The Fat Acceptance Movement may have a new hero. Tubby Republican nominee Chris Christie is now pushing back against imperially thin Democratic Governor Jon Corzine’s campaign theme making fun of Christie’s heft. Christie criticizes Corzine for his recent, implausible, assertions that Corzine never raised the weight issue: “If you’re going to do it, at least man up and say I’m fat…Afterwards he wusses out and says ‘no, no, no. I didn’t mean that I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Man up. If you say I’m fat, I’m fat. Let’s go. Let’s talk about it.” Asked if a governor needs to set a good example, Christie retorts, “I am setting an example…We have to spur our economy. Dunkin Donuts, International House of Pancakes, those people need to work too.”
Smart move by Christie, since his sense of humor about himself softens his prosecutorial image (which independent candidate Chris Daggett has exploited in TV commercials) as an angry guy whose solution to everything is putting somebody in prison. For the still-undecided voters (a group which tends to be ill-informed about politics), Christie’s quips show him as a guy who knows who he is, and who does not take himself overly seriously, who admits his own weaknesses, and who has a sense of humor.