Chris Christie, incoming governor of New Jersey, has a brother. The two are very close and very alike, and the New York Times has an article that runs through everything about the pair that is similar. They are both very devoted to the political career of Chris, the elder, for example. (Todd, leading up to Chris’s election, worked connections for him and donated $200,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association and $225,000 to the RNC. In high school and college, he even stumped for his brother’s student-council elections.) They are both driven. (Todd earned $60 million by selling his company to Goldman Sachs in his mid-30s.) Their histories are both tinged with controversy. (Todd’s firm was investigated for cheating customers, though he was only part of a civil-court settlement.)
And, they, uh, look alike. “Even at first glance, it is easy to recognize that the two men are brothers,” the Times writes, as if we couldn’t tell from the selected photo of Todd squeezed behind his office desk. “There is an obvious physical resemblance” between the two, the paper snickers, which includes their “big smiles” and their “hulking frames.” Big smiles? That’s got to be our favorite new euphemism for newspapers to use when they’re just dying to call a guy “distressingly cowlike.” He’s just got a big smile!
