After dinner in Georgetown, theater at the Kennedy Center and nightclub hopping in Adams Morgan until 3:00 a.m. last night, it’s no surprise Cerise and I slept in at my place in Great Falls, Virginia until shortly before noon. During a brunch in bed consisting of a smoked Scottish salmon organic duck egg omelette with roasted pine nuts, fresh squeezed blood orange Piper Heidsieck 2004 mimosas and Guillermo espresso cappuccinos made with fresh Chilean alpine grass meadow fed cow’s milk, my land line phone rang. Since the caller ID showed it was the governor of New Jersey, I had to pick up.
Christie: Hello? Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, Governor, this is he.
Christie: Oh, good. I hope I’m not disturbing you at home on a Saturday or anything.
Tom: No problem, Governor. It’s an honor to speak with you. May I ask how you obtained my home telephone number?
Christie: I, um… got it from Ron Paul.
Tom: I’ll be sure to thank him. How are you this morning, Governor?
Christie: Oh, not too bad. I got back the blood test results from my physical exam yesterday, and I gotta tell you, I’m a bit concerned about those, though.
Tom: Oh, my goodness, what did they say?
Christie: Well, it says my blood type has gone from carbonara Romano to heavy cream Alfredo, and I can’t figure why, because I’ve been working out like crazy lately.
Tom: Maybe it’s your diet. By the way, do I hear you eating something?
Christie: Yeah, I’m having a working lunch here at my desk on a Saturday. demonstrating my dedication to the people of New Jersey.
Tom: What are you eating?
Christie: Ah… a sandwich.
Tom: What kind of sandwich?
Christie: Uh… a… submarine… sandwich; something I made this morning and brought from home.
Tom: With?
Christie: Cold cuts… you know, bologna, Virginia ham, black forest ham, smoked ham, pastrami…
Tom: And what else?
Christie: Er… mortadella, capacollo, roast beef, corned beef, and roast turkey breast.
Tom: And what else?
Christie: Um… some olive loaf, pepper loaf, pimento loaf, bresaola, and prosciutto.
Tom: And what else?
Christie: Uh… Genoa salami, Milanese salami, Tuscan salami, sopressata, beef tongue… and… liverwurst. But all thin slices, okay? Very thin slices!
Tom: Any cheese with that?
Christie: Just some aged provolone, lace swiss, pepper jack, smoked gouda, dilled havarti, soft asiago, extra sharp cheddar and… well, I guess the blue cheese I mixed in with the mayonnaise counts, too.
Tom: Toppings?
Christie: A couple of dabs of lobster and crab salad… plus four deep-fried oysters I brought in a separate container and heated up in the office microwave – and a little tartar sauce on them, naturally. Then there’s lettuce, tomato, Bermuda onion, dill pickle slices, sweet piquantés and hot pepper relish, of course.
Tom: All washed down with what?
Christie: Caffeine-free Diet Coke.
Tom: Provided you’re willing to work out for about three and a half hours this afternoon, I can’t see any problem with that.
Christie: Of course not. Everybody knows subs are healthy food – look at the Jared guy, for instance.
Tom: Nobody can argue with that, I guess. To what do I owe the honor of this telephone call, Governor?
Christie: Well, there’s this traffic study, you see, that the New Jersey branch of the Port Authority conducted on our side of the George Washington Bridge at Fort Lee last September. It seems things got out of hand. Some of my closest and most trusted aides apparently decided to take things to the extreme and – without my knowledge, of course, and certainly without my permission – they ordered the New Jersey Port Authority director to restrict outgoing access to the bridge from Fort Lee to one lane.
Tom: Yes, I know about that, Governor. As a matter of fact, everyone in America who has Internet access or has been within earshot of a radio or television, or has – you’ll excuse the expression – read a newspaper at some point in the last five days knows about it. The popular interpretation, by the way, is that your close and trusted aides ordered the New Jersey Port Authority director to close traffic lanes leading from Fort Lee onto the George Washington Bridge because the mayor of Fort Lee, who happens to be a Democrat, refused to endorse you, who happens to be a Republican, in your bid to defeat Barbara Buono, who also happens to be a Democrat, in the recent New Jersey gubernatorial election.
Christie: Which is totally false! Chris Christie doesn’t roll like that – not even if I’m pushed off a steep incline! I would never retaliate against a Democrat simply because they refused to endorse me against their own party’s candidate, even if them doing so makes it look like I don’t have the kind of bipartisan support that could win a presidential election in 2016! Like I said Thursday at that press conference, the people of New Jersey have a right to know whether or not their governor’s a bully, and I am not a bully!
Tom: So when the biggest kid in the school yard beats the crap out of all the little kids and takes their lunch money, he’s not being a bully, he’s just conducting a study in the Darwinian economics of non-equilibrium income redistribution in an extra-mercantile environment under caeteris paribus conditions?
Christie: That question has more than two words with more than three syllables. By state law, nobody in New Jersey outside of a ten mile radius from Princeton University is required to answer it, and by God, that includes me!
Tom: Oh, sorry. Anyway, I recall that during your press conference, you announced that, first of all, you knew nothing about the emails from your close and trusted aide to the New Jersey Port Authority director, telling him to shut down the traffic lanes; and secondly, you had asked all of your staff about their knowledge of this affair a decent interval prior to it becoming a political football and they had all assured you they had nothing to do with it; and thirdly, after subsequently determining that was a bald faced lie on the part of the culprit, you fired the close and trusted aide responsible for these traffic actions at Fort Lee of which you had no prior knowledge; and, fourthly, this situation makes you very, very sad. Are are you still sad, by the way?
Christie: Yeah. I am still very, very sad. That’s the predominant emotion I feel right now – sadness. I feel sadness that I was betrayed by a member of my staff, sadness that I had people who I entrusted with important jobs who acted completely inappropriately, and sadness that all this has led the people of New Jersey to have less confidence in the people I selected to work for me. I’m speaking to you, Tom, in a state of great sadness – that is my overriding emotion. A person close to me betrayed me, a person who I counted on for five years – that person betrayed me, Tom. This was a person who I gave a high government office to, and they betrayed me. She sent an email to the New Jersey Port Authority director and it said, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” and he wrote back, “It’s done,” and here I was, like Julius Caesar, betrayed by that Brutus guy, except he was a woman, but you know what I mean. So this is a sad time for me, but I’m doing what I’m obligated to do as governor of New Jersey, and I’m doing that because it’s the right thing to do, even though it makes me very, very sad to do it. I don’t know what the stages of grief are, but…
Tom: “Sadness” isn’t one of them, Governor.
Christie: It’s not?
Tom: No, the five stages of grief, as defined by the Kuebler-Ross Model, are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
Christie: Well, um… “Depression” and “Sadness” are pretty much the same, aren’t they?
Tom: With all due respect, Governor, I think everyone can see you’re still in the Denial phase.
Christie: Denial?
Tom: Yes.
Christie: Okay, let’s just say… for the sake of argument… maybe I am in denial. In that case what am I in denial about?
Tom: You’re in denial about being held responsible for the Fort Lee incident, or “Bridgegate” as the media have dubbed it. You still harbor fantasies that by using the people around you as convenient scapegoats, you can somehow escape blame for what will inevitably prove to be the cynical, callous and uncivilized exercise of unrestrained and arrogant power in its most shameless, amoral and repellent state. You yet hope to disassociate yourself from the consequences of those actions – which include not only the petty inconveniences of missed business appointments, lost income and gratuitous stress upon those already unfortunate enough to dwell in Fort Lee, New Jersey, but also the untimely death of a dear old granny, trapped in the back of an ambulance in one of those traffic jams, whose presumably otherwise avoidable demise will surely be laid at none other than your feet. Over the next few months, there will come a steady drum beat of revelations…
Christie: Sweet Jesus, no!
Tom: Document releases – thousands of pages…
Christie: No, no, I refuse to believe it! This isn’t happening!
Tom: Testimonies – the New Jersey Port Authority director has already taken the Fifth Amendment…
Christie: No! No! Make it stop! Make… it… stop!
Tom: Lawsuits – class actions have already been filed…
Christie: La-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear you! La-la-la-la-la! I can’t…
Tom: Governor!
Christie: Huh?
Tom: The time has come, Governor, for you to move past the stage of Denial, before it is too late.
Christie: But I… she… they… um… Can you wait a just a minute, okay, while I take a couple more bites of my sub?
Tom: Sure.
Christie: There, that’s better. Okay, say you’re right – say I’m in denial about the consequences, and say I move right past all that other stuff right down to Acceptance. Yeah – so here I am, Governor Acceptance about this whole stinking mess. Now what? How do I salvage my chances for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016?
Tom: Simple.
Christie: Simple?
Tom: Lose one hundred pounds.
Christie: What!
Tom: I said, lose one hundred pounds.
Christie: Why do I need to lose a hundred pounds? I mean, it’s not like I would be the first big-boned President of the United States, or anything! I checked, and the Smithsonian still has William Howard Taft’s bathtub! I could have that installed in the White House, couldn’t I?
Tom: Yes, and if you didn’t have this Bridgegate crisis to deal with, that would have been a perfectly viable strategy. Now, however, given the circumstances, it’s not. You need to lose one hundred pounds, Governor, it’s just that simple. That’s the only way out of the woods.
Christie: Really? How so?
Tom: Because this entire nation is obsessed by body image and what it conceives to be “obesity,” and that fixation trumps everything. Therefore, if Governor Chris Christie loses one hundred pounds, the media will speak of nothing else, and not only will Bridgegate be forgotten, he will have a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
Christie: So – it’s either the White House, or this bodacious sub I’m eating right now?
Tom: And every other bodacious sub you will never, ever eat again.
Christie: The White House… or… subs?
Tom: And pasta, ravioli, stuffed baked potatoes, ice cream, gelato, pizzas, fried chicken, fried calamari, garlic bread, veal osso buco, veal marsala, veal Parmigiana, sausage, meatballs, burgers, french fries, fried onions, fried jalapeños, lasagna, ham, beef steaks, pork chops, lamb chops, tiramisu, spumoni, zeppole, cucidati, panna cotta, zabaglione, crème brûlée, manicotti, every kind of cake, every kind of pie, every kind of cheese, all kinds of…
Christie: Mother of God! Enough! I get the idea! That or the White House, huh?
Tom: Essentially, yes.
Christie: Oh, boy… I gotta think about this one.
Tom: All things considered, I figured you would.
Christie: A hundred pounds?
Tom: Americans don’t go for half measures, Governor. They like large, round numbers, like “one hundred,” but not large round politicians who go in for vindictive vendettas and gratuitous revenge.
Christie: A hundred pounds?
Tom: The first Republican primaries for the 2016 presidential race are only two years away, Governor. Consequently, I strongly suggest you make your mind up as soon as possible.
Christie: Subs… the White House…
Tom: Governor?
Christie: Manicotti… the Oval Office…
Tom: Governor?
Christie: Fried calamari… Air Force One…
Tom: Governor?
Christie: Are you absolutely sure there isn’t some way I can eat my cheesecake and have the presidency, too?
Tom: None that I can think of, Governor.
Christie: Okay, well, in that case, I’m going to finish this sub and then very seriously consider going on a diet.
Tom: Best of luck with that – and your presidential aspirations as well, sir.
Christie: Thanks, goodbye.