Newt: Open Wide

With all the talk about the Johns' affairs (Edwards and McCain), I couldn't help but remember my favorite hypocrite of all time, Newt Gingrich. Steve Benen at WashingtonMonthly.com wrote this in his delightfully titled piece "High Fidelity":

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, "Let Our Family Represent Your Family." (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

What's the difference between the description of "is" and "where did you ejaculate"? Oh Newtie. If only you had run for president. It would have been a field day.

More Gingrich Absurdity

A little more in-depth information regarding the darling of the right, the “intellectual,” Newt Gingrich. Here's a summary of Gingrich's family life, from Scoobie Davis):

1) Gingrich marries his high school teacher, Jackie, who was seven years his senior.
2) Jackie puts Gingrich through college and she works hard to get him elected to the House in 1978 (Gingrich won partly because his campaign claimed that his Democratic opponent would neglect her family if elected -- at that time it was common knowledge that Gingrich was straying).
3) Shortly after being elected, Gingrich separated from his wife -- announcing the separation in the hospital room where Jackie was recovering from cancer surgery (the divorce was final in 1981); Jackie Gingrich and her children had to depend on alms from her church because Gingrich didn't pay any child support.
4) Six months after the divorce, Gingrich, then 38, married Marianne Ginther, 30.
5) "In May 1999, however, Gingrich [55] called Marianne [48] at her mother's home. After wishing the 84-year-old matriarch happy birthday, he told Marianne that he wanted a divorce." This was eight months after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
6) In 2000, Gingrich, 57, married ex-congressional aide Callista Bisek, 34 (kind of like an intern ... my comment), with whom he was having a relationship while married to Marianne.

Bill Clinton was wrong to philander about, and he should have had more sense than to fool around with an intern. But two things need to be said: Clinton’s perjury had to do with being reticent about admitting a sexual tryst … hardly something that would bring down a nation, and, truthfully, it was just an attempt to smear and embarrass Clinton. Conservatives should really look at themselves before making their stupid claims of hatred of Bush.

Nothing Bill Clinton did compares in banality and pure evil than what Gingrich did to his women. The man is a pig.

An Angry Lefty for One Day

I’m just angry today. Yep, I’m an angry person today and I am a liberal so … viola … I’m a member of the angry left … today.

My good friend and blogging buddy, James Wigderson, author of Wigderson Library and Pub (which is a very fine blog) annoyed me yesterday and today (perhaps it was his intention) with his rant about the right needing to reach for a higher standard … a standard higher than liberal offensive speech … and his off-handed defense of Newt Gingrich's indiscretions.

I was flabbergasted at both the audacity and sagaciousness of his posts. Flabbergasted at the audacity because, other than some punks out in blogger land who write some truly offensive things about the President, who say offensive things about the vice president … you know, ordinary citizens who admittedly have the IQs of mice … it’s conservatives who dominate the mean-spirited end of the free speech spectrum. I’ve documented the notorious members of this brigade of hate, so I will not repeat myself.

But, I’m also flabbergasted at his sagaciousness because … well, James would be a great speech writer. I can see the less informed members of the conservative coalition (most of them) nodding their heads in unison at his seemingly convincing words.

Tom Tomorrow covers the Coulter phenomenon well … and the fact that she does not get it. No matter how many times James and others decry Coulter, the fact is a vast majority of conservatives enjoy and support her filthy mouthings.

The mouth that roared

Coulter explains her harmless, inoffensive little joke:
Right and I suspect everyone listening to your show knows about that. I mean, I know — well, I guess Pat is out in America now; you’re primarily in New York City. I give a lot of speeches out in America, I frequently visit America, and Americans are pretty freaked out about somebody going to rehab for using a word, and that’s of course what I was referring to. And I don’t think there’s anything offensive about any variation of faggy, faggotry, faggot, fag. It’s a schoolyard taunt. It means — it means wussy. It means, you know, Hillary giving a speech in a fake Southern drawl — that’s faggy. A trial lawyer who weeps before juries is faggy. Lifetime-type TV, faggy. Everyone understood I was not literally calling — well, I was not calling — well, for one thing, I wasn’t calling John Edwards anything. That was the whole point. I couldn’t talk about him, his life’s work, his appeasement policies, his wimpiness on foreign policy, because that word is out of bounds. So, in point of fact, I called John Edwards nothing. I said I couldn’t even discuss him because using any variation of that totally excellent word would send me into rehab.

This is, of course, the woman who “jokes” about murdering New York Times reporters en masse and assassinating Supreme Court judges and Democratic Presidents. Nonetheless, I find this defense extraordinary. Up until last week, there wasn’t a person in this country who would have argued that “faggot” is just a harmless word, offensive to no one. To say that it’s just a “schoolyard taunt” — well, I spent my middle school years in the south at the height of the integration battles (America being the place where I grew up and live today, unlike Ann, who apparently views it as a foreign land she sometimes has to visit). There were plenty of “schoolyard taunts” in those days targeted toward race, far beyond the “n” word. By Ann’s logic, she should be free to use any of them in discussing Barack Obama, because they were nothing more than harmless “taunts.” Why, if she phrased the joke properly — “I can’t call Obama a —— because it would be sooooo politically incorrect, ha ha ha!” — she could even claim that she hadn’t called him anything at all.
I invite her to try.

… it’s also sad that Ann, allegedly a professional writer, can’t think of a single way to discuss her negative feelings toward a presidential candidate without using a term that is considered hateful and offensive by most rational people. Maybe she should consider another line of work.


Lastly, James posts that the media still doesn’t get it about the Clinton impeachment. I’ve already commented at James’ site … the problem is James doesn’t get it. It really is about hypocrisy … James, and Gingrich, once again use that tried and true argument called equivalency in an attempt to sway the meager minds of their audience, however, the fact is Gingrich had an affair. For him to claim to be an authority on what is moral and a value is a travesty. For him to sit in judgment of Bill Clinton is ridiculous. For James to ignore it and to twist it in a different direction is a travesty, too.

Newt Gingrich is an Offensive Person

Gingrich can claim all he wants that he is not being a hypocrite (read the article) about having had an affair while leading the charge to impeach Clinton (over dubious charges … any lie he made having nothing to do with running this country, rather sexual indiscretions with an intern) … and now admits all this with James Dobson, grupenfuhrer of Focus With the Family.

Gotta love the christian conservatives. Now Newt will be forgiven in the eyes of god and all will be good.

Another Suggestion to Reduce our Rights

Another prime example of conservatives' disregard for our rights. Newt Gingrich opens his mouth and freedom of speech is disavowed.

-- Joe Conason

The flimsy philosophizing of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and aspiring Presidential candidate, isn't designed to bear any great weight. For many years, he has been willing to say anything that would win him the public attention and political power he still craves. Yet in the mainstream media and among Republicans, his intellectual pretensions are often taken seriously -- and when he promotes authoritarian "solutions" to national problems, that must be taken seriously too.

His latest insight is that America can only survive if we impose severe curbs on freedom of speech.

At a recent event in New Hampshire -- where he shows up often these days -- Mr. Gingrich explained why he believes that the First Amendment must be reconsidered in these trying times. He chose to deliver these remarks at an annual dinner held in memory of the late publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, honoring individuals who stand up for free speech.
He told the stunned audience that we are facing a "long-term war," or what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called "the Long War," which requires new strategies and tactics to thwart Islamic jihadism. We confront an existential threat "that will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons."
He went on to advocate measures that "use every technology we can find to break up [the terrorists'] capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us."

Such vague prescriptions sound sensible enough. Certainly no sane person wants terrorists using the Internet, and nobody wants them recruiting young suicide bombers on the Internet, either.

The problem is in the details. Exactly how the former Speaker would deter the enemies of freedom from using free speech was anything but clear.

About a week after his New Hampshire speech, he expanded on his remarks in an article for the ultraconservative Union-Leader newspaper. "The fact is that not all speech is permitted under the Constitution," he wrote. He noted the ominous remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the outreach by Hezbollah to sympathizers in Latin America, and the stated determination of Islamist militants to "use the Internet for the sake of jihad." He suggested that the government be empowered to shut down Web sites that recruit suicide bombers and urged "an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents."

That's only a sample of the many big mouthfuls of rhetoric emanating from Mr. Gingrich on this topic, but you get the idea.

When he appeared on Meet the Press on Dec. 17, host Tim Russert asked him how his fantasy would work. Who would define such murky offenses as "advocacy of terrorism" or "violent conduct"?

Mr. Gingrich seemed to be annoyed by the question. His answer was not only unimpressive but also unintentionally funny.

"You close down any Web site that is jihadist," he said.

"But who makes that judgment?" insisted Mr. Russert.

"Look, I -- you can appoint three federal judges if you want to and say, 'Review this stuff and tell us which ones to close down.' I would just like to have them be federal judges who've served in combat," replied Mr. Gingrich.

Considering the source, that was a remarkably weird response. A panel of three judges who've served in combat? As a qualification for making crucial decisions about combating terrorists, combat service would surely eliminate Mr. Gingrich -- a certified chicken-hawk who loves war but successfully avoided the Vietnam draft -- from running for President.
Logic aside, he has offered at least one example of how he would apply his new set of speech standards. He believes that the six Muslim scholars who were removed from a plane in Minneapolis last month for such suspicious behavior as praying in the airport "should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists."

That ridiculous assertion could only have thrilled the leadership of Al Qaeda. Nothing they can ever put on a Web site or videotape will be nearly as effective in encouraging young Muslims to hate America and reject freedom as Mr. Gingrich's cloddish demagogy.

Some moron out there will acuse the media of being biased for asking tough querstions of Newty. I'm not feeling nice ... tough shit.