Newt, Calista, Former Congressman Bob Barr, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal
In the week prior to Newt’s homecoming celebration in Carrollton, GA last night, local establishment newspaper Times-Georgian carried no less than five pump-up-the-volume stories about this epic event.
--Newt's visit to Carrollton is set for February 28
--Tuesday will be a Welcome Newt Day
--Governor to welcome Gingrich to Carrollton
--Large turnout expected to greet Gingrich
--Newt to push for $2.50 gas at today's rally
From last Wednesday’s article:
For Carrollton residents, Tuesday will be a “Welcome Home, Newt” celebration of huge proportions as Dr. Newt Gingrich, former West Georgia College history professor, brings his presidential campaign to the site where his political career began.
Details of the planned event were provided to the
Times-Georgian by Dr. Gordon Austin, Third Congressional District Chairman of Newt 2012 and a member of the Newt 2012 finance committee. He said the event would include a closed meet & greet fundraiser from 6-7 p.m. followed by a free public forum from 7-8 p.m.
[There was no mention in the article that a 2008 Carroll County Grand Jury indicted Dr. Austin on nine counts of simple battery, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of first degree cruelty to children, for allegedly beating -- with his fist and a metal object -- patients who were in his dental chair, or the fact that the Georgia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, working under the State Attorney General, brought separate and unrelated charges against Dr. Austin for billing Medicaid for tooth extractions -- at a rate of $250 per tooth -- which he had not performed, or that in a negotiated plea deal, Dr. Austin had agreed to shut down his practice in Georgia and plead guilty to the Medicaid fraud charges, in exchange for the state dropping the criminal assault charges.]
Attendance at the meet & greet required an advanced purchase of a $50 ticket at one of several local merchants, as tickets for such events cannot be sold on campus. I arrived at 6:45, coincidentally pulling into the parking lot at the same time as the Newt 2012 bus, which was obviously 45 minutes late. Having no ticket, I slipped in unnoticed with the entourage, just behind Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, former Congressman Bob Barr, former Congressman Mac Collins, Carrollton Mayor Wayne Garner and Newt biographer Dr. Mel Steely, who was a history professor at West Georgia College when I was a student there many years ago.
Once inside, I was struck by the funeral-like, hushed atmosphere. A u-shaped line had formed, starting at the opposite end of the gym, curving at about where we came in, and then heading back to the other side. The 300 or so people (in my non-scientific estimation), dressed in their finest Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes (for their $50 photo op), stood in a very organized fashion, dutifully following the blue tarps which had been taped to the gym floor.
At the end of the u-shaped line was the photo-op area, a blue-curtained backdrop just behind two American flags flanking a single Georgia flag. Underdressed for either the entourage or the "u" line, I reached into my backpack for my camera and headed towards the photo area, as the entourage made a bizarrely-quiet lap around the “u” to arrive at the photo area from the rear. Without any ado, Newt and Calista lined up on the left side, with Governor Deal on the right, leaving a space in the middle through which they began to quickly herd the line for the “meet & greet.”
I asked one of the real photographers why everyone was so quiet and he said that just prior to the arrival of the entourage, the minders had gone around the room and asked everyone to be quiet. Just speculating, they probably meant for everyone to be quiet until the entourage walked in, then erupt into rapturous applause and squeals of delight as His Pompousness made a triumphal homecoming entry; except, they forgot to instruct the crowd on the latter.
Bored after the first five or so photos, I went downstairs to the free public event in one of the “ballrooms.” To get there, one must first pass through a very large workout gym with the humidity level of a sauna. One can only hope that there was an indoor pool nearby providing the palpable moisture in the air and that it wasn’t bottled-up sweat.
The public event was in one of four ballrooms, all of which appeared to be configurable into one huge ballroom through the use of folding walls. Possibly learning from Mitt’s fiasco at Ford Field, Newt's handlers had everyone packed into one room.
One very humid and hot room.
The people were all standing in a semicircle configuration, facing the stage with the media staging area to their backs. All around the backside of the semicircle and as far deep into the crowd as I could see, were casually-dressed students who appeared to be as excited to be there as anyone who had been required to attend as part of a class assignment.
Assisting me in propping up the back wall, was a young lady who confirmed my suspicion that many were in attendance under duress of a grade.
Around 7:30 a small entourage consisting of Mayor Garner, former Congressman Barr and former Congressman Collins, made its way through the crowd around the back of the room, heading towards the stage. On the faces of the few students who even bothered to look, there was zero recognition of any of these gentlemen.
In an effort to keep the restless crowd from leaving, Mayor Garner took to the stage and asked everyone to please not leave, saying that he had talked with Newt and Newt was very excited about coming to see them, but was running late. “We’ve had weather,” said Mayor Garner, ambiguously stating a universal truism in the hopes that people would assume that the light rain was continuing to cause Newt’s delay as opposed to something like, say, posing for pictures upstairs with people who had $50 that the downstairs crowd didn't have. He went on the say that he thought Newt would “be here” in another 15 minutes to half an hour, without mentioning that he was already in the building and had been for 45 minutes.
Setting the tone for a night of folksy homespun stories with -- what they pretended for the cameras to be -- a crowd of down-home folks who just couldn’t wait to see and hear from their old buddy Newt again, Mayor Garner told the story of a time when he was campaigning for re-election to the state senate at the same time Newt was campaigning for re-election to congress. He said back then he had a big mop of hair (my words) like Newt and was often confused with Newt. One day then-Senator Garner was campaigning in the community of Stoney Point when a guy said to him, “I know who you are, Newt Gingrich, and I wouldn’t vote for you if Hell froze over!” To which Garner replied, “That’s fine because I plan on winning without your damn vote!” Later when then-Senator Garner saw Newt, he warned him not to go campaigning in Stoney Point.
Former Congressman Bob Barr then took to the stage and allowed how “we need someone in the White House who is proud to be an American like Ronald Reagan was and who doesn’t apologize for something they think the U.S. has done wrong.”
Former Congressman Mac Collins was next with ramblings for which the back half of the crowd which I could see, could not even feign any interest. He then introduced Newt’s youngest daughter, Jackie Sue, the one who is the same age as Calista.
Jackie Sue (Photo by Ricky Stilley taken from Times-Georgian article.)
Jackie Sue gave a rather lengthy accounting of her memories of growing up in Carrollton on Howell Road. After crossing Maple Street, Howell Road becomes Front Campus Drive, winding directly into the heart of the campus of West Georgia College, so their home was only a few yards away from his work, a walkable distance, even for Newt. There is a small rise in Howell Road between the Gingrich home and the campus, so she would hear her dad as he walked home, before she actually saw him, because he would be whistling as he walked home. Then she and her sister would run out to follow him, “like the Pied Piper.”
Her other memory of growing up in Carrollton was on the second Earth Day. Even though her dad was a history professor, he taught a class on environmental studies, “which was very cutting edge in the 1970’s.” On Earth Day, she and her sister and dad got out and picked up things on the side of the road. “Someone had thrown out a toilet seat; I don’t know why. But we picked it up and bagged it -- and that’s what we did...helped others.”
That was the entire story.
The first Earth Day, according to Wikipedia, was in 1970, meaning the toilet seat incident occurred in 1971. Jackie Sue was born in 1966.
Jackie Sue then introduced Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, warning that she might become emotional in so doing because Governor Deal was one of the few who stood steadfastly by her dad when other people didn’t.
Governor Deal made a few remarks about serving in congress at the same time as Newt. There was no mention of the fact that tomorrow will mark the two year anniversary of him resigning from congress on March 1, 2010, just ahead of the release of the House Ethics Committee’s report on his ethical violations in using his Congressional staff to protect a no-bid State contract in Georgia.
Governor Deal introduced Calista at 8:05. After a three-minute introduction of Newt, he started speaking at 8:08 -- and didn’t stop until 8:48.
In keeping with the homecoming theme, Newt too had two folksy old stories about life in the storied Carrollton of yesteryear that he wanted to share.
The wife of Newt’s good friend and neighbor on Howell Road, Kip Carter, had been after him to take care of a large tree which was leaning towards the Carter home. So Kip and Newt and another neighbor, fellow professor Henry Dufour, decided they would take the tree down themselves, without calling a tree service. Kip (“who thought he knew everything”) suggested they tie a rope to the top, cut almost all the way through the tree -- on the side away from the lean -- and then they would all pull on the rope.
Newt next mentioned that Professor Dufour -- one of my Sociology professors when I majored in Sociology at West Georgia College in the 80’s -- was only 5’ 5” tall. Being somewhere in that region myself, I mentally retorted that I was sure that whatever errors in their plan resulted from perceived deficiencies in Professor Dufour’s height, were more than adequately compensated for by Newt’s girth.
Too, Professor Dufour served as the Warden of Angola State Prison in Louisiana for several years before turning to teaching, so I’m certain that he wasn’t the weak link.
Newt continued. The tree, he said, weighed about 15,000 pounds and the three men together only weighed about 500 pounds. At this point, a lady in the audience near the stage frightfully and hysterically burst into shattering laughter, causing everyone to heartily laugh -- at her untimely laughter -- not at his tale. It would have been the biggest positive reaction to any of the stories, had it actually been in response to the story.
So the tree fell in the direction of the lean and hit the house and the last thing anyone saw of Kip was him running up the street with his wife chasing after him with a broom.
The irony is that Newt was telling this folksy story as an example of “lifelong friendships” which were formed in Carrollton. To understand the irony, just Google “Kip Carter.” His name is front and center in every article ever written about Newt’s philandering; specifically, he is the source for the “Jackie (1st wife) is not pretty enough to be a first lady” story and the “I had to scurry the daughters away from the car so they wouldn’t see the lady’s head going up and down in Newt’s lap” story.
Newt’s second folksy tell was about him and a friend noticing the red engine-light coming on in the friend’s car and the friend decided not to get it seen about which caused the engine to “freeze up.” Afterwards, that friend became “the most fanatical proponent of changing oil that I have ever seen.”
That was the whole story.
Of course no evening with Newt is complete without a heavy dose of fear mongering. So he launched into Obama’s plan to apply Cain’s 999 plan to raising the price of gas to $9.99 per gallon and Iran posturing in the Straights of Hormuz. He said there were two answers to the problem with Iran; an immediate answer and a long-term answer. The immediate answer is the U.S. Navy. The long-term answer is "to produce enough oil in the U.S. that we don’t care what Iran does."
Sheldon Adelson might be interested to know that Newt’s only issue with Iran is how its actions affect the price of oil.
Without mentioning that President Obama spectacularly neutralized Osama bin Laden, Newt went into detail about how it is inconceivable that OBL lived under the nose of the Pakistani military without them knowing about it. “At some point, someone had to ask, ‘Gee, who lives in the big house down the street?’”
Newt ended with an apocalyptic vision of what was happening as the result of President Obama’s biggest and worst foreign policy failure: apologizing to Muslims for the U.S. military burning copies of the Qur’an. He said churches in Nigeria were burned and no one complained. Churches in Egypt were burned and no one complained. Churches in Malaysia were burned and no one complained. And it is a crime to be a Christian in Saudi Arabia and no one complains.
The crowd near the stage apparently understood what he was trying to say.
He ended the rant with, “no one in this administration is prepared to stand up for our values.”
But the night was most remarkable for the utter patheticness of this much-hyped homecoming to Newt’s loving hometown. Even after all the local newspaper hype, other than possibly a few people in the center of the room whom I could not see (less than a 100 people), there was no outpouring of interest for the rally from the regular homefolk. And while the upstairs crowd was probably made up almost entirely of supporters, it wasn’t a huge crowd in light of this being Newt’s hometown and in light of such a small charge for a presidential fundraiser. Too, probably less than a third of the crowd upstairs even bothered to come downstairs to hear the speech, most leaving after getting their picture struck. And even with scraping the bottom of the barrel, they only managed to come up with down-home stories of old times and old “friends” which sounded like they had been made-up off the cuff by trees-are-the-right-height Romney.
With Newt being this utterly disconnected from the people who are supposed to be his closest friends, it’s no wonder that he hasn’t been able to connect with people on a national level.
I hope Newt lists the Times-Georgian on his donor list for all of the fluff pieces -- online and in print -- which they are providing for him; especially with them reporting as “news” every distortion and lie -- with no critical analysis whatsoever -- that Newt spews. Here's their reporting on the same event: Gingrich in Carrollton: Candidate says he's the one who can beat Obama