Chris Christie versus Barbra Streisand: Grow up, big guy

Reports are all over the Internet today about New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s boasts about routing Barbra Streisand and James Brolin from the seats they’d taken at a White House event for Chinese dignitaries. Christie made the remarks yesterday at a GOP event preceding this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Christie found that Streisand and Brolin were sitting in the seats reserved for him and his wife, so he enlisted a Marine guard to have the pair move—twice.

“And during that whole concert,” he told the rabidly applauding Republicans, “I couldn’t help but glance over there, right – and every time I glanced over there, Barbra Streisand was glaring at me. And I said, ‘Another badge of honor for a Republican.’”

What a classy guy: Scoring party points by bragging about inconveniencing other guests at a White House function. Maybe if the gov had hauled his big ol’ self to his place with a bit more punctuality, he wouldn’t have needed to make a stink.

This kind of divisive pettiness will not do Christie any favors when it comes to his future political ambitions. Any public servant with an ounce of decorum knows how to behave himself or herself with those on the other side of the political divide, because–ultimately–you’re working for everybody, those on the right and those on the left. President Barack Obama obviously is aware that celebrities on the right don’t approve of him. But I can’t imagine him considering it a “badge of honor” to, say, yank Pat Boone and his family out of their pews at a national prayer service. And if he did harbor such a thought, he’d know it was petty and would not brag about it.

Say what you will about George W. Bush. When he and Streisand met at the Kennedy Center when she was honored there late in his presidency, he greeted her warmly and even hugged her and planted a kiss on her face. Bush and Streisand both may have gritted their teeth during the encounter. But that’s what you do when you’re a public figure. You behave civilly, cordially. You certainly don’t make a scene in front of foreign dignitaries.

Streisand has obviously always made a point not to speak negatively in public of her colleagues in the entertainment world. Has she had heated disagreements with them? Certainly. How could she not have had? Has she ever trashed her contemporaries in interviews or engaged in public feuds with other singers or actors. Never. After a half-century in the public eye, she knows when she needs to speak up and when it behooves her to stay silent.

Christie may have wound up with a choice seat in the White House on the night he described with such glee yesterday. But if he’s looking for an eventual seat down the hall in the Oval Office, he’d better learn how to play nice—even to a liberal Democrat who has the talent and the will to raise tons of money to help defeat him.