Fairly soon, it’s going to be quicker to list the people who haven’t weighed in on Sanchezgate than those who have.
New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica became the latest to pipe up on Tuesday, responding to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie‘s harsh words about Jets beat writer Manish Mehta in a radio interview on Monday. Mehta, Lupica’s colleague at the Daily News, was doing his job and grilling Jets coach Rex Ryan for throwing Mark Sanchez, New York’s incumbent starting quarterback, into the fourth quarter of a tight preseason game against the Giants.
Christie, an avowed Dallas Cowboys fan, lit into Mehta for daring to question the governor’s pal Ryan.
“Idiot,” Christie said on WFAN. “The guy’s a complete idiot. Self-consumed, underpaid reporter. The only reason he’s employed is we’re spending all this time this morning talking about Manish Mehta — who, by the way, I couldn’t pick out of a police lineup.”
The estimable Lupica came to Mehta’s defense, but not before establishing that he, too, is apparently buds with the governor.
“I have spent some time at Citi Field with Gov. Christie this season talking baseball in general and the ’86 Mets in particular, and can tell you he is great company,” Lupica writes. “If it does come down to him against Hillary Clinton in the next presidential election, he could provide as much fun and life and color as any candidate has since Harry Truman was the one giving everybody hell.”
So now we know that Lupica is inclined to like Christie, and that he was a keen observer of presidential politics when he was negative-4 years old, when Truman defeated Thomas Dewey to win a second term in office.
Moving on …
“The whole country remembers, of course, how tremendous Christie was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, how presidential he looked even standing with President [Barack] Obama after the storm,” Lupica continues.
“Just not Monday. He’s the one who started to sound like something of an idiot Monday, and not just because Mehta is one of ours. Who knows, maybe there is a stronger bond than we know of between Christie and Ryan because they both have undergone lap-band surgery the past couple of years, maybe it’s some kind of Lap-Band of Brothers deal.”
There it is. A controversy stemming from one football coach’s boneheaded decision to insert a potential starter into a meaningless game and get said player injured has now morphed into newspaper columnists mocking politicians’ weight problems. Hang around, things are only going to get more interesting.
Photo via Facebook/Chris Christie
