Nicole Sizemore, the appropriately named deputy press secretary for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, is so helpful. She reached out to The Mirror this afternoon to express her displeasure with the way I characterized her boss in a story about him cursing out the media for charity earlier in the week.
Yes, it was a roasting along the lines of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Sure, his comments were made in jest. Which I made clear in my piece when I categorized the governor’s “I don’t give a shit about you” comment as part of a “comedy routine.”
The Mirror reported a previous instance of Christie pretty aggressively going after The New York Times and others in which he relied on the press to get his important messages across to constituents and his growing fan club around the world.
Nicole writes, “Wanted to reach out on your piece about the NJ Correspondents Dinner from earlier today. Given that the Gov.’s remarks serve as the basis of the piece, I wanted to provide you with a statement from our office that is important to providing context for the event and I think deserves to be included here.”
She continues, “I know you go into separate examples of him and others ‘ridiculing’ the media, but given the fact that his NJ correspondents dinner remarks were made under entirely different circumstances than the latter instances you reference, I think it’s a bit misleading to characterize this as a latest example of repeating a ‘weak pastime…in his classic bullying, big mouth manner.’ Especially since this event has long been an annual roasting of elected officials and reporters in NJ and as a number of attendees have said since, his remarks were not uncharacteristically different from those in years past.”
She sent along a statement from Kevin Roberts, Christie’s press secretary, along with a contact for one of the organizers — reporter Michael Symons of the Gannett/Asbury Park Press — who can speak to me if I’m interested “to give proper context to the event and what the night was” in case I’m too much of a moron to get that this time Christie was joking.
He really loves the media!
I’m going to pass on her referral to call the Gannett/Asbury Park Press reporter.
But here’s their office statement:
“All of the songs and acts of the night, including the Governor’s obvious parody of himself, were in jest and along with the spirit of the evening. This is in keeping with what the dinner is about – bringing people together off-the-clock for a night of comedy and self-deprecation in support of the Press Foundation’s scholarship programs. That anyone would misrepresent the traditional lighthearted nature of the event is a disservice to everyone involved.”