The "O" is for Obese: Take-Aways from TIME's Christie Elephant GOP Cover

• With the silhouette making CC’s outline the main act, the double entendre here is really vicious. On the controversy scale, Yahoo equates it to the “breastfeed ’em till they’re old enough to drive” cover. Seriously, if you’re overweight and you have to stand next to that cover in the checkout line at CVS this week, you’re collateral damage.

• Perhaps it’s an easier thing for America to a elect it’s first black president than it’s first fat one – given how image conscious we are. But maybe Christie is really not the big number here. Just as the endangered wing of the GOP asserted itself over the anorexically-libertarian Tea Partiers on Tuesday, perhaps the larger point is that the corporate wing of the party — the ones underwriting all those China-trumping-inventions and spurring the super-sizing of everything –is going large.

• Hmm, dying to know what “Gods of Food” is about.

• Now in the running for lap band poster boy and hitting the treadmill, this may all be a moot by the time the ’16 Iowa State Fair rolls around. Hold the deep fried butter on a stick?

• Yeah, like being anointed early is a good thing!

• In spite of the focus on his size, isn’t it interesting that the anatomical feature most emphasized is still his mouth?

(photo: Dennis Van Tine. original photo caption: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in Port Monmouth, NJ on Oct. 14)