Slut-shaming Bridget Kelly: How she ranks among history’s greatest political sluts [View all]

[Playinghardball]

Thursday night, Rachel Maddow marveled at the $1 million price tag shouldered by New Jersey’s taxpayers for an “investigation” of Governor Chris Christie by a law firm hand-picked by the governor himself. By now you’ve heard the boring stuff — Christie’s lawyers found that he had nothing to do with the George Washington Bridge scandal, yadda, yadda, yadda. But Maddow pointed out that the really juicy stuff to come out of the 344-page report was aimed at two women, neither of whom cooperated with the investigation.

The investigation found that Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer’s claims that she was strong-armed over Hurricane Sandy relief funds were “demonstrably false.” How did the sleuths working for Christie determine that? As Maddow pointed out, the investigative team dug up photos of Zimmer at a public event which took place shortly after she had been reminded by one of Christie’s commissioners that she was expected to “play ball” and support a development deal in return for more relief funds. After being reminded that she was expected to come through on the scummy quid pro quo, Zimmer took part in a taped PBS political panel. And then, photo evidence proved, she yawned.

Imagine that. During a PBS taping.

This, Christie’s crack squad decided, was clear evidence that Zimmer was a lying sack of shit.

“A person does not normally yawn when being threatened, coerced, or spoken to improperly,” the report said.

Maybe it’s just us, but we have a hard time seeing a male politician treated this way.

And that becomes abundantly more clear when you see how the report treated another woman who refused to be interviewed by the investigative team — Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff famous for her August 2013 e-mail that said, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” A month later, access lanes from Fort Lee to the GWB were shut down for four days, leading to gridlock in the town of Biblical proportions.

However, despite all the subpoenas and hearings and barrels of ink spilled over the scandal since then, we’re no closer to finding out why Kelly thought it was a good idea to create such a traffic mess for Fort Lee. Who was being targeted, and on whose behalf?

The report did contain one new solid piece of information which might help answer the first part of that question. The night before she sent that fateful August e-mail, Kelly got confirmation that Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich would not be endorsing her boss for re-election. That timing helps bolster what has been from the beginning the prevailing theory for the lane shutdown — it was political payback for Sokolich’s refusal to endorse Christie. But it still doesn’t really tell us why Kelly thought it made sense to punish Sokolich this way when his endorsement meant so little and Christie was just trying to run up the score in an election he had in the bag.

Again, what was Kelly thinking? Now, Christie’s hired guns believe they have the answer: She was a woman scorned.

More here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/28/slut-shaming-bridget-kelly-how-she-ranks-among-historys-greatest-political-sluts/