Chris Christie’s Lessons for School Children
By definition a leader is “one who shows the way.” Citizens, including school children, look to their leaders for lessons in terms of character, doing the right thing, behavior in public and how to treat those less powerful. Since the moment that he entered office, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has provided lessons that no parent or teacher would wish on school children. Here is a sampling.
Lesson 1: Be a bully
In a recent Rutgers Eagleton poll, New Jersey residents used the terms bully, arrogant, selfish and aggressive to describe the Governor. Apparently, Chris Christie flunked kindergarten. These are hardly the words one would hope people used to describe a leader and role model for children. The Washington Post, noting that Christie has a video crew follow him around to capture moments in meetings when he bullies a New Jersey citizen so that his bullying reputation can be bolstered by You Tube videos, says simply, “The reason Chris Christie is so good at this is that Chris Christie is actually a bully… He's someone who uses his office to intimidate people and punish or humiliate perceived enemies.”
Bridgegate is, of course, the most famous bullying incident, but bullying tactics have been central to Christie’s leadership style from the beginning. These incidents include stripping a former governor of his police security at public events, taking funding away from a Rutgers professor who had somehow offended him, disinviting a state senator from an event in the man’s own district, stalling another state senator’s judicial appointment and of course, berating citizens at town hall meetings and even chasing one down the boardwalk yelling, “Keep walking, Keep walking.”
It is ironic that the man who signed the Anti-Bullying Act in New Jersey in the wake of the Tyler Clementi suicide, embodies the characteristics of a bully that that legislation was designed to address in and around schools. Here is the definition of bullying in that act:
"Harassment, intimidation or bullying" means any gesture, any written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication, whether it be a single incident or a series of incidents, that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or a mental, physical or sensory disability, or by any other distinguishing characteristic…
· [an act] a reasonable person should know, under the circumstances, will have the effect of physically or emotionally harming a student…
· [an act that] has the effect of insulting or demeaning any student or group of students…
· [any act that] creates a hostile educational environment
By this or any other definition, Chris Christie shows the school children of New Jersey it is good to be a bully.
Lesson 2. Talk back to your teachers
Teachers are a favorite target of Christie’s bullying. He has been videoed angrily berating teachers on several occasions. New Jersey teachers Marie Corfield and Melissa Tomlinson have both felt the steam of Chris the Bully. Both women, both teachers, both asking the Governor simple questions Russ on Reading: Chris Christie’s Lessons for School Children: