NEWT GINGRICH--STORY EXAGGERATED

I have hated Newt Gingrich for years, partially because he's a far right Republican who's against everything I stand for, but mostly because of the story about his first wife. The story goes that he served his first wife divorce papers while she was on her deathbed dying of cancer. Not true. Jackie Battely was his former geometry teacher--he was 19 and she was 26 when they married.That's legal but ooky.

But she's still alive, and the couple was already in divorce proceedings at the time of the hospital visit. She did not want the divorce and was fighting it.  She had previously had uterine cancer, which he exploited politically, and she was in the hospital for the third time. Much has been made of the fact that this tumor turned out to be benign.  That totally disregards her pain and suffering with the recovery.  Gingrich did visit her in the hospital while she was recovering from surgery and admits that he got into an argument with her. He blows this off as something that couples in a divorce proceeding just do sometimes. He had been married to her for 19 years.

He's deliciously, if apocryphally, quoted by  L. H. Carter, Gingrich's campaign treasurer,  "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer". This might not be true but it's a great line. Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington.^..

That's so much less satisfying than the myth. What happened next, however, does show the character of the man.  Six months after he ended his twenty year relationship with Battely, (wife no.1) he married Marianne Ginther.(wife no.2) Twenty-odd years later  he started an affair with a staffer.Callista Bisek who was 23 years younger than him. He continued that affair for six years, then divorced Ginther to marry Bisek.(wife no.3) He married Bisek four months after his divorce from Ginther was final.

This still is very crappy behavior for a "family values" person.  All I have to say is that Callista Bisek, now 46, better watch her step.