Salon: The truth about Newt and his cancer-stricken wife

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Tuesday, Mar 8, 2011 10:01 ET
War Room
The truth about Newt and his cancer-stricken wife
By Justin Elliott

http://www.salon.com/news/newt_gingrich/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/08/gingrich_divorce_hospital_cancer



For almost three decades, Newt Gingrich has been dogged by a single devastating anecdote from his past, one that has been repeated in the national press hundreds of times and that has arguably come to define his political persona. After being elected to Congress in 1978 on a family values platform, the story goes, he visited his wife Jackie, who was in the hospital recovering from an operation for uterine cancer, and demanded that she discuss terms of their divorce.

It's a story that, remarkably, Gingrich disputes to this day. Testament to how deeply it has reverberated, some version of the story -- often rendered as Gingrich "serving divorce papers" to his wife in the hospital -- has been cited in the last month alone by Slate, MSNBC, Politico, Commentary and the New York Times, among other outlets.

The pattern of attention on the episode when Gingrich is in the news -- this time for exploring a presidential bid -- has been repeated ever since the anecdote originally appeared in the first big national profile of the then-Georgia congressman. That was a 1984 piece in Mother Jones written by David Osborne and headlined "Newt Gingrich: Shining Knight of the Post-Reagan Right."

"We thought it was going to be a piece about an intellectually interesting Republican," Osborne, who later worked for Vice President Al Gore and is now a consultant, told me. But when Osborne started talking to former Gingrich staffers and his ex-wife Jackie, he got some explosive material on Gingrich's alleged hypocrisy and moral failings, and the magazine rushed the story to publication before the 1984 election.

[RoccoR5955]

1. How quickly the MSM forgets this stuff

He's supposed to be so damn "family values," wtf kind of family value is his actual behavior?

He's also one of the idiots who say that government can do no good... Then when he's elected, he proves it with the type of job he does himself!

Why in hell do people still vote for these types, rather than someone who is willing to make some changes so the government can do some good

[valerief]

2. The news models don't have to know news or history. They have to know how to fix their hair and

project their voices and read off a teleprompter.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. link doesn't work? nt

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. I just clicked it and it worked

http://www.salon.com/news/newt_gingrich/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/08/gingrich_divorce_hospital_cancer

[Me.]

5. Neither Works For Me

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Works for me now. nt

[progressoid]

6. Salon is down temorarily.

I got this message:

Sorry! Salon and Open Salon are currently unavailable. Please refresh or try again shortly.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will keep the outage as brief as possible.

[opihimoimoi]

7. The Insensitive Asshole Wants his turn at the OVAL??? Good Luck and a good waste of time n $$$