This is sick. This will churn your stomach. This will make you puke. This is Newt Gingrich in the raw. This is the mind of the radical rightwing at work.
Esquire is running a long article about Newt Gingrich that features a lengthy interview with his ex-wife Marianne (actually, his SECOND ex-wife). Now, I know, hell has no fury like an ex-wife and maybe Marianne is furious. However, if you read what she says about Newt and if you then examine Newt's actions in light of Marianne's interview, it seems to me that she's right on.
You really need to read the full article.
Let's inject a bit of history. Newt married his first wife -- one of his high school teachers -- to avoid the military draft during the Vietnam War. Later, he told friends that he needed to divorce her because she "is not pretty enough to be a politician's wife." Newt was carrying on an affair with Marianne at the time. He served divorce papers on his first wife while she was in ICU recovering from cancer surgery. He married Marianne then started an affair with a young staffer -- Callista, about half his age -- at the same time he was attacking Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. Newt then divorced Marianne to marry Callista.
Now -- back to the Esquire article. Here is a section in which Newt's second wife, Marianne, discusses their divorce. She says the divorce did not come as a particular surprise since Gingrich had also carried on an affair with her while still married to his first wife and even "went to the hospital to present her with divorce terms while she was recovering from uterine cancer."
From Esquire's interview with Newt:
But Marianne was having problems of her own. After going to the doctor for a mysterious tingling in her hand, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother's birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn't return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.
"About what?"
He wanted to talk in person, he said.
"I said, 'No, we need to talk now.' "
He went quiet.
"There's somebody else, isn't there?"
She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?
She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. " 'I can't handle a Jaguar right now.' He said that many times. 'All I want is a Chevrolet.' "
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.
The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"
"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."
Got that???
"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."
Republican morality in action.
Excuse me but I'm running off to puke.