Posted by Morbo
Looking for somewhere cheap and entertaining to go to this weekend? Then visit the Bizarro Universe of TV preacher Pat Robertson and former House of Representatives speaker New Gingrich. It’s only a mouse click away.
Though brief, this interview has a lot going for it. Listening to Gingrich outline his plan for getting rid of federal judges who dare to hand down rulings he does not like — you just fire them, see — is priceless. But it’s his defense of “traditional marriage” that really warms the heart.
Blasting that favorite right-wing bogeyman of “judicial activism,” Gingrich told Robertson, “Well, you saw the same thing last year, with four judges in Massachusetts trying to destroy traditional marriage and redefine marriage, just as four lawyers. I don’t think we want a system in which four lawyers or five lawyers can define for the whole country what it believes in.”
To be fair, Gingrich really does qualify as an expert on marriage. In fact, he likes marriage so much, he’s had three of them! Unfortunately, fidelity has proven to be a bit of a challenge for him. The Atlanta Journal Constitution noted that Gingrich married wife number three, a congressional aide much younger than he is, “after a long-term adulterous affair.”
This is the guy who wants to save traditional marriage?
Morbo understands how it is. Divorce is a fact of life. Interpersonal relations are tricky things. Feelings and emotions change; people change. Some relationships simply do not work out over the long haul. It’s no cause for stigma or shame.
But damn, I’m not about to sit here and be lectured to about taking “traditional marriage” seriously by a serial adulterer whose antics have made a mockery of that very institution. Ever hear the story of how Gingrich demanded that his first wife grant him a divorce while she was lying in a hospital bed sick with cancer? And to see this guy held up as a model by perhaps the most judgmental TV preacher in the country — it’s too much. You just have to tell them to shut up.
Gingrich has a new book out, and the fact that he scheduled some events in New Hampshire and Iowa has led some to wonder if he is testing the waters for a presidential run in 2008. Please let it be so. Voluminous amounts of dirt have already been dug up on this rotten Georgia peach-pit. My guess is there’s plenty more where that came from. Break out the backhoe.