He's Back and Better Than...Give me a Minute

This decade has been charm-free so far. One of its few amenities had been the absence of Newt Gingrich from public view. America had remanded him to its attic, where he sat, doing needlepoint with crazy Auntie Perot and shouting "It's extraordinary!" over and over again. Sadly, Gingrich has returned to demonstrate once again that Fitzgerald was wrong about the dearth of second acts in American life. The first act was the tragedy; if Marx was right the second will be farce. But we won't be laughing because we'll all be trapped inside the joke.

Newt has been speaking up a storm in recent days. He won't admit yet that it's a prelude to a Presidential run, but because the speculation attracts cameras to him so that the evil spirits who live in his hair can have their messages heard, he won't deny it either. I provide two samples, one courtesy of Salon's War Room, the other courtesy of my channel flipping on a snow day:

Sample A:

The former House speaker and potential presidential candidate said Monday that the United States may have to revisit the idea of freedom of speech in the context of the war on terrorism. Speaking in New Hampshire, Gingrich said that we may need to apply a "different set of rules" before "we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade."

Sample B:

Extolling the virtues of America as a place where anyone can make it, Newt Gingrich used the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He claimed that it was only because of the unique opportunities America provides that a young child, born in Austria, could rise to become both a millionaire and a political leader.

Oh. For. Fuck's. Sake.

Perhaps the saddest thing about the recent turn in American discourse is that neither of these pronouncements, which Gingrich intones in a manner meant to imply that he's passing along insights he received from a whirlwind or the Oracle of Delphi, is instantly mocked back to the stone age. The English lexicon is thick with words to describe Gingrich and men of his ilk--words that too often go unemployed: nitwit, halfwit, dolt, ninny, nincompoop, dingbat, twit, schmuck, chowderhead, meatball, boob. That we don't use these words more often when discussing Newt--e.g. "Famous dingbat and world renowned schlemiel Newt Gingrich said today..."--is a devastating reflection on our political culture.

Still, having dispensed with my dismissal of Gingrich's latest drool, I'll now take him on point by lamebrained point, just for the exercise.

Okay. I'd hate to lose a city as much as Gingrich, I suppose, especially since I live in one. But before we start slapping that Homeland Security duct tape and plastic sheeting over people's mouths, let's look back at previous American cities that have gone under. Let's see now. We lost Roanoke Island because, well, we don't know exactly but most historians figure the Native Americans rubbed the colonists out. We lost Washington D.C. in the War of 1812 because some goobers in congress thought it was a great idea to pick a fight with the British. We lost Atlanta because General Sherman decided to burn it down (good for him). We lost Chicago because of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. We lost San Francisco in an earthquake. We lost a good deal of Florida in one hurricane and all of New Orleans in another. Suspending freedom of speech would have helped us in none of those cases, and it won't stop terrorists from taking out a city if they should ever develop the means to do so. Terrorists grew up in and live in countries that curtail all kinds of freedoms, and they still manage to strap bombs to themselves and blow things up. They're used to oppressive environments. They know how to operate when under surveillance, and because the best of them are completely contemptuous of their own deaths, if they want to wreak havoc, havoc will be wreaked. Giving up our liberties doesn't to a damn thing to terrorists; it just hurts us. Only a complete idiot would fail to recognize that.

As for Schwarzenegger, well, jeez. Only in America does an Austrian have a chance to get rich and rise to power? Really? You know, I remember a certain Austrian. He came out of Linz as I recall. He started out as a poor postcard painter, joined the German army, won a medal, wrote a bestselling book that made millions for him, and rose to the highest office in the land. His name was...wait. Don't tell me. Funny moustache, quasi-military uniform... I think he shouted a lot.

I'm not an expert on the number of wealthy people in Austria or the chances for upward mobility there or in neighboring countries of the EU, but I imagine that at birth an Austrian's prospects are pretty good. We don't have waves of Austrian immigrants sneaking into the U.S. in cargo containers or parachuting out of planes in order to work crappy jobs to send money home. Some do come out to Hollywood to pursue movie roles, but that's hardly evidence that Austria is a barren, bleak, economic and cultural wasteland.

That some people take Newt Gingrich seriously as a politician or as a thinker is evidence of how far, and how fast, our civilization has fallen. I hope that someday, when reason is restored to this land and the proper names are restored to their rightful owners, that Newt Gingrich will return to the office that best suits his capabilities: village idiot.