My apologies for writing about Mr. Gingrich twice in one week. It's a sadistic imposition on you and masochistic for me. But, his unrelenting evil makes public vigilance (I just typed "pubic vigilance" first; a Freudian slip) a civic obligation. So no matter how much he makes our skin crawl, his presence merits a certain prominence in any regular commentary. As pre-fortification I recommend Gas-X and a liberal shot of scotch.
Newt has become another, perpetually reinventing Nixon -- without the brains. Like some classical music that isn't really as good as it sounds, he's a windbag cum laude who nevertheless has the strategic foresight to pepper conservative media with subsidiary puppets who periodically praise him as an underdoggedly "big idea man."
You will notice, however, that the puppets never actually cite any of these big ideas. When you can find one, merely scratching its surface reveals a lurking imbecility normally found only in booby hatches where similar "big ideas" sprout hourly like mushrooms. Best to keep any details of his genius murky.
But let us not further tarry on the nonexistent or insane. Let us, rather, proceed to the latest talk of the town about Newt, which as you know by now has centered on his family values. In brief, he likes fresh and numerous ones. Families, that is, not values. Come to think of it, in his case this tedious rallying cry should be "families values."
Yet what a contrite little demagogue he is. Though his purification did not quite measure up to Jimmy Swaggart's on-air emotional catharsis, Newt braced himself for Focus on the Famil(ies)'s James Dobson's lumbering softball question about dalliances with ladies other than his wife(s) -- Mr. Dobson tastefully eschewed the more common term: adultery -- and answered, according to the cleansed AP transcript, "The honest answer is yes." (His actual response on tape was somewhat stuttered, with a "well" and a "fact is.")
Naturally, given Speaker Ahab's recent obsession with ridding our fair nation of high government officials who've engaged in improper conduct, his public confession to what everyone already knew raised the question: Is he a hypocrite?
To which I answer: No, or at least not really. For that's an insult to hypocrisy. I, for instance, am a hypocrite when I forgive liberal politicians for dipping into conservative customs of back-peddling and flip-flopping they normally decry, and of course they're hypocrites when they do it. But that's just necessary tradition, and playing with its finer edges is an exquisite and noble political art.
Newt, however, transcends mere hypocrisy. Wrapped in the flag, toting a cross, and still unforgiving of others, he stretches insincerity to unexplored heights, insulting not only hypocrisy, but every traditional notion of authentic remorse and genuine contrition. Any real man of his hyperactive balls would simply say "I screwed up and, consequently, out of verifiable sorrow I'm outta here." But that of course would mean he's actually outta here, and, like Nixon, "outta here" isn't something Newt does.
So let us not cast the forgiving and easily escapable net of hypocrisy over Newt. Let us, rather, express ourselves with lasting Old Testament wrath, and simply treat him as what he is: a squalid, unrepentant little man of utmost detestability.