Who would have thought that Gov. Chris Christie’s weight would become an issue if he decided to run for president? Apparently, that aspect of politics must seem unimaginable to some, but it seems quite in line with the usual ‘running of the bulls’ that is to be expected within the realm of American politics, and the media scrutiny that it endures on a regular basis. For politicians, if their families, sex lives, tweets, emails, Facebook comments, Craigslist postings, birth certificates, sexual orientations, religious beliefs, church affiliations, pastor affiliations, any and all past statements they’ve ever made, and their ethnic backgrounds are all considered to be fair, political game, then Christie’s weight will probably be next on the list, when and if he decides to run. As the proverbial saying goes: ‘You’ve got to have some fairly thick skin to be in politics,’ because if you don’t; pain and embarrassment will get to know you better than you ever thought they would or could, and that’s just in the primaries!

After all, a person’s weight shouldn’t disqualify them from the presidency any more than any other attribute like gender, sexual preference, religious preference, or race, but it would be foolishly naïve not to expect these things to surface, because they can, and they will. Isn’t it amazing how many of the same people who carried around the Obama, birth certificate cross for so long are now uneasy and nervous about the prospects of Christie’s weight being his birth certificate issue? Whether it is fair or unfair really has no bearings in this matter, because fair is just a mythical sentiment in the political arena that’s talked about far more than it is realized or invoked, and poor Christie had better get all of his ducks in a row before he applies for this job. If he doesn’t believe that, he should just pick up the phone and call President Obama, the Clintons and a few others.

Now Christie may fully understand all of this, but just in case he doesn’t understand the brunt of it all, here are a few incidents for him, his followers and others in the media to consider. Let’s start with our dear friend Sen. John McCain, who watched during his 2000 presidential campaign as President Bush’s henchmen racked his family over the political coals by accusing McCain of having a ‘Black child,’ due to the dark-skinned nature of his adopted daughter from Bangladesh! Yes, the child was from the country of Bangladesh, not Africa, but that didn’t stop the Bush elves.

Then there was Sen. John Kerry, who was unmercifully marched through the credibility shredding gauntlet over his military service in Vietnam during his 2004 presidential campaign. John Kerry was called every name in the book except a ‘child of God’ for his alleged corruption and cowardice during his time in Vietnam. By the time the Swift Boat ads were done enabling their political damage, John Kerry’s credibility was low enough to lose a ‘worst, American villain’ contest to Benedict Arnold, even though it was later proved that there was no documented proof to back these Swift Boat assassins. The Bush elves struck again!

And, let’s not forget about President Obama, the first, sitting U.S. president who was asked, demanded and eventually forced to release two birth certificates just to prove that he was actually an American citizen; that his life was not the grand schemed fraud that many in the conservative media, mainly the Birthers, backhandedly and at times openly promoted it to be. It is one thing to acknowledge a person’s weight or ethnicity, but it is something totally different to question the legitimacy of a person’s citizenship legality, as it applies to their right to have their lives continue to exist in its current state, as protected by the United States Constitution and the basic laws of the land.

What happened to President Obama went beyond basic slander into outright character assassination, but that didn’t stop the media from reporting on it, and it didn’t stop the stories from swirling around it. The show must go on, even as it steps over the corpse of another political victim to ensure that it does! As is said in the Black community when another young, Black youth is gunned down in the impoverished, ghetto streets that so many Tea Partiers and Republicans feel have been unfairly propped up with the pillars of Obama’s socialism: ‘it’s just another statistic!’ And if Chris Christie jumps into this presidential race, the next political statistic could easily be him.

As ridiculous as it may sound, if President Obama can be the first Black president, Christ Christie could potentially be the second flipside-of-skinny president. And if he is elected, don’t think for one minute that the same Saturday Night Live crew that navigated a ratings coup with Tina Fey and her Sarah Palin idiosyncrasy impersonations won’t hesitate for a second to recruit a guy who fails to meet with skinny to waddle around the presidential podium with a half-eaten, triple “Air Force One” cheeseburger, and that doesn’t even include the weekday, late-night comedians!

Since some publications have disallowed the usage of the o-word and f-word regarding a person’s weight, one has to question if this is truly a political issue, a journalistic issue or a 1st Amendment issue. In a journalistic realm, the responsibility is to truth and accuracy. In a 1st Amendment realm, the responsibility is to the character of the individual to exercise that right in a law abiding and responsible way. But in a political realm, only one rule applies. It does not necessarily have to be provable, but it absolutely has to be believable, and the burden of proof that stands on believable is about a million tons less than provable, because it is so much easier to plant a seed than it is to prove a tree, which makes it tailor-made for politics.

So, good luck Chris Christie on all of your future, political endeavors, especially if you run for president and that comes without the usage of the o-word or the f-word. Since those words are now off-limits on specific mediums as applied to you, let the people decide if you, Chris Christie, are the guy who sits across from skinny, whether it’s the ideology of skinny or an actual person who is skinny? Either way, we’ll all sit across sit across from some form of skinny at some point in our lives, as we are ultimately judged by the same judgments that we make. That fact of life can be censored but never changed!

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