That is an awesome post, Maggief.
She said that it wasn't a compliment to her. Well, what is it years later when it's over and done with and the hens have come home to roost.
I don't want to imply anything other than it's a bit hypocritical to be complaining about something happening to you that you did to someone else.
Marianne is hardly the person to be carrying this forward. I'm assuming she's being paid.
http://www.esquire.com/features/newt-gingrich-0910#ixzz1jv7FzDx3
She sounds proud, defiant, maybe a little wistful. You might be inclined to think of what she says as the lament of an abandoned wife, but that would be a mistake. There is shockingly little bitterness in her, and she often speaks with great kindness of her former husband. She still believes in his politics. She supports the Tea Parties. She still uses the name Marianne Gingrich instead of going back to Ginther, her maiden name.
But there was something strange and needy about him. “He was impressed easily by position, status, money,” she says. “He grew up poor and always wanted to be somebody, to make a difference, to prove himself, you know. He has to be historic to justify his life.”
She says she should have seen the red flags. “He asked me to marry him way too early. And he wasn’t divorced yet. I should have known there was a problem.”
Within weeks or months?
“Within weeks.”
That’s flattering.
She looks skeptical. “It’s not so much a compliment to me. It tells you a little bit about him.”
And he did the same thing to her eighteen years later, with Callista Bisek, the young congressional aide who became his third wife. “I know. I asked him. He’d already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked.”
He told you that?
“Yeah, he wanted to — “
But she stops. “Hey, turn off the tape recorder for a second. This is going to go places ...”
(August 10, 2010)