, will run through the streets of that city together next Tuesday.
The governor denies that he is deliberately ridiculing Mr. Christie’s weight, and tries to make light of such suggestions. “There isn’t a candidate in the world that likes how they’re depicted in their opponent’s ads,” Mr. Corzine said on Friday, smiling as he lamented that some have shown his bald pate. “Seems to be some sensitivity going on here.”
Surprisingly, I don’t have a problem with this. I think that the acceptance of excessive weight in our country has led to more people being excessively overweight. That’s what happens when you remove the shame and stigma. It became politically incorrect to make fun of, criticize, or penalize fat people for their weight. Now, more and more people are overweight. We forget this because the media is always concentrating on those super-skinny stars. I’m glad that Hollywood is so thin. I don’t want to watch a bunch of fat people on TV. I have to watch them everyday everywhere I go. And, the idea that they should pay more to ride the metro because they use more gas and energy and typically take up more than one seat has crossed my mind on numerous occasions.
Weight and health issues are a legitimate concern when electing a representative. You don’t want to elect someone who has the potential of falling over from a heart attack and dying on the spot. Let’s be honest. That’s why we usually care about how old people are and why presidential candidate typically release their medical records. It’s not like the weight issue is irrelevant in a political campaign. Let’s stop being crybabies. It’s Jersey, people! Who even cares? It’s the “Armpit of America.”
(H/T: Memeorandum)
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