I like American politics. It is just like Malaysian politics - bipartisan, mad and full of interesting characters. I have been following American politics since 2008 and am full of admiration for the good people (and even some politicians) who are fighting the good fight and trying their level best to keep America in her best traditions of multiculturalism, enterprise, freedom of religion, free speech and secular form of governance. So in the course of my understudy, I therefore have very little nice things to say about the Republican Party, and the right wing nuts that appear to infest its hive.
So today I was happy to bump into Chris Christie, the current incumbent Governor of New Jersey. Christopher James "Chris" Christie was born in Newark in 1962, a lawyer, a lobbyist, a former District Attorney and clearly in the Bush team for the duration of the former President’s tenure in the White House (he was a top fundraiser for Bush’s 2000 presidential election). He was a pal of Carl Rove and a mover and shaker in the rarified heights of Republican party organisation. So there is (normally) no reason why I should sing his praise. Until I watched this YouTube video …
He looks like a cast member in the Sopranos, don’t you think? So now I have two things I admire coming out of New Jersey - the Sopranos and Governor Chris Christie. You see, the Governor earned the ire of the right wing fundo-nuts when he appointed Sohail Muhammed, an American of Indian Muslim descent, as a Superior Court judge in New Jersey. By defending Sohail Muhammed and speaking so candidly against the ‘crazies’ in his own party and the right-wing movement, he has painted a political bull’s eye on his back. But by God, how I admire his courage. I don’t care what his antecedents are, but for this brief moment in time, he is one of the stars that are shining brightly in these dark nights that we are living in.
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| Another fine New Jersey export. |
I have been preparing this posting the whole day. And each time I get back to it (I do actually work, you know) I ask myself this question, - Am I being overly enthusiastic about this little piece of American drama? But when I re-watch the video, my sentiment about this story is still the same. There are just so few good stories coming out of American politics that it affects me in places only goodness and love can reach - Chris’s constituency is not just New Jersey anymore, it is now the world. Simply because he decided to speak from his conscience.
God bless his Christian heart.
wa min Allah at-taufiq
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