Usually I find it amusing when people so clearly do not practice what they preach. Newt Gingrich is a prime example of this adage. He has in fact invoked just that in the past.
Newt, when asked how he could be unfaithful and give a speech on family values responded: "It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."
Really? No one? It is the stuff of Saturday Night Live skits. If it weren't so sad and narcissistic it would be funny.
And maybe he considers consistency a virtue, because he has a long standing pattern of personal behavior that flies in the face of respect for the value of marriage and a nuclear family.
"In 1994, Gingrich responded to reports he'd had extramarital affairs while running a family-values campaign in 1978 by saying, "In the 1970s, things happened." And apparently they keep happening in the 1980s and the 1990s. Some habits are hard to break, but it seems adolescent to pretend that you can be a spokesperson for an institution that you clearly don't respect.
Nor is he a very nice guy. He outlined his first divorce at his soon to be ex-wife's hospital bedside while she was recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. He failed to keep up with child support, although he states he loves his children (loves them, doesn't care to feed and cloth them)--all this after his first wife put him through college and graduate school.
Yesterday was my favorite of the bunch, though--now Newt, again trying to get back on the ultra-conservative band wagon, averred that it was his passion for his country that led him off the marriage rails and into the land of screwing around. As a psychiatrist, I have heard a lot of excuses for a lot of personal choices, but this one is new to me. Who will buy it? Time will tell.
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