What Marianne Gingrich and Al Green Teach Us About the Man Who Could Be President

What Marianne Gingrich and Al Green Teach Us About the Man Who Could Be President

What Marianne Gingrich and Al Green Teach Us About the Man Who Could Be President

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Last night’s 179th GOP debate of the season taught us so much, again, about the GOP candidates: socialism for the military, no government at all for anyone else, protect zygotes, execute humans, “I swear I never once provided a single person with healthcare”/ “Yes you did!”/ “Did not!”/ “Did too!,” etc. But the biggest revelations of last night did not occur at the debates.

Thursday, I blogged about Marianne Gingrich, one of Newt’s several exes, and her tell-a-little interview (and how inconceivable sex with Newt Gingrich was to me). That was based on a mere preview of Marianne’s interview that ABC had released. But after the debate, ABC ran the entire at-least-a-couple-of-minutes-long interview. Here’s what stood out:

• Gingrich left his first wife after she got cancer and left Marianne after she got MS. The take-away is that at least Newt is consistent and that Callista better take her multi-vitamins, though she does have her age on her side.

• It was while he was cheating on his wife that Newt crucified Clinton for his infidelity and stated that there was “no administration with less moral authority than the Clinton-Gore administration.”

• Marianne Gingrich knows about only “some of” the skeletons Newt keeps in his closet since, presumably, he has more skeletons than could fit in one closet or one person’s mind. And, of course, Newt has continued collecting skeletons since leaving his wife, so she’s in the dark on those.

So, last night, we learned, or relearned, that Newt Gingrich is seriously one of the most disgusting, cheating, hurtful, wife-hopping people in the world. We also learned something about President Obama that puts him on the other end of the disgusting/adorable spectrum. And that is that he can sing! Which he did, at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Perhaps Newt’s unfaithfulness (and the fact that Al Green was at the fundraiser) was what made Obama sing a few (too few) bars from Green’s classic, “Let’s Stay Together” and, specifically, the words “I’m so in love with you.” I pity the wives of Gingrich, but I envy Michelle Obama. See the video and look out for the president’s Kermit the Frog moves. It should convince the “there’s no difference between a Republican and a Democrat” crowd that, when it comes to Gingrich and Obama, there’s a huge difference, at least on a personal level. And, of course, as we all know, the personal is political.

 

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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