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Behold, the latest source of wingnut outrage — “our national anthem” (not) being “turned into gibberish” by… well, let’s just pretend that if American English was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for those people, am I (very far) right?
Meanwhile, the Saga of A Jersey Pol is rapidly descending into farce. Here’s John Cassidy at the New Yorker:
… In political and media circles, the conventional wisdom is that Christie is pretty much finished. On NPR, David Brooks said that, in view of the latest revelations, he couldn’t see how Christie could run for President in 2016. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer concurred: “This is kind of nasty, and it’s got potential,” he said. Meanwhile, Christie’s political enemies took the opportunity to join in. John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Obama who is widely expected to run Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, told Bloomberg News, “I think it’s a killer, really. … If that was true, I don’t think there’s any coming back.”
In a post entitled “Yep, he’s toast,” Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall argued that, at this point, it doesn’t even matter very much whether Christie is telling the truth. “The 2016 primary is already underway,” Marshall wrote, “lining up political professionals, money people, power brokers in key states. That’s all happening now and it will continue through this year.” As the “Bridgegate” scandal continues to unfold, Marshall said, it will continue to distract Christie from his efforts to build a credible national campaign, subjecting him to “the death of a thousand cuts.”…
Even the so-called “upbeat” Christie stories are… kinda iffy. Jon Chait at NYMag dissects a Washington Post article, where, Chait thinks, “Report of Christie As Youthful Non-Goon Actually Sounds Pretty Goonish“:
… What did Christie do that so impressed them? Well, he had been the starting catcher on the baseball team, and a better player transferred to the school and took his starting spot, and Christie decided not to sue to keep the kid out of school.
The idea of suing to block the transfer of the better catcher came from Christie’s father, and Christie decided against it. The story notes that Christie did not reject this idea out of hand. (He “sought opinions about the idea from two of his closest friends on the team..”) Nor did he reject it on moral grounds. Rather, he simply decided it was too risky. (“Christie thought his dad was wrong, given the apparent risks: The season might be forfeited, and the team and the town might be turned against their family.”).
So Christie decided, after deliberating for a while, not to sue a kid for transferring to his school and being better than him at baseball, on the grounds that the community might not look kindly on that decision. This, concludes the Post, is evidence of Christie’s generosity of spirit. Because what most people would do when beaten out for a starting position in high school is use the legal system to have the kid thrown out of school…
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While we brace ourselves for further tales of Republican magnanimity, and/or nurse our SB hangovers, what’s on the agenda for the start of another week?