Last week, T. Borris Avdeyev, the technician responsible for the Olympic ring miscue, was stabbed to death in his Sochi hotel room.  Well, not really, but the quote ascribed to a complicit police investigator that Avdeyev “tripped and fell onto a set of knives” comports neatly with our perception of Russian brutality and callousness.  It recalls the apocryphal reports of Soviet commandoes butchering family members of Iranian hostage takers in 1979.   Understandably, given President Carter’s feckless response to the seizure of our embassy in Tehran, we were ripe, over that shameful year-and-a-half, to embrace the notion that somebody had the balls to kick ass.  What is not fiction, however, is George H. W. Bush’s secret flight to Paris weeks before the presidential election where he offered Hashemi Rafsanjani $40 million to delay the release of hostages.  As such, Mr. Bush all but secured Reagan’s victory and, at the same time, established the very back channels that would become instrumental in the conduct of Iran-Contra.

These events solidified America’s reputation as a weasel, operating in the shadows, in contrast to the brazenness of the Russian bear.  Moscow has a long history of atrociousness, from the pogroms to Stalin’s army of rapists.  So it came as no surprise in 1985 that when Hezbollah abducted four staffers from the Russian Embassy in Beirut, the KGB kidnapped and castrated a close relative of the militant group’s leader, delivering the severed organs along with their ultimatum.

Imagine, then, my shame over the accusations leveled against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  When Fort Lee’s Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich refused to endorse the governor’s re-election, his Doughiness allegedly sealed off several lanes of the George Washington Bridge.  Are you serious: a traffic snarl as payback?  In Jersey?  I can almost hear the indignation – “He’s garbage!” – among patrons at Satriale’s butcher shop: Better that retribution was meted out by Tony Soprano, who would have thrown Sokolich and his entire family off the fuckin’ bridge.

The larger narrative has Christie trying to secure endorsements from Democratic mayors and legislators in order to broaden his support for an anticipated 2016 run at the White House.  It certainly didn’t help that one woman actually died after EMS crews were delayed by the GWB lane closures.   And while Christie aides may argue the victim was 91 and would have croaked soon enough anyways, they can’t explain away the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into claims made by mayor Dawn Zimmer (D-Hoboken) that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno personally cautioned her that any post-Sandy relief funding would be contingent upon approval (as yet unforthcoming) of a development deal proposed by the Rockefeller Group, a real estate company with several ties to the governor.   Though Zimmer requested $127 million in compensation (the vast majority of Hoboken was literally underwater after Sandy hit), she received only a niggling $342,000.

By way of contrast, compliant Democrats were showered in a surfeit of state funds. The Port Authority doled out $250 million to mayor Raymond McDonough of Harrison for a new transit station (the largesse was overt to the point of causing a fatal heart attack), and another $3 million to mayor Brian Stack of Union City even though the PA has no operations there.  Over in Essex County, executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr. received $7 million more from the Port Authority for a “park” and an additional $4 million in state aid for a vocational school.  We all know that dipping into the public till for political purposes is strictly prohibited and with any luck we’ll soon see Mr. Christie in federal court.  I only hope we can look forward to a process without the prototypical American lies and obfuscations (see: Watergate, Lewinsky).  I for one would be far more likely to vote Christie for president if queries as to whether he ordered the bribes wrought the Jessup-like exclamation, “YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!!”