Here Comes Newtie, Again

While Newt Gingrich looks like a pudding on the outside,  I picture his interior  resembling that charcoal grey skein of wool my cat played with for a week.

Over a long life you encounter a panoply of personalities. And, if you are paying attention, you find that they can be categorized and pigeon-holed for future reference.

I recognize Newtie, I've met him before. Always under compromising circumstances.

For this reason, and others, it's useful to pay attention....but it takes its toll. If you aren't careful, you tend to get a little jaundiced in your assessments and you have to keep reminding yourself that stereotyping is a very, very bad thing. But irresistible, nevertheless.

In the instance of Newtie, I can read him like the funnies, even though I still can be surprised by his gall. I find him endlessly entertaining because he is so incredibly predictably a clown. Not a conscious clown, but one who takes himself so seriously he can't  contemplate that when he opens his mouth, in his studied verbose, but oddly  laconic fashion, he looks and sounds like a complex electronic toy that got its wires crossed.

Yes, he is a ninny, but still a source of fun because he is so clueless about his nakedness.

While I have not yet relinquished my front seat at the Cain Train theater, and still get an occasional kick out of the pray-away-the-gay duo, plus that prettier version of Georgie Porgie, I am gearing up for the media feast on Newtie's previously picked-over, hypocritical carcass.

I am so glad he is running.

Schadenfreude is one of the most useful words I have ever learned. Beyond being voluminously expressive, it has explained (and therefore excused by dint of it being a universally shared emotion)  my ungenerous reactions to the discovery of a fellow human being's clay toes.

As Rachel would say, "Where's the popcorn?" 

-30-

The Epitome of Smarmy

Is there anyone who epitomizes "smarmy" more thoroughly than does Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Va.)?

Cantor is what the GOPers identify as an "up-and-comer." His vaunted talent for raising money is much treasured by the wingnuts.

But what impresses me is his ability to be unctious and arrogant in nearly the same second. He can sneer without moving his lips, and he can rub his hands together while they appear to be hanging at his sides.

Wouldn't it be grand if some of the old-timey types of politicians - those who knew how to be graciously principled in their interactions with the opposite party without feeling they were compromising their own principles - could appear for an encore?

Instead we have the Cantor types who are masters at being maliciously demeaning and, among other efforts at disparagement, persist in saying "Democrat Party" and "Democrat President" because they believe it removes dignity from a liberal point of view.

I believe an objective apolitical person with any insights into human nature would come to the conclusion that these conservatives need to belittle and sneer and lie in order to feel like men, and that includes the women.

We can lay a great deal of this new kind of calumny on Newtie's doorstep. I remember reading a piece he wrote for Republican Party consumption where he recommended that all things liberal and democratic (big and little "d") be referred to in only denigrating terms. It has worked like a charm. The whole of the party, and now the witless teapartiers,  have adopted his tack.

But it only works among themselves. Imagine anyone believing that Barack Obama, the coolest  president since JFK, could  be seen being "dragged, kicking and screaming" anywhere. While Cantor would like that  picture to resonate, it ain't hardly likely.