New Jersey, despite the sentiments of many residents and the producers of television shows and authors of books with catchy titles, is no more politically corrupt than any other big urban state. It has, however, in the last few decades become the center of a new political phenomenon: Political pornography. And, in this less graphic version of “Boogie Nights,” the Jack Horner character, the producer—Burt Reynolds—is, of course, Chris Christie, the punk who became governor.
Why call it pornography? Sure, it doesn’t have much to do with sex—although, as we’ve seen from the Bridgegate trial, profanity and obscenity are prominent in dialogue. It’s more like poverty porn, the exploitation of the degraded circumstances of people in a way that titillates observers, draws media like flies to manure, produces emotion-packed stories, results in a transfer of wealth to the organizations that do the exploiting–and yet nothing is changed for the poor.
And, like both sexual and poverty pornography, political pornography is essentially amoral. Its stories—and Bridgegate is only the most prominent at the moment—provide no guide to good behavior, produce no heroes as examples of right-thinking, and end with no spiritual uplift. Watching political pornography titillates but doesn’t inform, just as sexual pornography arouses without any sense of romance.
We should have seen it coming to New Jersey when the story first broke that Chris Christie, a small-time Morris County Republican and lobbyist with little expertise in criminal law–but with a brother with a lot of money to donate to the Republican Party–would be named the US Attorney in New Jersey—an office that had reached national prominence through crime-busting prosecutors like Herbert Stern and Frederick Lacey. My friend and colleague, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer Richard Aregood, tried to warn us, even then.
Like porn producers who care nothing about plot and porn actors whose natural physical endowments make up for lack of theatrical skills, the inexperienced but connected Christie became New Jersey’s chief federal prosecutor to advance, not justice, but his own political ambitions. While New Jersey suffered from illegal imports of guns across state lines, violations of federal housing laws, a drug epidemic that turned its cities into gang battlegrounds, Christie used the federal prosecutor’s office to eliminate political figures who might some day get in his way.
Few probably remember all the names. Here’s just a few: James Treffinger. John Lynch, John Bennett (never indicted but implicated by leaks from Christie’s office). Wayne Bryant. Sharpe James. Joseph Doria (again, never indicted but implicated in the so-called “Bid Rig” scandal. At times, he really crossed lines—like the way he tried to interfere in the Senate race between Robert Menendez and Thomas Kean, Jr. by dropping subpoenas on the Democrat and leaking the action to the media just before Election Day.
Just as powerful as the right to indict– maybe more so–was the power to spare. Although he complained that state law enforcement wouldn’t go after South Jersey political boss George Norcross III, he ultimately formed a lasting political partnership with Norcross. The same was true about Joseph DiVincenzo, the Essex County Executive, and Steve Adubato, the political boss. There were stories about investigations, carefully leaked to friends in the media, so potential targets knew how grateful they should be they weren’t clobbered by the awesome power of federal prosecutions. They knew they should be afraid. They would rather be Christie’s ally than target.
Ah, but the stories. The prosecutor with a near-perfect record. The crime-buster. How the media were pampered. Tip-offs to FBI raids so the cameras and reporters could be there to watch perps led out and evidence removed (often in what were really empty boxes). Don’t tell me it didn’t happen—I know it happened. I saw it and heard it and participated in it—including on that July morning in 2009 when dozens of small-time politicians and, yes, venal rabbis, somehow were swept up in raids occurring just weeks before the election that saw Christie beat Jon Corzine. All orchestrated by Christie’s friend and assistant, Michelle Brown, who, like so many others who worked for him in the prosecutor’s office, would go on to play key roles in his gubernatorial administration. Political pornography is an ensemble production.
Christie wasn’t just good copy–if you were a reporter and he granted you access–a function of how well you treated him–you got stories no one else did. That itself borders on the obscene.
Just as pornography pushes the limits to leave consumers breathless, Christie’s ambition had no limits. There was no one to stop him. The energy that drives sexual pornography is the appetite for satisfaction; for political ambition, it is fear. Chris Christie knew he would not become the governor everyone loved; but he knew he could become the governor everyone who might cross him feared. Meanwhile, he provided entertainment to the masses.
Even vaguely attentive news readers can remember the first few examples of political pornography played out for the entertainment value of the story of the “Jersey guy” who takes no nonsense from anyone.
Saying teachers used children as “drug mules.”
Calling a Navy seal a “jerk.”
Telling someone to “shut up and sit down.”
Chasing after a heckler on a shore boardwalk with, yes, an ice cream cone.
Defaming a teacher who had actually saved children’s lives.
But these were only teasers.
Going all the way with political pornography was reserved for the special paying customers, those insiders who would sell their integrity before they would stop him from crossing lines probably no governor had ever crossed before. And who would want to stop him? He was on his way, after all, to the biggest prize of all, the presidency of the United States.
And that brings us to two of the worst scandals of the Christie Administration—Bridgegate and the quashing of indictments against political allies in Hunterdon County.
They both are reaching their, well, climax, now. Christie, whether he knew about the Fort Lee lane closures or not, used the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and its $8 billion budget to buy the political loyalties of Democrats and others whose support he wanted. While tolls on bridges and tunnels were increased, Christie got the Port Authority to buy a Bayonne Marine Terminal for $25o million in hopes of getting the town mayor’s endorsement. He got the Port Authority to spend $3 billion on a renovation of the Pulaski Skyway which has nothing to do with the Port Authority. He stashed political allies in good jobs at the Port Authority that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, of course, his aides shut down access to the George Washington Bridge, the busiest interstate crossing in the nation, to punish another recalcitrant pol.
But, worst of all, perhaps, he used the emotional attachment to the destroyed World Trade Center, a Port Authority property, for political gain. Christie gave away pieces of debris–still considered relics by many families–to favored politicians, along with flags that were raised and lowered over Ground Zero just for the purpose of use as part of a “goody bag.”
Consider this: 37 members of the Port Authority police died on 9/11. Yet Christie and his operatives didn’t mind exploiting the support given to the governor by the union representing those officers. Indeed, some of the most bizarre testimony described how the union president twice offered to have the executive director of the Port Authority murdered–given a “dirt nap” or shot in the head– because he refused to back up Christie’s explanation of why the George Washington Bridge was all but shut down for four days.
A joke, we were told at trial. Pornographic jokes are rarely funny.
Meanwhile, through operatives like David Wildstein and Christie press spokesman Michael Drewniak, Christie threatened those who would think independently. Because, Wildstein has testified, when you worked for Christie, you abided by the “one constituent rule”—the “only person who mattered” was Christopher J. Christie.
That should be the title of any book or film about Christie the political pornographer. Yes, the “one constituent rule” doesn’t have the sexual panache of, say, “Debbie Does Dallas,” but behind that limp-sounding phrase lies the most frightening—and titillating—fantasies of the consumers of political pornography: The possibility that, under a leader like Christie or his doppelganger/idol Donald Trump, the republic could collapse. The ultimate political snuff film.
Because, let’s remember, Christie and his sycophantic followers want to destroy anyone who stands in their way–the torture of the innocent and the vulnerable by the powerful and dominating is a major theme of pornography. So the other major example of political pornography now available for review is the decision of Christie’s attorney general’s office to quash indictments of the Hunterdon sheriff and others in her office for a scheme in which law enforcement credentials were apparently sold or given to outsiders.
The story is long and complicated and probably will never be fully revealed because the lawsuit behind it has been settled with a non-disclosure agreement for many of the documents involved. The suit was brought by Bennett Barlyn, an assistant Hunterdon County prosecutor who was fired after Christie’s attorney general, Paula Dow (now a judge who also got a job with the Port Authority), ordered the indictments dismissed. After Barlyn complained, he was fired. He sued.
But, like so many whistleblowers who fight against corruption, Barlyn finally had to give up. He settled without the entire story revealed. He was financing the case himself; Christie was able to spend $3.2 million in taxpayer funds on outside counsel. Still, the state had to pay Barlyn $1.5 million and, despite claims it had done nothing wrong, the Christie administration would hardly have settled if it thought it was going to win.
Barlyn is a decent guy but, in this age of political pornography, he cannot be a hero because, ultimately, his goal—to expose corruption—was frustrated by the power of a state ruled by an unscrupulous governor and a court system that favors those who have the money to buy justice. There are no heroes in stories of political pornography because there is no good to triumph, no evil to vanquish: Just sordid details.
“In a way,” Barlyn said to me the other day, “I am the anti-Wildstein.”
That, of course, is a reference to David Wildstein, the admitted architect of the George Washington Bridge lane closures who has told most of the story of Bridgegate so far. Wildstein is no hero and, to his credit, I don’t think he would claim to be. One of his throw-away lines while testifying last week was that he decided to end the cover-up because “I didn’t want to get in any more trouble.”
Wildstein got himself one of the finest defense lawyers in the state and he went to the federal prosecutors and agreed to tell his story in return for promises of limited immunity and the chance he might not go to jail. He pled guilty. Justice should not be the result of a race to defense counsel to see who gets to testify for the prosecution.
Barlyn might have been a hero if he could have lasted out the siege of legal bills and stress. But the pornographic nature of public life under men like Chris Christie does not allow for heroes or happy endings. Pornography is amoral, situational, transactional. Even better–it’s often sadistic. Those who like it secretly get a thrill of seeing the bully beat the hero.
Let’s face it. Whether Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, the Bridgegate defendants, are convicted or acquitted, nothing will change. Christie was allowed to remain free and uncharged. He has a year left to his term to punish disloyalty and promote himself as Donald Trump’s “transition director.” Just as pornography ultimately renders sexual love meaningless, political pornography renders traditional political values meaningless–Christie is now free to say or do what he wants, without accountability.
And, who knows? Maybe he will, in the end, contribute to the most obscene, the most profane, the most pornographic, event that could befall this nation: the election of President Donald J. Trump.
Outstanding article. I wish it could get wider circulation, maybe on the various Patches, the Huffington Post, NJ Spotlight or Blue Jersey?
Bob Braun: Share it!
Christie is heartless and evil. May he burn in hell with Norcross and Sweeney
This is the best assessment of what Christie is about that I have ever read.
Amazing article Bob. Brilliant, eloquent, true, but sad (I’m NOT quoting anyone)!
Nancy
Brilliant piece!
Talking about political porn: Donald Trump. I wonder what tap dancing Christie will be doing with the latest Trump scandal. Will he jump ship, hunker down or move to Alpha Centauri? Hopefully, Trump will take down Christie and the whole far right wing/libertarian/tea party/Ayn Randian clown car which is the modern day GOP. The GOP should resign and step down from this current election cycle, not just Trump. Trump is just the logical result of a party that has become radicalized and has devolved into an extreme right wing nightmare.
While Christie and company pace and plot their next move from high atop Trump Tower (no, Chris from Jersey is not “the company” – he’s just another “pretty” face), it’s both weirdly and incompletely satisfying to see the opposition (to the governor’s interminably long joy ride) raising up a few siege towers of its own. Where the hell has everyone been?
This post, “Chris Christie: The master of political porn” (Oh, hell yes!), is one of the few, within this sprawling local tableau, that is tall enough – and sufficiently stable – to get the job done. I hope the rest of our best engineers will take heart in their knowing that it can be done, that it needs to be done, and that there is no time like the present for making their best shots count.
I also hope they don’t make the perennial mistake of taking everyone’s sweat and blisters for granted, once the immediate contest graduates to the dicey status of a forgone conclusion. That’s our own flesh and blood lying in those ditches. Good people, and serious. People who made no judgement on who you might be or where you came from, because you were willing to join a critical battle. I wonder how the lines of inclusion will be redrawn, once the pitched fighting recedes again.
Will it? Ever?
Maybe not, because the pathological few percent will never quit (are they simply “blended” with the financially “ennobled” few percent? Hmm), and boy, are they ever proud of that distinguishing characteristic. So proud, and so sure of themselves, that they allowed their colors to come how much further out of hiding within the last few – what? Decades? Like, maybe they were expecting crowds, in the street, cheering them for having “liberated” us?
Gilded Age appetites, refueled by a volatile mix of inbred nature and untaxed nurture (plus, of course, that mercilessly huge, off-shored, and only occasionally “repatriated” stack of cash-on-demand), will be all but impossible to sate. A hunger like this can only be stopped by a force external to itself. Ergo, government. No, I am not enrapt with full-on, free market voodoo, so buzz off, zombies. In the example of Herr Trump, we see that there is nothing so garishly tremendous as gold-plated everything. A mesmerizing, in-your-face, logo’d up feast for the eyes that is still not complete without that killer, multi-million dollar, wide-angle view — also of everything.
Herein lies yet another strangely bent feature which the women in certain men’s lives all tend to carry with them at all times. As carefully molded as the wives may be, by the genius fingers, for example, of our own political Leonardo, Donald “d’oh” da Chintzy, modern pre-nups are specially designed to keep feminine ambition in check.
Like a not-so-inert foreign body, left carelessly – and deliberately – in the prime motivational centers of their feather-bedecked gray matter, the ravenously consumptive lifestyle hits women as hard as it hits their men. So, the men are under professional advice to hit first, for their own protection, in the event that it turns out to be cheaper, later, to not keep her.
If ever there was a castle tower in need of a proper sacking, it could be readily found and identified — and with minimal delay — by tracking Christopher J. Christie’s clumsy footprints through the American political wilderness. No, not the hopeless Bill Vance Pro clown shoes for sport anglers. That impression is a false trail. Go instead with the more obvious skid marks. Those, over there – those smokin’ tread burns belong to Big Boy’s real first choice in casual kicks – the Cessna Citation X.
Big Boy knows all the best castles. Or, at least, he thinks he does. One has to allow that no self-respecting Lord of America would let a galoot like Christopher J. Christie, from Livingston, New Jersey, all the way into their castle keep. While at the same time, incalculable greed does do strange, Machiavellian things within the controlled confines of its off-the-record gatherings. Big Boy also knows a lot about how all those towers connect, and whose banded pigeons belong to whom.
I don’t believe that our two NY metropolitan boy emperors – huddle as they do in a mere Trump Tower – like what they see happening out here. I wonder how thick a Trump castle wall really is (metaphorically speaking)?
I’ll not, I suspect, have that question, unanswered, for very long.
The first truly serious test shots, I’ll bet, are about ready for flight. And though the pen is a far more economical slayer than the sword, the recorded word (and image) is yet to have its best day. Then there’s the telling absence of most of the above. The most discreet operators are the ones who should always beg our most careful attention.
The empty hype of “Governor” Christie, and his newest prizefighting prodigy (dude, keep the robe on), stands to further devolve tonight, sans possession of that trademark advantage and Christie secret ingredient, aka, the “shrewd” stage-crafting element, whereby team Christie assumes total control over “town hall” ticket sales and painfully burlesque production values.
I wonder how the weekend’s bake session is going to rise, for the Republicans, when they’re plain out of yeast?
Like so many readers, Bob, I’m puzzled by the shrouds over what Fishman’s team thinks they’re erecting, way over there, amid their ceremonious return to District Court in downtown Newark. I also wonder when they are finally going to aim that curious contraption they’re slowly piecing together. In their down moments, they might fan out and scrounge up a few extra (and tremendously huge) rubber bands. They might then – while they’re at it – think to phone home more frequently, just to confirm what’s really on the line here, and who, in fact, presides over this strangely paced and increasingly chaotic campaign.
Campaign? For what, we ask? For justice?
Whose version of earth’s most ancient (and most hotly contested) tome will the feds finally push? And if their shot falls short, who rolls in next? Who, really, holds the key to this carefully protracted trial, and why is it so persistently hidden?
Somewhere, someone is laughing off our pedestrian succession of allegedly major omens. With high-fives and smokes all around, they’re clinking their favorite crystal tumblers. Basking in the familiar aroma of seventy-year-old single malt, they’re thanking their gods, again, for the blessing of rudderless rubes.
Precious, and orderly rubes, in all the right places, who will predictably decline to spot a dead giveaway, even when they already know better.
Formerly proud and irreplaceable knights are, in our time, cheaply derived from poorer alloys and byzantine rooks, questing only from paycheck to paycheck, and calling out, instead, for but a half shot of watered-down Jersey-style justice juice, vintage 2016.
One of the original thirteen colonies and proud, once, of her place among the union of the independent – we’re now reduced, more than two centuries later, to the rank passivity of a crappy (and taxpayer funded) settlement. Without proper representation, again.
The long return to legalized disenfranchisement has been ably abetted, most recently, by the boundless ambition of the senior Tom Kean’s intermittent protege, a persistent little scrounger from the old Livingston hood. There is no way we can blame something this big, and this implausible, all on Big Boy. He had a load of help along the way.
The Clintons, meanwhile – with their own tortured back story – are a wholly insufficient reason to fall into the fantasy of Donald J. Trump, “President of the United States of America.”
So get over it, America. Clinton answers next.
Most importantly: Whither our professional government virtue? Any day now. Any day.