?It?s a better time to be a pizza man than the US president right now,? one TV pundit recently surmised. ?At least a pizza man might see some dough rise over the next year.?
Chris Christie ? the New Jersey governor who has vehemently ruled himself out of the race in the past ? might once have believed the same. This week, however, it looked like he could crack, in the face of renewed pressure to stand from across the Republican party.
There?s a problem, though. Christie is a large man ? large enough to inspire talk-show host David Letterman to feature a Top Ten list of reasons Christie could never get into the White House. They include: ?He?d have to hire a Secretary of Cake?, ?Taxpayers would have to pay for the President?s second seat on Air Force One? and ?The new national anthem would have to be the Chili?s Baby Back Ribs song?.
A producer friend puts it more brutally: ?Christie?s eloquent, clever and likeable, but weight is too much of an issue in the US ? too much of an Achilles heel. America was ready for a black president, but it?s not ready for a fat president.? There?s always another barrier to break down.
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Forget Russian villains with white cats and British megalomaniacs. There?s a new bad guy in town: the microscopic virus. These little anti-heroes ? mutating gayly in Steven Soderbergh?s Contagion, and taking centre-screen in Rise of the Planet of the Apes ? are smaller than even Tom Cruise, able to reproduce beautifully on screen (with a disdain for anti-nudity clauses matched only by Kate Winslet) ? and they?ve got germ-phobic US audiences squirming in their seats.
?She?s gone, dude!? someone shouted from the recesses of the cinema as Gwyneth Paltrow went into some Oscar-grade seizures on her kitchen floor in Contagion. ?It?s coming to get you!? announced another spectator with grim relish as the mass graves started to pile up (cinemagoing in LA, I should explain, is as interactive an experience as a live wrestling match).
Popular as scantily clad zombies are, having finally found a rational fear to tap into, Hollywood isn?t about to let this one go.
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