Because of my job as an editor and the fact that I’m a writer, I probably do not read news articles the same way that you do. I won’t say that I skim them, exactly. What I do is read them as constructions. I look at how they are put together as much as what they actually have to say, and if I skim something it is probably going to be the set pieces that I know must be written as predicates for the overall point of the piece. That’s why I initially did not see even one mention of Bridgegate in Peter Hamby’s CNN piece on Chris Christie. I had to go back and read it two more times until I found the brief obligatory mention of the episode that torpedoed Christie’s presidential ambitions. It’s tucked in here, in a bit on how Christie can replicate McCain’s town hall success in New Hampshire:
Christie’s team, aware they can no longer rely on the establishment forces that were propping him before last year’s Bridgegate fiasco, is hoping that his personal charisma and Jersey-tested ability to engage with voters in unscripted settings will produce a similar outcome.
That is the eighth paragraph in a piece that begins with a simple question: “Whatever happened to Chris Christie?”
It seems like a long time to wait for the answer, and the “Bridgegate fiasco” is never explained either for what it is or why it has been a fiasco. Hamby’s article doesn’t even give a nod to the story currently running on the front-page of the New York Times: Indictments May Be Near in George Washington Bridge Scandal.
Strangely, the article takes a perplexed tone about why the governor hasn’t been keeping in touch with his would-be organizers in states like South Carolina or why he hasn’t checked off certain boxes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, it reads like some kind of detached-from-reality press release from Drumthwacket, wherein Christie’s aides pretend that the walls aren’t about to cave in and their boss will soon launch a Jersey-flavored version of John McCain’s 2000 Straight Talk Express.
Because the article completely fails to explain “Whatever happened to Chris Christie,” and it doesn’t address the fact that things are about to get a whole lot worse for the governor, it reads like something from an alternative universe.
Maybe writing a piece like this is good for maintaining sources and getting access, but it’s an absolute embarrassment as a piece of journalism.
Having said that, it does at least detail Team Christie’s fantasy-world plans to make their man the Republican nominee. And that’s worth something, I guess.
