5 things I did not know about "Newt Gingrich"

[underpants]

He was born Newton Leroy McPherson (later adopted by his stepfather)
He married his high school geometry teacher (he was 19 she 26)
He is Catholic (2009 conversion)
He is a dinosaur enthusiasts
His cell phone ringtone is ABBA's "Dancing Queen" - he is a big fan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich

I DID know that in 1992 he defeated then US Congressman Ben "Cooter" Jones (Dukes of Hazzard) whose house had been redistricted into Newt's district
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_L._Jones

[n2doc]

1. Things I do know

He divorced his first wife while she was in the hospital with cancer, after starting an affair with an intern.

He then married that intern, and later divorced her.

He is a scumball and a hypocrite

He is a flip-flopper of the first order (see positions on Libya and on the Ryan budget plan, for recent examples)

He left office in disgrace, a tough thing to accomplish for congressmen.

In a truly moral country he would be living in obscurity, as no news outlet would dare to give him a voice.

[underpants]

8. The Wikipedia link disputes the cancer-divorce story

but hey :shrug: Sorry Newtie that story is already sunk into the dialogue like those lame Al Gore joke-comments about the internet and weather.

[n2doc]

13. well...

Gingrich married his second wife, Marianne Ginther, months after he divorced Battley in 1981. According to Battley, Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery.

"There are things in my own life that I have gotten on my knees and turned to God and prayed about," Gingrich said.

Clinton Impeachment Proceedings

Gingrich also acknowledged cheating on Ginther while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

source:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2937633&page=1

Guess it depends on who you want to believe. I wouldn't believe Newt if he told me the sky was blue and water was wet.

[roxiejules]

15. Newt: "I'll say you're lying"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair1.html - via PBS by Gail Sheehy, 1995


Along with his amorphous political persona, Newt showed a propensity for the kind of behavior boys boast about in the locker room. Throughout his first campaign he was having an affair with a young volunteer. Dot Crews, who occasionally drove the candidate, says that almost everybody involved in the campaign knew. Kip Carter claims, "We'd have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her on the desk."

The Gingriches entered marriage counseling, but Newt continued to behave as if other people's rules didn't apply to him. Dot Crews observes, "It was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his marriage to Jackie. One of those women, Anne Manning, became romantically involved with Gingrich during his '76 campaign. "We had oral sex," she says. "He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, "I never slept with her." Indeed, before Gingrich left that evening, she says, he threatened her: "If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll say you're lying."

In April 1980, he told Jackie, who was suffering from uterine cancer, that he was filing for divorce.

For some time, Jackie tried to hold on. "He can say that we had been talking about it for 10 years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise," she told Lois Romano of The Washington Post. "He walked out in the spring of 1980...By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said, 'Daddy is downstairs. Could he come up?' When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from my surgery."

[napi21]

2. The only one of those I didn't know was that he liked dinosaurs, and NONE of the good

things anyone can say about him come close to offsetting the bad things I know about him.

[FSogol]

5. Newt is a dinosaur.

:shrug:

[Mimosa]

3. Like Dick Morris, he is no kind of Catholic IMHO!!!!

Not now a 'practicing Catholic', I'd practiced so much I've got it down. ;) I was raised Catholic, attended schools where I was taught by Civil Rights and anti-war nuns and priests.

Sure, I don't personally care for any patriarchal aspects of Catholic doctrine, including their idiotic doctrine on reproductive freedom for women, but there are some good things about Catholics.

Newt Gingrich, like John Boehner, espouses a kind of predatory vicious capitalism which is out of step with the teachings of Catholics and Christianity.

[Wilms]

4. That poor district.

From Cooter to cooties.

[Mopar151]

6. The more you know Newt

The less you like him. He epitomizes a good deal of what is wrong with American politics. In plain terms, Noot is the winner of the full-of-shit contest.

[rurallib]

7. IIRC he has a sister he refuses to speak to

because she is a lesbian. Candace Gingrich.

[PatSeg]

9. I didn't know he married his geometry teacher

I found this interesting: "While at Tulane, Gingrich, who at the time belonged to no religious group, began attending the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church to pursue an interest in the effect of religion on political theory; he was soon baptized by Rev. G. Avery Lee."



His official portrait as speaker cracks me up.

[treestar]

10. LOL

Looks more like a pastor of a church's portrait.

[PatSeg]

14. It has a messianic look to it, doesn't it?

The guy certainly is full of himself.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. the less I know about Newt the better I like it.

[veganlush]

12. can you be a catholic AND

believe in dinosaurs? just askin'...

[saras]

16. So what? They're five things I have no need to know about Newt

There's lots of useful information that could be shared (or exposed), but this ain't it.