The Newt Embraces Social Darwinism and Reincarnation
Art by Barbara Broido.(For more great doodles, go to Broido's site, Barbara's Doodle Blog.)
Maureen Dowd uses her bully pulpit wisely today to excoriate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for "shamelessly embracing his party's lunacy." She notes that Newt is "claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene." The Newt's muse, an "Ann Coulter-in-pants" named Dinesh D'Souza, argues that Barack Obama's father "is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."
The Constant Weader comments:
Oh boy! Social Darwinism and reincarnation!
In fairness, it's quite possible Newt has a mental disease and we should be more understanding. But as long as the media give him a microphone & introduce him as "the former Speaker," we must treat him as if he knows what he's saying.
Barack Obama barely ever saw his father after the younger Obama was two years old. The President's mother & maternal grandparents reared him. If he has any "intellectual heritage," it comes from Kansas (and I'm not talking about The Wizard of Oz, Newt).
How was it exactly that Papa Obama infiltrated the mind of the future President? Is a man really genetically engineered to take on his father's political beliefs? Nature beats nurture? Or is it that reincarnation thing? Let's have a seance!
It's fairly hilarious that Gingrich is busy rewriting President Obama's childhood inasmuch as Gingrich -- according to an Esquire profile -- has completely rewritten his own. Writer John Richardson details how Newt makes his childhood "sound ideal," yet,
His mother married his father when she was sixteen, left him a few days later, and struggled with manic depression most of her life. His stepfather [who reared Newt & moved the family to a series of Army bases] was an infantry officer who viewed his plump, nearsighted, flat-footed son as unfit for the Army.
Whatever Newt's actual family history, he appears to be the reincarnation of a cruel, mendacious, opportunistic lowlife -- a newt with a personality disorder. It is one of the tragedies of American history that this man once held a powerful position. He was never a leader, always a follower, & now he is following his party over a cliff of right-wing extremism that knows no boundaries and is trying to break its fall by holding tight to an umbrella of fear-mongering, prejudice and outright lies.
Update: Commenter Jim F. of Los Altos (#3) points to Paul Krugman's blogpost on the Gingrich/D'Souza "madness." Krugman remarks that the whole basis of the "Kenyan" plot theory is an Export-Import Bank loan to Brazil. Says Krugman,
Except, you know, the Ex-Im bank’s job is to promote US exports — and this was a loan for the specific purpose of buying US-made oilfield equipment. And the board approving the loan was … a board appointed by George W. Bush. In other words, aside from being ignorant, this is complete the-Commies-are-putting flouride in the water to steal our vital bodily fluids stuff.
Update: without actually employing the terms "racial prejudice" or "ethnic stereotyping" or "lying through their yellow teeth," Matt Bai of the New York Times postulates that Republican lowlifes (another term he doesn't use) are trying to cast President Obama as "The Other" in order to motivate their base of stupid, racist yahoos (okay, Bai doesn't describe the base as "yahoos," either, but you know that's what he would write in a less hoity-toity publication).
Update. Brendan Patrick Keane in Irish Central: the real scandal in Newt's outrageous rant is this: "Newt Gingrich embraces British colonialism."
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