Does It Matter Newt Cheated?
Newt Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, told ABC News he’s morally unfit to be president because he cut out on her with Callista and then asked her to go along with the arrangement. She’s attacking the candidate who shut down the entire U.S. government because it was spending too much money on poor people; who thinks that “African-American” is just a synonym for food stamp recipient; and who wants to conscript impoverished children into janitorial jobs to teach them promptness. And we’re worrying about what he did with his dick? Watch out: When all morality collapses into sexual morality, the voters will become so fixated on whom the candidates are screwing they don’t notice … it’s them.
Most of the fault for this misallocation of our moral indignation lies, of course, in the unruly sexuality of fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo. Like Newt Gingrich, Augustine’s sexual desires stood in the way of his ambition — in his case, for a career in the church. Although, like Gingrich, Augustine finally suppressed sufficiently to embrace the requisite behavior, in his struggles he left behind the wicked legacy that conflates sexual desire with moral failure. As time went by, the church agreed that sex was OK as long as you confined it to one lifelong heterosexual reproductive marriage. The monogamous marriage really took off as a moral model when Martin Luther founded the Protestant wing that Gingrich the Catholic now eschews. Like Gingrich, Martin Luther had his eye on a nun long before he nailed the theses.
And so when Gingrich decided to get married in 1962 and again in 1981 and once more in 2000, Speaker Gingrich had to commit himself to be faithful to Wife 1, Wife 2 and, now, Callista. And then he breached his contract. Again and again. Unless you live in fourth-century Italy, that’s what infidelity is. Not the sum and substance of all that’s wrong in the world. Not the only thing a Republican can do that is legitimate to criticize (enjoying all those Cayman millions, Mitt?). Not the definition of immorality. But definitely a breach of contract. It’s like walking away from your mortgage when your house is underwater or wearing a dress to the party and then taking it back to the store.
Breach of contract, like lying, is not nothing. When people try to get out from under the Catholic/Protestant order of sexual morality, they try to say Gingriching around is nothing, as long as you don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses: the right to privacy and all that. That is as foolish as saying infidelity is everything. All you have to do is look at the video of the usually unflappable Hillary Clinton walking to the helicopter to Camp David that awful day in 1997 to know that breaching the fidelity contract is not nothing.
The problem is, what with no-fault divorce, our society provides no damages for breach of sexual contract other than a suicidal divorce. In most divorces, the breacher pays about the same price as he would for forgetting to return his Netflix. Especially if he’s a big, powerful man like Newt Gingrich and the wife was foolish enough to bet all her hopes for her future on his stellar course. Or Bill Clinton. Or France’s contribution to the news category, feel-like-you-need-a-shower-after-hearing-it, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Their wives were smart enough not to try to enforce their contract of marital fidelity through the suicidal medium of divorce. Hillary Clinton gagged it down and she almost made it to the White House. Anne Sinclair got chosen the most admired woman in France. Don’t blame them for choosing unconditional surrender. Under the current divorce laws and social norms, those alpha males are the U.S.Army and the wives are Grenada. Why does the society treat the women who invest early in high-flying careers so much worse than the early investors in, say, Facebook? A better system would treat a Marianne Gingrich at least as well as the courts treated the Winklevoss twins.
Which is why I’m actually rooting for Marianne. When she refused to take Newt’s offer and stay on the gravy train, he tried to stick her with two grand a month they had agreed to after an earlier squabble. His earlier attempts to avoid supporting his first wife and their daughters were also legendary. Now he’s a Tiffany-patronizing, speech-making money machine, a gold mine. And as usual the ex-wife got the shaft. It’s not the definition of immorality, but her going public right before the South Carolina primary has all the appeal of asymmetrical warfare. Just as Newt was cruising down the road to victory in South Carolina his jeep hit an IED. He’ll probably be fine. But it’s so gratifying at least to see him bleed a little.
By: Linda Hirshman, Salon, January 20, 2012
“Total Self-Absorption”: Newt’s Toxic Narcissism
Before he dumped Marianne for Callista, Newt Gingrich approached his second wife of 18 years with the possibility of an open marriage.
I ask you: how awesome is that?
In an interview airing tonight on Nightline, Marianne recalls Newt complaining to her. “You want me all to yourself. Callista doesn’t care what I do.”
Assuming Marianne can more or less be believed, let’s update what we now know of the former speaker’s personal history:
1. Gingrich dumped his first wife, Jackie, while she was being treated for cancer.
2. Some 12 years into his second marriage, he started sleeping with a much younger Hill staffer.
3. Six years into the affair, he asked wife No. 2 for an open marriage.
4. When she declined, Newt pressed ahead with a divorce—shortly after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
5. The dissolution of Newt and Marianne’s union occurred as the then-speaker was galumphing around the country loudly proclaiming President Clinton to be morally unfit for office.
My God, it’s like a bad telenovela—only starring homely people.
I have to admit, while the tales of Gingrich’s mistreatment of the women in his life are, of course, appalling, I also find them utterly irresistible—and more than a little satisfying. Not because I care about Gingrich’s rank hypocrisy. Unlike many journalists, hypocrisy isn’t what gets my blood boiling. All politicians are hypocrites to one degree or another. They have to be.
No. What entrances me about these Newtonian love stories are how perfectly they jibe with the former speaker’s broader character portrait: namely, that of a pure, unadulterated narcissist, a man whose sense of himself as a world historic figure leads him to believe that whatever is good for him must be what is good. Period. In Gingrich’s worldview, the end justifies the means—and the end is invariably the advancement of Newt Gingrich’s personal aims.
The entire sweep of Newt’s personal life brings to mind a line from Whit Stillman’s 1990 film, Metropolitan, in which one of the cast of young, rich Manhattanites scolds another, “When you’re an egoist, none of the harm you do is intentional.”
I’d say that this line could apply to all aspects of Newt’s life except that, in many of his political dealings, Newt absolutely intends to cause harm. Demonizing the opposition is frequently his aim, and his aim in that department tends to be quite good.
But with his wives, one gets the sense that Gingrich never set out to hurt anyone. He simply didn’t give a damn—or at least enough of a damn to make an effort to minimize damage to the other person on his way out the door.
Lots of people cheat on their spouses. Lots of people leave their spouses. It takes a special kind of ego to carry on a lengthy affair with another woman, then grandiosely suggest to your wife: so howzabout you content yourself with just a slice of Newt pie and agree to share the rest?
Hypocrisy, infidelity, dishonesty, immorality—none of those interest me here. When it comes to Newt, the ultimate driver—and the biggest danger—has always been the man’s total self-absorption and near-messianic self-regard.
That ought to make even the most devout Newt fan a little nervous.
By: Michelle Cottle, The Daily Beast, January 19, 2012
Why Don’t Men Like Schwarzenegger, John Edwards Use Condoms?
The revelation that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child a decade ago with a woman who was not his wife—a disclosure that comes just a couple of years after we learned that onetime Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had done the same thing—begs an important question:
Exactly what century are we in?
The issue here isn’t even why a married person would have sex outside his or her marriage, which is not an infrequent occurrence now or at previous points in history. It’s not even about how a public person thinks he or she could behave that way without anyone finding out. Edwards, after all, was castigated for doing something so reckless and foolish during a time when he was under intense media scrutiny. But the fact that Schwarzenegger was able to keep this a secret for the entire time he was in the governor’s mansion is astounding, and suggests maybe Edwards wasn’t as delusional as some people thought.
But has it not occurred to these men to use a condom? Birth control is readily available. It’s legal. It’s simple to use. And it limits the fallout from an affair. Learning of a past sexual dalliance would understandably be very upsetting to a spouse. Learning that a child was produced from the union is devastating and adds a living, breathing reminder of the episode, a pain compounded by the fact that it is not the child’s fault that he or she is a walking symbol of marital betrayal.
But seriously, if a woman approaches a man and says, “you are so hot,” as Rielle Hunter reportedly said to Edwards, does it not occur to the man that she might not mind having a permanent connection to the candidate a child would secure? And what was Schwarzenegger thinking when he had sex with someone who actually worked for the family? Did he not consider the possibility of pregnancy?
Perhaps the use of birth control adds to any guilt the men might feel; if the episode is planned, it is more difficult to convince oneself that passion was to blame. It’s sort of the counter-argument to those who believe that providing birth control to sexually active young people will give them ideas about sex they wouldn’t otherwise have. More likely, they are thinking about sex, and while it may not be wise to engage in sex at a young age because of the emotional implications, the physical consequences of sex without birth control are far more serious. One would think adult men would know that by now.
By: Susan Milligan, U.S. News and World Report, May 18, 2011
The Year Of Living Adulterously: What Is It With Republicans Lately?
Nobody wants to run for the presidential nomination. Mike Huckabee said God told him to stay on Fox News. NBC told Donald Trump to stay on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Whatever happened to putting your country first? Our forefathers would never have passed up the presidency for anything less than the Charlie Sheen role on “Two and a Half Men.”
The Republicans are terrified that they’ll wind up with Mitt Romney, who has been fund-raising like crazy and seems to be planning a campaign based on the slogan: “Money can’t buy love, but it can definitely purchase a grudging, defeatist acceptance.”
Some party leaders are looking hopefully at Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, who’s promised to make up his mind this month. If he runs, one thing you are not going to get from Mitch Daniels is the politics of joy. Have you ever seen “Game of Thrones” on HBO? It’s about a mythical kingdom that sends some of its young men to the remote tundra to live in perpetual celibacy and guard a 700-foot-tall wall of ice. Their reaction is very similar to the way Mitch Daniels looks when he talks about running for president.
Daniels is apparently worried that a presidential run might prove embarrassing to his wife, who ditched him and the kids and ran off to California to marry a doctor and then later recanted everything and came back. I think it is pretty safe to say that this topic might come up.
Which brings us to sex. What is it with Republicans lately? Is there something about being a leader of the family-values party that makes you want to go out and commit adultery?
They certainly don’t have a lock on the infidelity market, and heaven knows we all remember John Edwards. But, lately, the G.O.P. has shown a genius for putting a peculiar, newsworthy spin on illicit sex. A married congressman hunting for babes is bad. A married congressman hunting for babes by posting a half-naked photo of himself on the Internet is Republican.
A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child is awful. A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child by a staff member of the family home and then fails to mention it to his wife for more than 10 years is Republican.
A married senator who has an affair with an employee is a jerk. A married senator who has an affair with an employee who is the wife of his chief of staff, and whose adultery is the subject of ongoing discussion at his Congressional prayer group, is Republican.
We haven’t even gotten to Newt Gingrich yet!
Gingrich is the best-known of the second-string Republicans who are ready, willing and eager to take on Romney for the nomination. The question is whether social conservatives will resent the fact that he was having an adulterous relationship with his current wife while she was a House of Representatives staffer and he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Also, this week, Politico reported that in 2005 and 2006, Gingrich had an account with Tiffany’s that sometimes ran to $500,000 in debt.
Never have we had sex issues with so many layers. It shows you how far we have evolved as a nation. In the old days it was: Warren Harding making whoopee in the presidential coat closet: yes or no?
Really persistent sexual misbehavior says something about the character of the person involved. In Gingrich’s case, we have a failure-to-settle-down problem that extends way beyond matrimony. He can’t even hang onto a position on Medicare for an entire week. This man is a natural for an occupation that rewards attention deficit. Maybe God actually meant to tell Newt to stay on Fox News, but accidentally shipped the message to Huckabee.
As to Governor Daniels, the voters are unlikely to give a fig about the interesting past of his wife, Cheri. But if he wants to protect her from the embarrassment of being asked about it 24/7, perhaps he could just declare her off limits. The news media has generally respected those kinds of rules when it comes to presidential candidates’ children, as long as said offspring don’t show up on reality shows or as teen-abstinence ambassadors for a shoe store foundation.
Of course, a wife who is off limits would not be able to campaign for her husband. I think that would be terrific. Finally, we could end the tradition that a presidential candidate’s spouse is running for something, too. If we want a first family to obsess over, we should just hire a king and queen.
Don’t know how the social right would feel about this. But there’s always Mitt Romney.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 18, 2011
Mr. Gingrich’s Intolerant History: A Presidential Bid Built On Divisiveness And Name-Calling
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and latest entrant in the Republican presidential field, has money, experience and name recognition. His introductory videois all serenity and hope, a deceptively calm way for many voters to meet a splenetic politician with a long history of slashing divisiveness and intolerance.
He refers to himself as a historian, but apparently his personal study of history has primarily taught him about the effectiveness of demagogy. Donald Trump, fiddling with birth certificates, is an amateur compared with Mr. Gingrich at sliming the Obama administration — as well as Democrats, Muslims, blacks and gay men and lesbians.
The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine,” he wrote in his 2010 book, “To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, saying it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing Islamic law on every American village and farm.
Last year, he called for a federal law to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when he said that Mr. Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”
In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have little entrepreneurial tradition, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.” (He kind of took back that last slur.)
Despite all this, not to mention the ethics violation when he was speaker, Mr. Gingrich’s real liability among the conservative and fundamentalist groups that dominate the Republican primaries is his personal history of infidelity that led to two sordid divorces. (Much of which took place while he was denouncing President Bill Clinton for moral transgressions.) That may explain his endless calls to restore Judeo-Christian values.
It is sometimes difficult to know what some Republican candidates stand for, as they pander to the far right without alienating the center. It is not difficult to know what Newt Gingrich stands for, and to find it repellent.
By: The New York Times, Editorial, May 12, 2011
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