Sorry for obsessing, but the strangeness of Newt Gingrich’s first week as a prez candidate is hard to overstate and everything the campaign has tried to do to mitigate the damage has only made him more of a laughingstock.
Part of the attempted mitigation was to blame the media, specifically Meet the Press moderator David Gregory for asking the question that caused Gingrich to call the Paul Ryan Medicare voucher plan “right-wing social engineering.” But when the Huffington Post asked Ginrich media spokester Rick Tyler about the media’s role in Gingrich’s bad week, they received this unbelievable self-parody of a reply:
“The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding,” Tyler wrote. “Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”
But self-parody was not enough. Acting at the speed of satire, Stephen Colbert had actor John Lithgow come on the show that very evening and give Tyler’s words a dramatic reading:
Thanks, Eric. That’s the best laugh I’ve had all week. Indeed, much of the media response to Gingrich has been over-the-top, but then, Mr. Gingrich tends toward the over-the-top himself. Lithgow’s reading of the self-serving claptrap of Rick Tyler was masterful.
But then, so is the “…buys his engagement rings in bulk” line.
That was wonderful – thanks for the link. I couldn’t stop laughing. Great to end the week with a belly laugh.
“Out of the billowing smoke and dust … emerged Gingrich!”
Just priceless.
Sounds like a toady talking about a third world dictator.
Well ya know, the creme floats to the top in barrel of milk… even sour milk.