Until this week, I had thought we were beginning to get past the relentless overuse of the word "bully." Now here I am, feeling compelled to address bullying in a column.
It's Chris Christie's fault, really. He's the one who declared, in his Thursday news conference, "I am not a bully," pushing back against those who say the tone he has set in his administration as governor of New Jersey led to the scandal that now ensnares him.
So bullying is back in the news, and I am forced to address this topic, rather against my will. You may say Chris Christie has bullied me into it.
Not that this is my first personal exposure to bullying. An older kid named Bart gave me a taste of it on the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School playground when I was 10 years old.
Bart was big, dumb and rich. I was skinny, smart and lived in a house my family didn't own. That apparently made me a good target, though I can't recall what finally led Bart to confront me one day and slap my face. It stung my pride more than my cheek, but I didn't want the big guy to whale on me, so I just mumbled something and walked away. Bart swaggered on to his next victim.
Unlike lots of kids, I was undamaged, and in saying that the word "bullying" has been overused I do not mean to diminish the toll that bullies impose, in both private and public settings. Too many children have been scarred by bullies' emotional harassment or physical abuse. According to the National Education Association, one-third of students report being bullied in school, and half of teens say they've been cyberbullied.
But the real hurtful incidents have been nearly overshadowed in recent years by the careless description of all sorts of incidents as bullying. You are not being bullied if a school board president brings down a gavel at the end of your five-minute rant. It's not bullying when a neighbor tells your kid that shrieking teenagers outside at midnight are disturbing his sleep. Every stressful incident is not bullying.
And there is legitimate concern that all the talk of bullying isn't doing as much good as you may think. At about the same time last fall that vengeful aides to Christie closed traffic lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a politically uncooperative mayor — to the governor's complete surprise, he now says — a University of Texas researcher reported that school bullying prevention campaigns have actually increased incidences of physical and emotional attacks, by teaching kids about the ins and outs of bullying. Dr. Seokjin Jeong suggests that students in schools with anti-bullying programs are more likely to be victimized, not less.
Bullies loom large in popular culture, from the football toughs in episodes of "Glee" back to Biff bugging George McFly in "Back to the Future" or the guy from the mean dojo beating up "The Karate Kid."
And in our politics, lots of guys have bullied other guys. George Reedy, a close adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson, described LBJ thus: "He was a bully who would exercise merciless sarcasm on people who could not fight back but could only take it." Johnson, by many accounts, routinely humiliated and picked on staffers.
As governor, Mario M. Cuomo did not shy from using his extraordinary intellect and verbal skills to diminish those of lesser ability. To reporters or political opponents who weren't mentally agile enough to keep up, the competition could be withering.
But that's a different degree of intimidation from what is alleged to be the all too typical behavior of Chris Christie. In the YouTube era, we're able to see one incident after another in which the former federal prosecutor tramples critics:
During a town hall meeting in 2012, he calls a Navy SEAL who questions his higher education policies "an idiot" and a "jerk." A Democratic legislator who says the governor shouldn't have used a state helicopter to attend a few innings of his son's baseball game is also a "jerk." A reporter asking a question on a topic Christie doesn't want to address gets this: "Are you stupid?" On a hot July night on the Jersey Shore in 2012, the governor starts to go for a constituent who dares to ask him to take care of teachers. "You're a real big shot!" Christie shouts. "Keep walkin'! Keep walkin'!" An aide puts a hand on Christie's back and guides him away.
Some people love tough-talking politicians. So what if it's the kind of rudeness your mom wouldn't have liked? (She always said you would outgrow it.)
So when Christie claims that the revenge lane closures that have now led to the departures of four top aides left him "humiliated... very sad.... heartbroken," you might understand. Just setting up some traffic cones is mild stuff, right? Let's not overuse that "bullying" stuff.
Still, it's unfortunate that Christie's most pungent comment — "I am not a bully" — is such an unfortunate echo of Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate-era remark, "I am not a crook." Which, you know, he turned out to be.