Call it Spidergate. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie exploded the myth that he wouldn’t harm a fly over the weekend when he callously sent an innocent spider to its death. As though the act weren’t sufficiently depraved on its face, the governor committed it in front of a group of school children, several of whom afterwards were overheard discussing plans to buy assault weapons as soon as they were legally able.
Nature World News reports:
The incident occurred when the governor was meeting with his daughter’s fourth grade class and in what appears to be his office. Governor Christie smashed the spider with his hand and wiped up with the back of his desk chair and the inside of his pants pocket.
The killing set off alarms at the headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The group’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, called the governor’s actions thoughtless:
He probably did it without thinking. Some people put the spider outside, but spiders are often scary to people, and that can prevent them from pondering their worth.
For those who might doubt the veracity of the story, video evidence exists in the YouTube clip below [Warning: Graphic content]. In it Christie can be seen hunting down and assassinating the arachnid, then quipping:
That’s also one of the fun parts of being governor. Any bugs on your desk you’re allowed to kill them and not get in trouble.
The governor later compounded his sin by tweeting: “Earlier today I saved a few school children from a spider #nobigdeal #toughdayattheoffice.”
In 2009, PETA took a similar stance against President Obama after he swatted a fly during a televised interview. Four years prior to that, police in Ahoskie, N.C., investigating the grisly dumping of dozens of dog carcasses behind a convenience store, staged a stakeout. The sting led to the arrest of two PETA staffers, who were indicted on 21 counts of animal cruelty. At the trial in 2007, PETA attorneys insisted that the employees had acted “acted out of love for animals” and “had no criminal intent.”
Will Christie use the same argument at his own trial? Only time will tell.
Related Articles
- PETA: Prison should serve flesh-free meals to cannibal inmate
- Countdown to announcement that Chris Christie is leaving GOP
- Man arrested for hacking CT resident to death, eating eye and brain
- Are Americans unwittingly helping the Food Police?
- The next frontier for the food police: Eliminating milk from school lunch
- Drunk driver who killed two suing restaurants that served him booze
- 9th Circuit Appeals Court upholds inmate lawsuit demanding Wiccan chaplain
- Outrage: Prison inmates collect unemployment benefits
- Swaziland urged to raise witch-doctor tax to avoid own financial crisis
- Ohio prison system bans pork in response to lawsuit by Muslim death row inmate