Chris Christie comes around

“I have a friend” who is packing at least 2x her recommended body weight. And like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie used to, she champions it as a reasonable “lifestyle choice.” She’s kind of militant about it, going so far as to share photos of lavish, heaping, lovingly-prepared meals that otherwise distributed could feed a family of 16 Tasmanian beet-pickers for a week.

By all accounts, she isn’t running from her Brobdingnagian appetites either, she is embracing them. Like I said, she sees it more or less as a civil rights issue. And I guess, cast in that light, she would be correct. We do have the right to let our bodies go to shit. I did for years (and years?) and The Missus was the only who ever said anything. And now when I see pictures of fat me, I wish a lot more people had said something, anything. Anyone. My God, I look like I’d been stung by a swarm of bees.

Putting themselves in a class that includes cutters, smokers, alcoholics and people who masturbate while choking themselves with a nylon, these are intelligent, otherwise clear-headed taxpayers who make the informed decision to take out their personal issues on their bodies. And if anybody gives them shit about it, they whip out the “I have a dream” speech and talk about their freedom to eat like they’re defending against alQueda planting roadside bombs on the Disneyland monorail rather than the fact that it won’t be long before someone is prying a Big Gulp from their cold, dead fingers.

And they hang on to any piece of data released, however spurious or questionably-sourced, that suggests a new study has found that morbid obesity actually isn’t bad for you like FOX is hanging onto Benghazi. (I have provided a link for readers who are non-FOX viewers and have no idea what this last reference refers to.)

Former militant fat-guy Chris Christie has apparently had a change of heart before he needed an actual change of heart. Recent reports are that he had tummy surgery a few months ago to get the ball rolling. And if he wants to remain a viable contender in 2016, he’s gonna have to rewire his ‘lifestyle’ from top to bottom. From daily 16-course bacchanalia at the Boom Boom Room to staring down a sparse plateful of wan-looking vegetables. 

I don’t envy him.

Maybe he should ask Bill Clinton how he did it, although Clinton could have his own reasons for not reaching out to help.

Of course, Christie is deflecting questions about the surgery by repeating the same line politicos use for absolutely everything, “I’m __[fill in the blank]_ for the good of my family.” And that’s cool, too. It’s the game, man, and that’s how the game is played. It’s always about your family; it’s never about your mistress, the indictments, your drug/booze/weight problem, the guy in the stall next to you going to the press…

Personally I’m happy for him. Although I don’t agree with most of Christie’s policy positions (pretty run-of-the-mill old school conservatism), he also doesn’t strike me as a vainglorious madman just waiting to fulfill his role as foretold in the Book Of Revelations. As Republicans go, he’s a fairly level-headed fellow. If one of them is going to take up residence in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next election, I’d hope it would be him. Not indebted to FOX News or the Tea Party, this guy could actually chase the hard-core assholes out of the body of the Republican party proper and do the GOP, and the country, a real service.

But this isn’t even about him. It’s about my friend. I can’t talk or even write to her. I don’t know her that well, and she would be well within her rights to tell me to fuck off thank you very much.

At the same time, as someone who at one time or another had myself convinced that almost any deviant, self-destructive behavior was fine as long as no one else got hurt, I’ve been down that road before. Except I was never an advocate of my unhealthy lifestyle, just an eager participant. (For years before I stopped drinking, I would meet new people in social situations with, “Hi, I’m Fang [beat] and I’m an alcoholic.” Oh my God, it threw everybody off their game.)

I’m beginning to drift. Must focus.

I’m still engaged in what some would consider to be an unhealthy lifestyle, but those parts of my life, I’m not necessarily proud of and I’m certainly not an advocate for. I owned my guitar for about 3 years before I ever picked it up. I have a stationary bike in my office that’s been gathering dust for over a year now. sigh

All this stuff I’ve put off or am putting off, at least I’ve always been honest enough with myself to admit that what I was doing was not/is not an intelligently arrived-at, commendable decision. Even if I found an article tomorrow on the dangers of stationary bikes, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I would categorize it as an outlier and look closely at its source, not run it up the flagpole and stand beside it, saluting.

What to do about my friend, then? I got nothin’. I’m a pretty shitty example of making smart lifestyle decisions. Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot. (The hilarity of that unintended, doubly on-point pun is causing a brief delay in wrapping this up.)

I can’t talk to her about it, we’re not close enough and it’s legitimately none of my beeswax. But it’s hard sitting on the sidelines, watching the Titanic sail dreamily toward a date with an iceberg that should have been easily predictable but was overlooked until it was too late. And being too damned cowardly to do anything but write about it in a blog that statistics prove nobody even reads. (Spellcheck doesn’t even recognize ‘blog’ anymore.)

If Chris Christie can man up, cut down and recant all his earlier statements about his weight not being a health issue, certainly someone who’s not in the public spotlight—who is not not-running for president in 2016—can be convinced to do the same, right?

Titanic, iceberg. Iceberg, Titanic.