Insert Bridge Pun Here

You have to admit, it's at least possible that the media loves this Chris Christie story so much because of the cornucopia of available bridge related puns.  Chris Matthews could lead his show with this story every day for three weeks (and he might) and never use the same silly segment title twice.  Bridge Over Troubled Water, Bridge to Nowhere, Bridge to 2016, Bridge-et Jones' Diary of New Jersey Political Revenge...it goes on and on.

Assuming that isn't the reason, and I'm not saying that's a safe assumption, I suppose I can see other reasons the media would find this so fascinating.  First of all,  this is a perfect Chris Christie story.  If six months ago you told me something was going to happen that would reflect negatively upon Governor Christie, and that the nature of the situation would be not even a little bit surprising based on what I already knew about Governor Christie, and then you asked me to guess what was going to happen, my guess would have come pretty close to the mark.  Like if I told you that Chris Christie was going to use sanitation trucks to block the Outerbridge Crossing indefinitely because he didn't like how Staten Island was looking at him, you would have to at least think about it a little before you decided not to believe me. 

I also have a hard time believing Christie didn't know anything about this until last week.  He doesn't exactly seem like the kind of guy staffers go rogue on.  The most I'd be willing to believe is that his staff did it without him knowing and then told him about it as a present, like a cat showing up in your doorway with a dead mouse.  If that was his story, I'd probably believe him, even though it's a little hard for me to believe that his staff ever gets him a present that isn't a meatball sandwich.

Having said all that, MSNBC can't possibly expect people to care about this, like in reality.  Sure it's fun and distracting for a little while, but they can't honestly think that people will go to a voting both in 2016 and think "I really like Chris Christie as a candidate, but there was that one time he caused traffic, better vote for Hillary."  That scenario seems highly unlikely to me. 

You have to understand that so much of the national media is based in New York, and some of them commute from northern Jersey.  Traffic on the G.W. Bridge may seem like a ridiculously huge story to them, but I have a hard time picturing people in Ohio caring.  They don't have traffic in the Midwest.  I'm not even sure they have traffic lights in the South yet, or lights in general for that matter. 

Sidenote: If I ever have to go south of Virginia for some reason (please no, it's so hot down there), I'll probably just delete everything I've ever written to be safe.

And I certainly can't picture it hurting Christie in the primaries.  I don't see a lot of Midwestern Republicans thinking "Christie seems like the best candidate, but he was pretty mean to New Jersey Democrats so I guess I'm voting for Rick Santorum".  If this story has any impact in the primaries it'll probably kill for Christie with the tea people.  If Ted Cruz shut down a bridge in a liberal city just to be a dick the tea people would throw him a parade.

Meanwhile, if the liberals in the media are trying to hurt Christie and help Hillary with this, I think they couldn't be further off the mark.  I can't even watch Fox for fun anymore because I get so angry when one of them mentions Benghazi or the IRS "scandal" that I want to throw things at my television, and I don't want to pay for a new TV right now.  Liberals and the media have been doing a fantastic job of ignoring these fake Republican scandals, but you can't continue knocking Republicans for making up nonsense scandals if you start making up nonsense scandals of your own.  You're giving up the high ground and saying that making up scandals to smear the other party is a perfectly acceptable form of journalism.  It isn't. 

I'm not a Christie supporter, and I've said I'm probably only voting for him if he winds up running against Hillary Clinton, who I will not vote for, but I'll probably vote for every other Democrat over Chris Christie.  I'm not downplaying this because he's my guy.  This isn't a scandal.  It's stupid and sort of interesting, and I'm sure people in Fort Lee were really inconvenienced (although they already live in New Jersey so they should be used to disappointment, and four hours of traffic is only like a half hour more than normal), but it's not a deal breaker. 

You know how many politicians are currently plotting revenge on anyone who even slightly wronged them?  All of them!  They're all egomaniacs, presidential candidates especially.  Do you really think that people who believe that god told them to be President wouldn't take an opportunity to get some revenge on anyone who stood in their way?  Chris Christie got caught because his staff is very stupid.  How hard would it have been to actually do a fake traffic study?  And how long before everyone finally learns that if you're going to do something you aren't supposed to be doing you can't talk about it in an email?  A little longer I guess.

My only point is that my opinion of Chris Christie isn't any different now than it was a month ago.  If your opinion is a lot different now, I have to think maybe you weren't paying a lot of attention to Chris Christie before now, because even in the worst case scenario, what happened here is pretty much exactly what I thought of Christie before this happened. 

He's not my favorite candidate, but I could certainly find worse Republicans.  In fact, I found five of them (plus Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul) and documented every debate they had for like a year.  You know what, I'm not sure any of those people from the 2012 primaries (except for Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul) could even successfully do what Christie might have done.  Disrupting a whole town for fun and revenge isn't a good thing, but if we could just get Christie to channel some of that competence into slightly more productive things, he'll already be the best Republican nominee since, I don't even know, Eisenhower?  I don't think I'm kidding about that.

I know some people will tell me I'm not understanding how big this really is, and how this isn't funny and how people's lives were effected and Chris Christie is a monster.  And I know I joke about New Jersey, but I actually don't have any problem with people from New Jersey.  I've known New Jersey people that I've legitimately loved.  I swear.  But about this bridge and traffic thing, I'm sorry, I just don't care, and you can't make me.

PS...For those of you who read my blog sometimes and are hockey fans, I'm working on something that I think might turn out kind of awesome...or, ya know, not that awesome.  I don't know yet, but just get ready for something awesome or also maybe not.