Great Bores of the Modern Age: Newt Gingrich

"The right to bear arms comes from our creator, not our government . . . . A Gingrich presidency will submit to the UN a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right to every person on the planet.”

    - Newt Gingrich at the NRA forum, Celebration of American Values Leadership, April 13, 2012

"Is there a Mister Newt Gingrich at home?"

Let's be clear about this: it now transpires, in the fevered logic of the American right, that a person who lacks a photo ID in this country does not have the right of franchise; none of us has the right to health care we can afford; some of our citizens (many of them aligned with Gingrich) argue that women have right of access neither to contraceptives nor to abortions; and yet every person - on the planet - has the right, endowed by the creator no less, to have and carry a gun? And more, since many states have extended "personhood" into the womb (in the case of Arizona even before fertilization occurs), it's anyone's guess how many little unnamed zygotes, cytoblasts and homunculi might qualify for concealed carry permits in this country alone. "Mommy doesn't like you playing with guns" just doesn't carry any weight in the modern age.

"I have a gun, Daddy has a gun, my zygotes have guns."

For my text today, (since someone mentioned the creator) I have chosen a passage from Genesis, chapter one: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And he gave unto each, male and female gave he unto them, a cache of automatic assault weapons, and handguns without number, that they might have dominion over the face of the earth." 

I mean, fer Chrissakes, if the creator hadn't wanted us to have dominion, then he would have made animals bulletproof - not to mention people. QED, right?

Eve, American-style

As it happens to be Gingrich we're talking about, "the planet" would also include the moon. And presumably the Afterlife, where the streets of Paradise will be littered with small-arms shell casings of gold. Heaven will be like a paintball paradise with real gunfire, where no one ever gets seriously injured (they're already dead, see?) Admittedly a little gunplay could relieve the tedium of eternal self-consciousness, but for myself I was hoping to get in a little quiet flyfishing by the rivers of Babylon or wherever we're ultimately parked.

The notion that rights are endowed by divine fiat rather than by an enlightened system of government is the sort of superstition that could find an audience only in this country and in some retrograde African kingdoms. To suggest that God has granted a universal right to own a gun is shameless delusional humbug, beneath comment, particularly in the aftermath of several noteworthy bullet-riddled episodes in the past month, which any internet search will find quickly. And why stop at small arms? By the same argument, shouldn't it be any person's right to own some rocket-powered grenade launchers, an armored tank and maybe a Mercedes Benz in the garage? This way lies madness, of course. Lifting international bans on arms dealing would, by these lights, be a form of humanitarian aid.

Gingrich is not talking about the typical American hunter, nor the gun aficionado who keeps a locked collection of firearms, some of which as artifacts can be quite nifty things, I'm told. A couple of things seem to have escaped his notice: first, the members of al Qaeda are persons on the planet who will also share in Newt's magnanimity; and second, a New York court has just ignored the creator's wish for his creatures by sentencing a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, to 25 years for selling guns to the same al Qaeda.

No, Newt's peculiarly American vision of global human rights, which incidentally brought down the house at the NRA forum, looks more like this:

"Putting the Infant in Infantry"

He Rises for the National Anthem

It requires no great native intellect to figure out that if the excuse you've proffered your wife for your adultery didn't work on her, it probably won't work with more than, say, a few million of the Republican faithful old enough to vote. Newt Gingrich was led to cheat on his second wife with his third-wife-to-be, the hapless victim of a supererogatory patriotism. Newt has explained time and again to an aggrieved ex-wife and numberless interviewers that, “There’s no question, at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

Well, he's correct - there's no question that "not appropriate" things happened. When things happen, of course, we're always invited to take the generous view and suppose that whatever happened was not entirely within another's power to prevent happening, and that by itself is as good as not having done anything, really - the thing, I mean, which admittedly did happen.You have to hand it to him - he carries his own baggage where everyone can see it.

Let's try this out. Suppose a fellow comes home late from work, suspiciously tardy on yet another evening. He's confronted by an angry and skeptical wife who asks him where the hell he's been all this time. The obvious answer, the one that he'll probably try on first, is that he had to work late. It's plausible, it might just work one more time. Maybe she's not buying it any longer - the scent of another woman, two ticket stubs in his pocket to an anime movie she never saw, a $30,000 Tiffany charge she doesn't recall, any number of little things that an intimate who can add two and two will turn into evidence for the prosecution.

  "Miss me, dear?"

In the circumstance, it would be immediately clear to the normal adulterer that some extenuating considerations must be floated - she doesn't mean anything to me, it's the only time I've ever, it's really you I love, I've been such a cad. Admittedly all pretty weak, calculated to have a cumulative and long-term palliation rather than immediate alleviation of the discomfort. And these have been proven to work sometimes.

To his credit, though, Newt avoided the cliche, probably not caring to extricate himself, failing to see any transgression, constitutionally incapable of employing any tactic save pure effrontery. Basically he told the aggrieved Mrs. Gingrich II that he was having an affair because he had to work late, not that he was working late because he was having an affair. It was his own recognition of his value to a grateful nation, a nation he felt "passionately" about, that occasioned his fall from grace. If Newt's real passion was his country, then it seems any reasonable woman should have said, "Oh, well - that's all right, then."

Obviously she didn't say that. And from there, I can only imagine what ensued . . .

"What's the bitch's name?"

"For reasons of national security I'm not at liberty to say."

"National security - or personal security?"

"I don't see those as distinct. It's a weird name, anyway."

"'Weird' how? - you mean weird like Squeaky? or weird like Conestoga?"

"You know, this really shouldn't be a big deal. Why can't you be more . . . European about this?"

"European about what? I thought Europeans were socialists."

"Well, indeed they are, but I just mean civilized. Why can't you just be open and accepting, like a woman with some culture would be? 'European' in its most positive sense."

"Meaning . . . ? What is it I'm accepting - you screwing around with some tart?"

"If you wish to put it that way. 'European,' when it doesn't mean 'socialist,' means that the man in a relationship gets to carry on and it's none of the wife's business. An open marriage, if you like."

"And what about me? How about I start banging John Boehner's golf caddy?"

"Not on your life. You make everything about you. Where did you learn that kind of talk, anyway? This isn't about you, it's bigger than both of us - it's about my patriotism, which you obviously can't or won't share. It's about my love for my country. I've worked hard to make America a better place for . . . us. I'm passionate about this great nation - I suppose you could say my passion overflowed its cup, but what could be the fault in that? I can't help it, I'm the kind of man who rises when I hear the national anthem. I'm leaving you for the Star Spangled Banner."

"That one works too."

Vote Naked

In Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust, a boring English aristocrat named Tony Last divorces an unfaithful wife, turns his back on England and escapes into the Brazilian rain forest. Lost, marooned in the jungle, Tony falls ill and wanders delirious into an isolated village where he is nursed back to health by the illiterate half-caste Englishman, Mr. Todd. Todd is a lover of Dickens, and Tony's fate is to remain Todd's prisoner for life in the remote jungle, reading aloud to him from Todd's mildewed set of Dickens' novels.

"By the time that they were in the second volume however, the novelty of the old man's delight had begun to wane, and Tony was feeling strong enough to be restless. He touched more than once on the subject of his departure, asking about canoes and rains and the possibility of finding guides. But Mr. Todd seemed obtuse and paid no attention to these hints.

One day, running his thumb through the pages of Bleak House that remained to be read, Tony said, 'We still have a lot to get through. I hope I shall be able to finish it before I go.'

'Oh yes,' said Mr. Todd. 'Do not disturb yourself about that. You will have time to finish it, my friend.' "

This bizarre scenario returns to mind because it seems to me that the only thing worse than a lifetime of reading Dickens to an illiterate might have been sitting through a reading of Dickens by the author himself.

"You there, Sir - sit down!"

No, I take that back. The only thing worse than a lifetime of reading Dickens to an illiterate is the quadrennial runup to the Presidential election, in which, by a horrible role reversal, serial illiterates read some version of Dickens to the rest of us.

The field, of course, will be dominated by the Micawberesque blather and humbug of Gingrich. Adding to Gingrich's brand of humbug is Tom Miller, a "career flight attendant" whose political website sports the same litany of imminent fears familiar to any Republican and Faux News listener, everything from "Elected officials publicly dismissing the United States of America as a Judeo-Christian nation," to "Enemies captured on a foreign battlefield to be brought into our cities, tried within our public court systems, and given the rights and protections of a U.S. citizen" to "The wage of Federal employees to be 90% higher than the average of private sector employees" to "My President to appoint 36 czars, bypassing the Congressional confirmation process, giving these individuals a Federal authority over the citizens of the U.S.A." And more from the same hymnal.

But beyond the seemingly unending prospects of watching a waffling Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty's mindless embrace of contradiction, Michelle Bachmann's ignorance, Sarah Palin's cute gormlessness, Rick Perry's razor-cut machismo, Herman Cain's clueless affability, there are some bright spots in Bleak House. I'm not making any of this up just to add the spice of irony to another deadening political cycle.

For 2012, there is even a Democrat willing to take his chances against the incumbent, a chap named Randall Terry. Terry is a used car dealer from upstate New York and founder of the militant anti-abortion Operation Rescue. 

"I'll have an LGBT on white bread."

Terry is in favor of life, according to the introductory blurb on the nonpartisan website 2012.presidential-candidates.org. "[I]t may seem a little odd for a pro-life and anti-LGBT candidate to run for the Democratic nomination," his introductory copy concedes in understatement which, like the impending campaign, is devoid of any irony. Presumably Terry is for life, so long as it resembles neither a prime rib nor some person who behaves in ways which are none of his business. Fortunately the national patience will not be much taxed by Terry, whose mantle of sanctimony will doubtless be worn, again with merciful brevity, by Rick Santorum, the ex-Congressman whom Pennsylvania wisely forebore to return to his duties in Washington.

"I can't feel a thing." 

The candidate, who was reportedly lobotomized during a rowdy Republican fundraiser in the 2000 election cycle ("I thought it was the tattoo room"), claims civil liberties as his first concern - he opposes abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gay adoption, the teaching of evolution, sharia law, and gun control. He supports the Patriot Act, torture and domestic wiretapping. He apparently lacks an economic or foreign affairs agenda, presuming that a nation free from sin and theological error is a safe and happy place, where poverty strengthens character and where war is something we do to someone else.

On the Tea Party ticket there is Robert Burck, better known as the Naked Cowboy, "The World's Most Celebrated Entertainer."  Burck was a tourist attraction on Times Square for many years, his most recent ambition to be "the wealthiest person who has ever lived," presumably edging out Mithridates, Darius and Cyrus (kings of Persia), Ptolemy of Egypt, and Porfirio Rubirosa (the good always die young - in Ferraris). For $500, you can be married in Times Square by the "Reverend Naked Cowboy," although his official website makes no mention of his presidential aspirations nor does it outline a policy agenda. Naked is a notoriously litigious cowpoke, the stuff America's political heritage is made of.

Robert Burck: The next Johnson?

Last, though in this field it's always hard to tell who might be least, I give you Jimmy ("The Rent is Too Damn High") McMillan, who has retooled a failed mayoral bid in New York City (2009) and a failed gubernatorial bid in New York State (2010) as a Republican presidential run. Some people just can't be rejected by enough other people at one time to be happy. This tonsorial artifact and curiosity of the barber's skill has since shifted his sights to President Obama, warning that, "If you don't do your job right, I am coming at you." McMillan filed a legal notice against the New York City Board of Elections for removing the word "damn" from his party's name on mayoral ballots, arguing that from all he can find in the King James Bible, "Damn is the word of God."

McMillan explained to a gathering of Young Republicans at New York University, in a flotsam of prepositions and pronouns adrift of their referents, that, “Daddy gotta do what Daddy gotta do [when] you can’t afford to live here, you can’t afford to buy that," adding, "It’s easy to talk to you cuz you like my kids.” Presumably McMillan has sired several upper-class white children who can afford the freight at NYU. And for many presidential aspirants, conversation is always much easier once grammatical constraints are scuttled.

On second thought, I may have taken too dim a view - maybe things won't be so dismal this year, at least until the wheat of sanctimony is threshed from the chaff of comedy. I'll even take back what I said earlier about Sarah Palin. If she runs, that'll be fun, too. But for my money, it's the Naked Cowboy by a furlong (or a farsang, whichever is longer).

 Vote Naked