<!– Yeah I Photoshopped a tan on Chris Christie –>
In September there was something of an uproar regarding the assassination of an American citizen without due process of the law.
An American-born terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki, had blown up upon being struck by an American Hellfire missile in Yemen.
“An abomination of justice and the Constitution!” some rightly cried.
* * *
Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey; the cast of Jersey Shore spends a great deal of time tanning, working out, doing laundry, and contracting venereal disease in his realm.
Just five days before the federal government would take out al-Awlaki, Chris Christie declared a fatwa calling for the assassination of Jersey Shore.
On September 26, Christie blocked Jersey Shore’s creative team from receiving a $420,000 tax break. The show was supposed to have received this break as per a New Jersey law meant to attract movie and television crews to the state.
“…as chief executive I am duty-bound to ensure that taxpayers are not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the state and its citizens,” the governor explained.
And so there you have it. Chris Christie unilaterally decided that Jersey Shore was unrepresentative of New Jersey and therefore did not merit tax payer subsidy.
(Somehow it seems wrong that through a tax break for filming in New Jersey, the governor gets a few hundred thousand dollars in negotiating leverage with every outfit that comes to town… but I digress…)
The conflict between Christie and Jersey Shore has escalated into a full blown rivalry. In November, Christie called the cast “losers” and has repeatedly pointed out that many of the most popular residents of the Jersey shore are, in fact, from New York, as if to insinuate that all of the crappy people in New Jersey simply blew in from that giant human waste factory across Hudson River.
Earlier this week, Snooki took to Twitter to declare that she would never vote for Chris Christie for president (despite her support of John McCain in 2008) because of his attacks against the cast, with whom he has never actually met. Snooki said that somebody told her he was running. (He isn’t, but he could wind up on the ticket as a VP candidate).
Christie upped the ante even further Thursday night, absolutely unwilling to recognize the lunacy of the situation and make a joke.
“You see, this further reinforces my concern about these people,” Christie said. ”I tell [New York Governor Andrew Cuomo] all the time, ‘you can have them back’. You will not be shocked to know that he has not sent a car yet, for Snooki, or JWoww or The Situation.”
It seems that this entire feud, ridiculous and farcical as it is, stems purely from Christie’s mandate to govern as a boisterous jerk.
See, the theory goes that Christie was able to win the governorship against an unpopular incumbent by running as a total jerk. He therefore believes that the people want an obnoxious jerk to govern them. And so he acts like one.
It would be so easy to laugh off Jersey Shore. Schwarzenegger had to deal with Laguna Beach and The Hills, and he never came close to a Twitter feud with Lauren Conrad. (According to PTB’s records.)
But Chris Christie is 100% willing to stoop to the level of Snooki and The Situation after the peak of their popularity and engage them without a hint of irony. As if the biggest threat to the good people of New Jersey is six idiots who like to go to the club and have sex with each other and cry or something.
He’s willing to go so far as to call out television characters- television characters- and call them losers and deny being from the same state as them.
He’s willing to retract a tax break to prevent an MTV reality show from “making him look bad.”
Chris Christie is willing to go full on al-Awlaki all over Jersey Shore.
Remember that later on.