The Roving Eye of Newt

The Roving Eye of Newt

Gary Alan Fine

Guggenheim Foundation Fellow

John Evans Professor of Sociology

Northwestern University

Co-author, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter

All influential politicians attract rumors. Like tarbabies, no matter how much denied or improbable, sticky rumors do not disappear if they capture something defining about their target. They are too good to be false. For several weeks prior to our consumption of all things Bin Laden, Americans speculated on the meaning and significance of Barack Obama's birth certificate. There was never much evidence to suggest that the President was born outside of the United States, but it had a certain cultural cachet. Even if the rumor was not explicitly racist, Obama with a Kenyan father, schooling at a Muslim school (although not a madrassa) in Indonesia, and a globalist political stance could be seen as extra-American. The birther rumor had a political logic, even if the facts were against it.

But Barack is not the only politician to have to confront a rumor that skips lightly over the truth but that addresses public concern, allowing us to use beliefs to reveal our hidden attitudes. Former Speaker-of-the-House Newt Gingrich (and my former Congressperson) has announced that he will be running for Obama's job. He would like to be discussing policy position, but to many Americans he also brings a character-deficit. To be sure those who hold most strongly to this belief are not likely to be in the Newt camp, but the same could be said of the birthers and President O.

Newt is currently allied with a third wife. He is a serial adulterer, not necessarily a disqualifying trait for father of his country. But in Newt-world the juicy rumor involves his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher, wed he was 19. The rumor is that when his first wife was dying of cancer, Newt popped up cheerily and cheekily in her hospital room to ask for a divorce (perhaps he felt that she was "a little square" [I couldn't resist a little geometric humor!]). The story, in the way it has been told, has flaws and holes. It lacks a birth certificate, but it does have legs. A quick Google search reveals that the story is all-over the Internet.

With Gingrich's run for the Presidency, the rumor needed to be confronted, although whether such confrontation will be successful is very much an open question. Into the breach rushes Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Newt's forty-something daughter and author, revealing the true story, at least her true story. She informs us that she was at the birth - uh, the hospital - and that as a thirteen-year old can be our guide. Apparently the Gingrichs had already been discussing the divorce for a few months before the hospital room visit and it was Newt's wife's desire. Jackie Battley Gingrich was resting at the Emory University Hospital after the removal of a tumor. We are told that the tumor was benign, and Newt's first wife is still alive, if not talking for the record. Whether the Gingrichs knew of the diagnosis at the time of the visit, whether Newt raised the details of the divorce at the visit, and whether Newt committed himself to their marriage and to being faithful forever, we are not told. But there are certainly enough open doors for Donald Trump's crew to drive a truck through.

The real issue is not whether Newt bedeviled a dying woman, but whether the story - even if false - reveals something true about Gingrich the politician. The account speaks to a man who his opponents believe is insensitive, cares first and foremost about himself, and is a grade A egotist and a 100 point hypocrite. It could be that these reveal a prejudice against rednecks (although Gingrich was born and was raised in Pennsylvania), but it is a story that will be hard to erase as it reflects something that critics see as applicable to the Speaker. Newt entered the canons of comedy by suggesting that his adultery was sparked by his overwork due to how passionately he felt about America. Please don't swab the stains on the Statue of Liberty's frock for DNA-samples.

The bedside visit, perhaps, was entirely appropriate and inconsequential, and his marriage to Callista may be perfect, but I won't be satisfied until Newt releases those hospital records.