Via Hot Air, a video of Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) responding to a reporter asking about his confrontational tone:
Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone' |
Let’s not get bogged down in an argument over the value of Christie’s policies and agree that it would be really nice if there were any Democrats who would be that blunt. And admit a little bit that you had to stifle a cheer when he ripped into the guy for their bullshit habit of covering nothing but process. Because I sure did.
I’ve spent the last year reading about Obama’s choice in mustard and what he put on the Queen’s Ipod and whether or not he is smoking or plays enough basketball with women or whether he will seem “soft” on terror, and sweet Jeebus I would love it if he ripped into Dana Milbank or someone like him and did what Christie did right there.
Nick
Barbara Boxer told off a WaPo reporter, said something to the effect of “Are you going to ask me a question or give me a speech”
Doesn’t get news because when Democrats do it, it’s offensive, when Republicans do it, makes them look strong and decisive.
cmorenc
@John Cole
Barney Frank can be pretty darn blunt and to the point. I remember his acid dismissal of a rabid teabagger at one of his “town halls” who was just too crazy-from-another-planet to give any grounds for rational response to.
True, that wasn’t a reporter, but Frank generally doesn’t dither around diplomatically around reporters either.
valdivia
@Nick:
what you said. When a Dem does this they are rude. Come on John you know that don’t you?
mcd410x
If Obama does it, he’s an Angry Black Man.
Also.
Elisabeth
@mcd410x:
But he can give a dismissive WTF? look like nobody’s business.
NickM
He started out great with the idea that frank argument is what drives representative democracy, but then went to tired soundbites about taxes and government, and to talking about his “personality” and making himself the story. Sounds pretty standard to me, except for the accent.
Keith G
@mcd410x:
Nothing wrong with that.
But it is just window dressing. Proposing and implementing sound policy is the Grail. If Obama manages to do this the rest will take care of itself.
freelancer
More of this please.
And if the question comes from Fox, turn up to 11 and rip off the knob.
kid bitzer
yeah, i’m not so sure, john.
when i hear this guy start telling the normal lies about how liberals are in favor of higher taxes, i just hear another unapologetic, unabashed wingnut. no democrat would distort things this baldly, because they have shame, and because they’re afraid of getting called out on it.
and then it reminds me of exactly what you were saying earlier:
“Meanwhile, deeply stupid people like Mike Pence, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, Joe the Plumber, and so on, are unfettered by similar restraints and in fact rewarded for their idiocy, often with great sums of wealth and power and status well beyond what they deserve. As such, the smart people are quiet, and the morons run around polluting our discourse.”
by the time i have heard him out, christie is just another moron polluting our discourse.
Zifnab25
I remember when Donald Rumsfeld went out for press conferences and whipped the WH press core into shape. Of course, I also remember him feeding them lines and them lapping it up.
What’s the point? Christie’s a corrupt piece of slime (I can say that with confidence – he’s from Jersey). He’ll swat down the bullshit on camera, but he won’t even let the legitimate journalists within shouting distance.
I honestly appreciate when journos can cow a politician. Journalists don’t normally have that kind of leverage. It’s good to know a politician can’t just brush the press off. But then Republicans don’t fear the press because they all country club with the press pool’s bosses. Christie can tell this guy off because he won’t suffer politically for his offense. That the speaker’s question was banal is bad. That the governor of New Jersey can openly dismiss him is a different flavor of bad.
It’s all bad.
dnelson
I say let all of the old senators and house folks retire at 65 to 70.
The world is changing. Get rid of the old guard. They are too deeply into themselves. @kid bitzer:
Davis X. Machina
He’s a Republican. He can talk that way, because when you’re a high elected GOP official, and you’re talking to a reporter, you’re just talking to The Help. And you can always get different help if they get lippy.
calling all toasters
God help us if Obama does it. We’re already in the middle of a White Power tidal wave.
Corner Stone
kay – you’re needed on the white phone.
kay, please answer the white phone.
kommrade reproductive vigor
And now members of the press will kill each other for a chance to lick Christie’s shoes. After giving his EEEs a nice spit shine the survivors will go back to carping because Gibbs doesn’t write their stories for them.
@mcd410x: This.
Breezeblock
Sorry, Governor Krispy Kreme is a fucking bully. Like any fucking right-wing douchebag.
We here in NJ can only wonder if he will finish his term, what with his obvious love of food.
And fuck you if you think I’m being mean. FUCK YOU. You come by and talk to the seniors he is throwing to the wolves because he will veto the tax on people making $1million.
And I’m sorry, but Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran is a good journalist (that’s who Jabba was talking to).
cleek
he’s like a cross between Bobby Baccalieri and Sgt Landsman
The Moar You Know
WHY CAN’T DEMS DO THIS?
I’m fucking serious. It’s fucking shameful. God knows Governor Hog Jowls there probably campaigned on selling the organs of homeless children to slash the state deficit, and the “big spending” he’s referring to probably involves vital maintenance of the oxygen-generating machine that keeps everyone in Jersey from dying of pollution, but FUCK at least he is willing to stand by his no doubt insane platform and defend it.
Democrats, our president included, would agree with the reporter and promise to be nicer next time.
FUCK.
Nick
@The Moar You Know:
Because the media will then get offended and lie and seek to destroy them.
Republicans can do it because the media likes them.
Doug
I was distracted by the douchey looking guy standing behind the Governor and laughing. Looked like a quintessential “yes-man.”
Just Some Fuckhead
Governor Christie seems like a very angry black man.
Triassic Sands
John, where have you been for the last year (or so)?
Alan Grayson is certainly that blunt — and with much better policy preferences.
But, yes, it would be nice if there were more Democrats who were that blunt.
Nick
Media Failure #34343543
President came to New York City today…he flew over my apartment in his helicopter tonight.
The media here has been losing its shit all day because “Obama cut our security funding”
Except he didn’t cut our security funding…the money has been reallocated into through the stimulus and grants and actually we hav $47 million more than what Bush gave us, but when the media was finally forced to report that, they presented it as White House spin and let Peter King slime all over the TV all day.
Fact is spin and spin is fact, but hey, whatever outrages the public enough to get them to watch or buy the news, thus increasing ad revenue and salaries of producers, anchors, reporters and executives.
Church Lady
@Breezeblock: You mean people earning over a million don’t have to pay income tax? Wow, lots of banksters will be moving across the river quick, quick, quick to escape their NY taxes! Oh, you meant that the current 10.75% they pay over that million isn’t enough and they should pay more? In that case, carry on.
middlewest
Once again, the onion offers straightforward reporting from the future. This is exactly what CNN will look like in 5 years.
Jason
Yeah, I dunno, guy comes off like a major-league douche to me. Would it be impolitic to interrupt his little condescending-and-yet-still-stupid bit about “bigger government” or whatever and say “This is what I’m talking about. You’re a smug douchebag. Why would anybody mistake what you’re doing for arguing in good faith?”
I mean I like it as much as the next guy, especially when the media does suck. But the reporter had a really good chance to clarify that he meant, “You know you suck too, right?” I can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want to knock the tittering gaggle of aides on their collective asses, either.
Steve
As a NJ resident and a certified hater this sort of thing actually makes me start to warm up to the fat fuck.
On some level, you have to respect people who tell you what they’re going to do and then actually go do it. Christie didn’t run as a compassionate conservative. He ran on a platform of being a huge douche, doing stuff like calling universal pre-K “babysitting,” vowing to cut the shit out of everything and raise taxes on absolutely no one. To no one’s surprise, I voted for the other guy, but I guess people were in the mood for a douche. And he’s basically doing just what he said he would, how about that!
When I lived in Michigan we had a governor named John Engler who resembled Christie in more ways than one, and it was basically the same deal. Cut all the budgets, privatize a bunch of stuff, just like he said he would when he campaigned. Of course I happen to think his policies were a huge disaster for Michigan and played a big role in why that state is so messed up right now, but that’s democracy for you. The people have no one to blame but themselves.
I just want to see more of this from Democrats – and I don’t mean Alan Grayson insulting people on MSNBC, because he’s not actually doing anything, he’s just giving sound bites. Christie is an executive, he’s actually implementing policy and changing things. If it’s that easy to change things in a bad way then it shouldn’t be impossible to change them in a good way. Maybe the Democrats’ problem is that they’re such a coalition of interest groups that they always end up watering everything down to try and please everyone.
gnomedad
@calling all toasters:
Fortunately, he doesn’t need to. Only a master of subtle wit like Obama could have been our First Black President.
Oscar Leroy
Huh. I must have missed those articles while reading about Obama’s escalation of Afghanistan, his back-room jettison of the public option, his assassination of an American citizen and his acquiescence to Drill Baby Drill.
Nick
@Oscar Leroy:
Maybe if you read something other than FireDogLake.
ItAintEazy
@Nick
Didn’t we just have a dust up over how Barack Hussein Obama X reportedly said Rush Assboil can go “play with himself”?
Jean
@Nick: FTW
Nick
@ItAintEazy: I must’ve missed it…the 11 o’clock news here in New York probably never got to it. Wall to wall breaking news coverage of a parked car in Manhattan.
Mike Kay
@The Moar You Know: oh, c’mon. Obama recently used the word “teabaggers” and jake tapper fainted and then went ape shit.
jl
Nice show there by Christie.
He will find a handy escape hatch, when things go wrong, though. He was either mistaken or lying there.
Mike Kay
@Nick: well, that is breaking news. how in the hell did he find a parking space in mid town?
D-Chance.
Interesting wording from the NYT lede over at Memeorandum:
President Obama is angry about the oil spill, its magnitude, BP’s stalling and tomorrow, he is going to let his frustrations spill out at a late-morning press availability after he meets with senior officials.
Not a news conference or presidential statement, but a “press availability”…
geg6
@Church Lady:
OH MY GOD! Think of the poor millionaires! The horror! Fuck those children and elderly, YOU MUST NEVER TAX THE WEALTHY TO PROMOTE THE COMMON GOOD! Haven’t these people read “The Fountainhead?” Barbarians!
Nick
@D-Chance.: In their defense. that’s an actual thing.
A press availability is different than a press conference, because the latter is something that is called having to do with one thing…the President may call a press conference to discuss the oil spill.
A press availability is when the person, in this case the President, is just showing up to answer questions, not to talk about an intiative, piece of legislastion, etc.
kay
I thought it was horrible. I love the giggling little ass-kisser choir behind the big belligerent thug, though. Do they go everywhere with him? That would be great to watch.
People who repeat over and over that they’re straight shooters usually aren’t, in my experience. “This is what I AM”. Okey-doke. It’s akin to calling yourself a maverick, and we all know how that turned out.
MikeBoyScout
Very good find, and spot on analysis.
Christie is an ass whose policies are wrong, but he’s not hemming and hawing here.
Like him or not, that was refreshing.
cat48
@Nick: Didn’t you say the press is just waiting for 2012 & hoping he has to leave?
Nick
@cat48: yeah, so?
Allison W.
Sorry I don’t care how tough or ‘real’ he got, he was straight lying through his teeth. Hell, if we’re gonna start praising Christie, then we should start patting Rush on the back.
Ming
I found that a sweet clip. I think he’s full of shit on “Dems want big gov’t blah blah blah” but Yes to calling the media on their obsession with shit like “tone” while ignoring the vital, urgent, huge fucking challenges we’re facing, and Yes to saying “I’m blunt, that’s who the voters elected” and Yes to saying “no one is going to be wondering what my positions are” (if that’s the case).
and Yes to Grayson and Barney Frank when they do the same.
Nick
@Allison W.: I think John’s point is he was able to do that and get away with it. Democrats can’t get away with doing what he did when they tell the damn TRUTH.
cat48
@Nick: Well, since they hate him or whatever, they will be punished by having to grill him. Just makes me happy. Don’t think a lot of most of them.
Bill H
From the Huffington Post:
At a Barney Frank town hall meeting in Dartmouth, MA, a constituent asks, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?”
Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He then calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” He closes by saying: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.”
Church Lady
@geg6: I guess my sarcasm didn’t come through. He made it sound like you pay no taxes on over a million. Actually, you pay a lot (at least for 2009 – this year they’re supposed to roll back to 2008 levels, which means everything over 500K is at the same level). Seriously, when you take all local and state taxes together, New Jersey taxes are absolutely punishing at all income levels. My brother and his wife lived there and wound up moving out of state, because the taxes were killing them. And no, they were not rich. She was a NJ high school teacher and he was a production coordinator for a studio that made commercials – solid middle class jobs. They just could no longer afford to own a home and live there.
Nick
@cat48: meh, if they do it right, makes it easier to get rid of him in 2012.
Lynn Sweet had this nailed down…turn a perfectly good press conference about healthcare into a racial issue, put the President into a box, and that becomes the story and not the important issue he WANTED to talk about.
I expect a few questions about Elena Kagan’s sexuality and white vs. hispanic people tomorrow.
Bill E Pilgrim
Not impressed, sorry. Bill O’Rielly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck basically spout the same nonsense about “Democrats are for higher taxes” and all of the same BS about being unfairly attacked for their “tone” just as loudly all day long and there’s nothing remotely refreshing about it.
Yes, I suppose a question about “your confrontational tone” was a bit process-oriented or cosmetic, but this Wingnut is just trumping that up as an excuse to bloviate lies and nonsense.
Ross Perot used to use that tactic all of the time, every time someone called him on his lies he would say “Look I just want to talk about the issues” and sidestep any question that way.
I bet if someone asked Christie about the “confrontational tone” of his Democratic opponent he’d give a detailed and emphatic agreement, and wouldn’t be whining about process questions at all.
va
I agree with christie that it’s his prerogative to talk however he wants to talk, but he still sounds like an asshole when he says it.
Apart from the mewling reporter in the clip who’s apparently concern trolling, there is, fortunately, an adversarial press in NJ and christie’s getting vocal opposition from many quarters. Fortunately, he’s not the only asshole in Jersey, and he certainly isn’t the most vocal–just among the most powerful. He’s picking fights (recently on a Supreme Court appointment) and losing them. His administration is a few months old, and people in NJ are tired of him–even people who voted for him. This is just to say that I’m not actually impressed with his assholery, and fortunately, many others aren’t either.
flyerhawk
@steve – entirely spot on.
Christie isn’t a bad guy. He’s the natural result of the tea bag theory of how government should operate.
Cut spending to schools and they will get better!! Well no, they will simply get rid of the cheap non-tenured staff while keeping on the 6 figure board of ed apparatchik.
Girl I’m seeing right now is about to lose her job because of the cuts to her school district. And she isn’t likely to find another job in a school because of Christie’s goal of cutting spending, regardless of the impact.
Christie is coming to my town on Monday for a town hall to explain how his plan will cut property taxes. I’m going because it should be wonderful to hear that sort of fantasy being told on stage.
ChrisB
@va: Exactly right.
We hate the fat fuck.
El Cid
I wish the fuck Clinton had done this shit about Monica Lewinsky and told the panty-sniffing press and right wing maniacs to go shove their nosy heads further up their asses.
georgia pig
That was just another installment of Hannity and Colmes or O’Reilly. Maybe your attraction to it must be a vestige of your republican past. What you seem to be saying is that appearing to sound authentic is some sort of substitute for actual authenticity. We went through eight years of that with Bush. Lies are still lies, even if strongly asserted with a prominent codpiece.
Xenos
@geg6: Re: Taxes – NJ is the densest populated state, with a decent chunk of very wealthy people. The wealthy can certainly pay more taxes than they are now, but from my contacts in Rumson they are all trending teabagger at this point. They are flipping their shit over the Marxist takeover of the US, even while they want all the benefits of our welfare state for the sake of Wall Street and the Fortune 500. They really hate the proles there, and they are very motivated about it.
But where are they going to go? To hang out with the Yankees in CT? To live 1.5 hours away from the beach with the Germans in Pennsylvania? To face even more taxes and congestion in NY?
Christie is going to crush the social mobility for the bottom 80% of the state. That is going to be a problem before long.
bob h
Christie’s “my way or the highway” tone closely parallels that of his mentor, George W. Actually, many Democrats like me support the necessity of doing something about reigning in public employee pension benefits, but are aliented by the gratuitous, confrontational tone.
Christie’s approval rating is at 33%, and judging from the tone of newspaper editorials, it is headed even lower.
We traded in Governor Corzine for Governor Porcine.
brantl
Belligerancy in the service of lies is not a virtue. And Christie is a liar, and a belligerant one.
Leonard Stiltskin
@Steve:
Except that while we here in NJ seemed to want the douchebag, now that he’s in office, his popularity is hovering around GWB levels. Seems like everyone wanted the cuts to everyone but themselves. They also didn’t like Corzine.
I live in a purple-moving-to-red town and there is alot of buyers remorse now that our nice schools have been hit with 50 layoffs, our property taxes are going up, and everything from dog licenses to pool membership to recycling have gone up 30-40%.
Steve
@Leonard Stiltskin:
We’re going to have to see. Nobody gets turned on by budget cuts, but John Engler got three terms, which still kind of blows my mind.
I’d get rid of Christie tomorrow if I could, but the next election is unfortunately a long way off. As the job situation starts to improve, as it inevitably will on a national level, will NJ somehow come to believe that Christie’s policies played a role?
ChrisB
@Steve: Christie’s yes but Obama’s no, of course.
But you’re right, he may have become unpopular too early in his term.
rumpole
@georgia pig: You’re missing the point. He told the media to grow a pair and not worry about tone, and then got back to his message. if they weren’t reporting on a confrontational tone, they might have a some energy left to determine whether or not he was lying.
Mumphrey
I don’t live in New Jersey, but I grew up in Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, so I heard all about the politics growing up, reading the newspaper and seeing New Jersey ads on Philadelphia television. I don’t like Christie, and I hope he gets dumped out on his fat ass in 2013, but yes, he was right. All these guys care about–most of them, anyway–is “Who’s up?” “Who’s down?” “Who’s upset about what so and so said?” “Was thus and so out of line for saying it?” “Will so and so not work with thus and so since thus and so did such and such?” And then David Broder comes along and says that he’d be just fine with the Congress passing a law that says, well, anything at all, just so long as they do it bipartisanly. And with great comity. And civility. I don’t think he’d have anything bad to say about bringing back Jim Crow, as long as Ben Nelson, Mary Landreiu and the two senators from Arkansas went along with the Joe Lieberman and the Republicans, and Markos Moulitsas, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and all the hippies were pissed off. That’s all he seems to care about.
On a random note, I’ll just say after listening to Christie speak that I sure don’t miss hearing the Philadelphia-southern New Jersey accent now that I don’t live near Philadelphia any more. I grew up there, but somehow I was spared picking it up.
Yoshidad
Christie is charming but a complete liar. First of all “tax and spend” Democrats aren’t responsible for the state’s deficits. Federal revenue sharing has been in the tank since Reagan, and no “fiscally responsible” Republican federal administration since Reagan has done anything but tax and spend… er, I mean create massive deficits that are just taxes you haven’t paid yet plus interest.
I’m not sure about the state of things in Jersey, but here in California, the meme is that the state has been spending “like a drunken sailor.” The truth is that state spending has changed insignificantly if you adjust for inflation and population. Spending has increased 1/8% a year for the last decade, and that assumes the consumer price index (the inflation adjuster) applies as well to states as it does to individuals. See here for the footnotes.
The truth is that consume-atives (what are they conserving?) explicitly adopted a strategy called “starve the beast.” Using it, they have deliberately deprived the government of revenue in an attempt to force the spending cuts they now insist are necessary. This is their strategy to cut programs otherwise too popular to touch. It’s why W ran as our savior from terrorism, then pivoted, once elected, to try to privatize Social Security.
So when consume-atives passed California’s Prop 13, that cut local tax revenues by 57%, and the state back-filled with revenue sharing (and started to take over lots of local services because they wanted to supervise the money they were supplying), it set up the current deficit.
And please, let’s not credit the consume-atives with “tax cutting”! Reagan signed eight tax increases, all regressive, and between him and his successor, social security taxes quadrupled. He cut taxes on the wealthiest in half, but quadrupled them on lower incomes.
No wonder that, since Reagan, the lowest 90% of real incomes have been relatively flat in the U.S. (even though productivity has increased, leading to real income growth), and the top 99.99th percentile received a 497% raise!
Those are the real numbers. See here for the footnotes.
Lynn Dee
I agree about Christie. But see that giggling dweeb-smurf to Christie’s right? I wanted to rip his fucking face off.