What Happens if Christie Really Never Knew All Along?

Today on NRO CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Russia is running rings around America. Obama vs. Putin: The Mismatch. JONAH GOLDBERG: There's no journalistic skepticism about the motives of those on the left. Leland Yee, the Kochs, and the Press. KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: An indictment of the Democrats' big-government agenda. Hypocrisy Hypocrisy. MARK KRIKORIAN: Fencing is needed in some places on our border, but not everywhere. Border Fencing: One Tool among Many. SLIDESHOW: Tomahawk Missile. Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty March 28, 2014 What Happens if Christie Really Never Knew All Along? Chris Christie knowing about the bridge-lane closures and then giving that "I had no idea" press conference would suggest he was either a nut job or an extremely convincing liar. Having said that, most of us on the right would not accept a Democratic governor investigating himself or an "internal investigation" or an investigation by allies. So a lot of folks, fairly or not, will dismiss this investigation... Howard Kurtz: The internal report exonerating Chris Christie in the George Washington Bridge scandal was big enough news that the cable networks went live to the presser during or after President Obama talking about his meeting with Pope Francis. …Let's assume, for just a second, that the report was largely on target. It was headed by Randy Mastro, a former New York City deputy mayor, who knows that he will look like a dishonest hack if the federal and state investigations find that Christie was in fact involved in the lane closures. But if Mastro's central finding holds up—that Christie didn't know of the bridge fiasco and wasn't involved in any coverup—how does that change the national media clamor over the New Jersey governor? What if all the speculation and breathless cable segments, especially on MSNBC, was wrong, and Christie's denials (beginning at that marathon news conference) were truthful? Even on the charges of a Hurricane Sandy aid shakedown by Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, whose account was branded "demonstrably false" by the investigators? Can you be truly "cleared" after being roughed up in this modern media age? And if he was, would Christie be owed an apology? Kurtz concludes, "it may be that Christie was innocent in a legal sense but will still pay a huge political price. That may be unfair, but no one ever said presidential politics was fair." Yes, but notice that certain scandals never stick to certain other figures. As Brittany Cohan notices this morning, "Today Show talking about Bridgegate. Nothing about gun running, FBI raids, bribery, illegal campaign spending, etc. Because they're Dems." If you're not familiar with gunrunning, it refers to this… [California State Sen. Leland] Yee discussed helping the [undercover FBI] agent get weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder fired automatic weapons and missiles, and took him through the entire process of getting them from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines to the United States, according to the affidavit. The New York Times greeted that news with a one paragraph summary on page A21 Wednesday with the headline: "California: State Senator Accused of Corruption." To Liberals, It All Comes Back to How Evil You Are for Disagreeing with Them A good example of the phenomenon discussed in my NRO piece Wednesday… After a surprising comment from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, America Rising put together a short video of Reid on the floor of the U.S. Senate insisting "The junior senator from Wyoming has come to the floor recently, talking about examples that he and other Republicans have given, dealing with Obamacare, examples that they think are bad, I have called lies; Mr. President, it is simply untrue, I never come to the floor, to my recollection, and said a word about the examples Republicans were giving regarding Obamacare and how it's not very good." … roughly a month after he said, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, that stories of "the lives [Obamacare] is ruining" were "tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies…" You can watch the video by clicking below: In his second appearance, Reid said, "I have never come to the floor, to my recollection, and never said a word about any of the examples Republicans have given, and how it's not very good." Now, there are two possibilities here. The first is that Reid is lying through his teeth. (Quite a bit of evidence to support that assessment.) But the second is that Reid is telling the truth, and that he genuinely doesn't recall saying anything like that, even though he did say it, to a quite vocal reaction, standing in the exact same spot roughly a month earlier. As I mentioned a time or two, Harry Reid has a history of odd and controversial statements -- commenting that the tourists smell, that no one who's Hispanic could be Republican, claiming that Mitt Romney didn't pay taxes for ten years… Could Harry Reid genuinely not remember statements he made a month earlier? Is it possible he's experiencing some early form of Alzheimer's Disease? If he were, wouldn't it explain a bit of some of these odd comments?   I tweeted out the question, and National Republican Senatorial Committee Strategist Brad Dayspring added, "that video raises a real question." There was no plausible snicker or sneer, and there is no plausible way to interpret this remark as somehow mocking those who suffer from Alzheimer's.                            While neither Dayspring nor I are remotely fans of Reid, you don't have to like the Senate Majority Leader to be troubled at the thought of the man having a problem as serious as this. Presidents release some version of their physicals and health assessments, but senators don't, so we just don't know how Harry Reid is doing. He's 74 years old. He was briefly hospitalized at the end of last year after "not feeling well"; the preceding year he was hospitalized after a car accident. But Jed Lewison over at Daily Kos interpreted my Tweet and Dayspring's six words as a progressive must. The real issue, worthy of attention and public denunciation, was not anyone dealing with difficulties from Obamacare. The real issue wasn't Senator Reid absurdly insisting that all of the stories of "the lives [Obamacare] is ruining" were "tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies." Nor was the real issue Senator Reid denying saying that a month later. No, the real issue, he insisted with his 330-word piece, is what Brad Dayspring said, and of course he insisted it was an "Alzheimer's joke." To a significant number of progressives, everything, everywhere, at all times, must be interpreted in a way to emphasize the evil of the opposition. Full stop. That is the story. That is the point. That is the alpha and the omega, the purpose of conversation itself. The implied defense is, "of course Reid doesn't mean it when he says he doesn't recall making the comments! He's just lying, you fools! Get over it and stop taking him at his word that he doesn't remember!"  A lot of the folks who Tweeted at me, telling me what a terrible person I was, felt the need to emphasize their personal experience with a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's -- as if that were some sort of trump card. I could have Tweeted back about watching my grandmother gradually but steadily decline until she was reduced to mumbling incoherent phrases to my mother and me during one of our last visits, and seeing a loved one once sharp as a knife reduced to baby talk. I could, but it wouldn't change anything. Those denouncing me don't really care whether or not I have personal experience with the horror of Alzheimer's; the whole point of the exercise is to vent their fury at me for doing something terrible and feel good about doing so and feel good about themselves.  Naturally, in a Daily Kos post denouncing Dayspring for making an Alzheimer's joke that he didn't make, the comments section reacted thusly: "Anyone else remember when we had a president who often forgot what he was saying and rambled on and had to be told what to say next by his wife?" "That would make him Reaganesque." "It's occurred to me that Anthony Kennedy does." "I thought Alzheimer's only made you forget gun-running schemes in Iran and Nicaragua." Yes, on a thread about how awful Dayspring is for making a joke about Alzheimer's (that he didn't), the Daily Kos crowd responded by making jokes about Alzheimer's. None of those folks writing those comments recognized the irony or the fact that they were doing the precise action they had all gathered to denounce. Literally, in their minds, the appropriateness of a comment about Alzheimer's depends entirely upon the partisan affiliation of the comment's subject. This is why it's nearly impossible to get progressives to "live up to their own book of rules." The only rules in that book are that you're always horrible and evil, that they're always right, and they always win. Can We Please 'Consciously Uncouple' from Taking Celebrities Seriously? OPENING DISCLAIMER: Gwyneth Paltrow, I wish you and your family well. You've always seemed nice, and I hope you and Robert Downey Jr. make Iron Man movies forever. Our Katherine Connell notes, "Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin are not merely divorcing; they are consciously uncoupling." Conscious uncoupling will bring "wholeness to the spirits of both people who choose to recognize each other as their teachers." What's more, conscious uncoupling "prevents families from being broken by divorce and creates expanded families that continue to function in a healthy way outside of traditional marriage." They conclude that by "choosing to handle your uncoupling in a conscious way . . . you'll see that although it looks like everything is coming apart; it's actually all coming back together." [blinks] Um… Good for you? Look, marriage is hard. Don't take it from me; take it from Mrs. CampaignSpot, who has to put up with me. From where I sit, as much as everyone would like to see married couples staying together until death do they part, some marriages reach a point where staying together is going to be more harmful for all involved. There are amicable divorces and bitter divorces, and obviously, it's better when it can be amicable -- particularly if children are involved. If "conscious uncoupling" is just a Hollywood new-age kumbaya term for an amicable divorce, then sure, tell the world about how you and your spouse decided to try to keep things civil and respectful and put the kids' needs first. But the look-at-us-we're-role-models-for-divorce comments come as Paltrow's been… rather public in expressing to the world how difficult it is to be her, and how much harder her life is than, say, mothers who work in offices: "It's much harder for me. I feel like I set it up in a way that makes it difficult because…for me, like if I miss a school run, they are like, 'Where were you?' I don't like to be the lead so I don't [have] to work every day, you know, I have little things that I like and obviously I want it to be good and challenging and interesting and be with good people and that kind of thing." She added, "I think it's different when you have an office job, because it's routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you're shooting a movie, they're like, 'We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,' and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it's not like being on set." Reminder: Paltrow and her husband Chris Martin of the band Coldplay have an estimated net worth of $280 million. Some working moms are not amused. As luck would have it, Gwyneth Paltrow was featured in one of my all-time favorite Cracked articles, one that should be read by every high-schooler -- no, make that grade schooler -- in America, entitled, "Five Reasons You Should Never Take Advice from Celebrities." (Some F-bombs at the link.) So when we get advice from Gwyneth Paltrow on "what to get the man in your life," it's incredibly hard to not burst into fits of psychotic laughter… Seriously, take a look at what she suggests and tell me you don't want to punch her in the face:                         "Room spray" (the size of a pill bottle): $125                         Sweater: $800                         Belt: $420                         Rug with silhouette of his head: $3,500 It's not a huge mystery that when you enter into that celebrity level of financial security… the enormous weight of that stress just evaporates. I'm not talking about some successful business owner who works around the clock, I'm talking about a class of people who can collect six-figure checks just for showing up to some event whose organizers want a famous person in the audience. After living that lifestyle -- and hanging around others who share it -- for so long, it becomes impossible for you to relate to the average human. … When asked about how to keep level-headed and grounded, Goldie Hawn's advice is to stand in front of the ocean. Which I'm sure that, for the multimillionaires living on beachfront property, it's a great idea. Or for the small percentage of people who live close enough to the ocean to drive there. But for the overwhelming majority of the globe, it's just gibberish horses*** spraying from the mouth of an ultra-privileged, out of touch alien. Now… if we've determined that Hollywood stars, as much as they may delight us on the silver screen, live lives too far removed from our own to be useful guides in the areas of gift-giving, money management, stress relief, time management, relationships and marriages, or most other matters of life… why would we turn to them for guidance on political matters? ADDENDA: Another chapter in the long, long nonfiction book, Bruce Braley, Jerk. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Follow Tweet NR Podcasts Send National Review, Inc. Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. This email was sent by: National Review, Inc. 215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10016