Chris Christie Opens Up About Weight, All of a Sudden Personal Responsibility Doesn’t Apply to Him

Chris Christie is the brusque and somewhat unvarnished governor of the great state of New Jersey, known mainly (aside from telling reporters who ask inconvenient questions exactly what he thinks of them) for being on the rather plus-size side.

Yes, Chris Christie is — there is no polite way to put it — rather tubby. And while body-shaming and fat hate are big issues in a society as chubby as ours (and it’s not cool to factor in appearance when assessing someone’s character) there is something galling about a man who has a problem that many feel is behavior-related expecting some understanding from people about his own shortcomings when he won’t extend the same to others who are in situations that parallel his, but when it comes to poverty or personal freedom.

For Chris Christie, it’s impossible not to draw this parallel. Before we get to his ABC interview explaining how being fat really isn’t his fault, I will say that I actually entirely agree with Chris Christie there. Obesity is a poorly-understood combination of disposition, circumstance, lifestyle and habit, and while we as humans can control for about half, the other half will always be there to hold us back.

In essence, can you climb a ladder with greased rungs? Yes, but if you slip off and land in a pile of Krispy Kremes, it’s eminently understandable that it’s not entirely your fault. Maybe you’ve only got $6 left til payday and you can’t afford a salad.

So back to Chris Christie. As tea-flavored site Townhall.com quotes, just back in April, Christie was ragging on poor people because that’s the GOP’s hobby of choice — outside fancy horse dancing, or dressage. Christie, in what the blogger refers to as discussing the “moral implications of the entitlement attitude,” had said:

“It’s because government’s now telling them, stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally… When the American people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work hard and to act with honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life, then we’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.”

Now, it can be argued (and frequently is, by Republicans and teabaggers) that poverty, like obesity, can be solely influenced by one’s bootstraps or merit or what have you. But then we have the Mitt Romneys of the world, who were born with a fantastic metabolism.

Should we redistribute Mittens’ good genes to Governor Fat Fatty, or should we at least just recognize that a complex set of factors — not the least of which is the family you were born into — is a huge, if not the single biggest deciding factor on your current finance or fat situation?

Back again to Christie. In the ABC interview, he whines:

“I mean, see, listen, I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding among people regarding weight and regarding all those things that go into, to people being overweight. I think folks say – yeah, well he must just not be disciplined, you know, or he must not have willpower – that kind of thing.”

Yes, Christie! That exact sort of thing! I hear Republicans yank it out all the time to beat on people who had no advantages in life, and ended up single with a baby after their husbands left. It’s a shitty attitude, isn’t it?

Christie continues:

“I guess the best analogy to make is some people drink too much. Some people take drugs. Some people eat too much. See, you can go live every day without drinking. You can live every day without taking drugs. You can’t live every without eating.”

And when you’re poor, sometimes you have to eat foods that promote obesity, because they’re cheapest. I mean, we can take this analogy all the way down the road, but basically, someone needs to sit Chris Christie down — on a reinforced chair — and explain that the same factors that drag him back drag everyone back, and a little understanding that life isn’t always fair for everyone might help shape his political opinions to be a bit more accurate in reflecting reality.