I agree that Christie's behavior was idiotic. That said, what annoyed me the most about the coverage is that the coverage never discussed why the shutdown occurred (at least in sufficient detail to allow people to debate it). This is a so-called small government politician who is shutting down his state government because a left-wing state assembly speaker was putting up some resistance to shaking down an insurance company (to raid the reserve fund that is built from people's premiums). That to me is the real issue (he's always done dickish things like the beach incident).