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Jackie Gingrich Cushman: Setting the Record Straight (about my dad's first marriage)
Creators ^ | May 13, 2011 | Jackie Gingrich Cushman

Posted on 11/05/2011 1:37:42 PM PDT by bkopto

My father, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, has been in politics as long as I can remember.

And as long as I can remember, media coverage about him has contained misstatements of facts. The vast majority are simple mistakes that are easily corrected, understood and rewoven into an ongoing storyline.

But one of them seems to have taken on a life of its own, and simple corrections have not sufficed to set the record straight. Why does this happen? I can't be sure, but I suspect that the narrative created by these untruths proves to be so much more compelling and more dramatic than what actually happened that it proves irresistible.

I'm talking about the story of my father's visit to my mother while she was in the hospital in 1980.

For years, I have thought about trying to correct the untrue accounts of this hospital visit. After all, I was at the hospital with them, and saw and heard what happened. But I have always hesitated, as it was a private family matter and my mother is a very private person. In addition, for the four people involved, it was one of a million interactions and was not considered a defining event by any of us.

My mother and I have both recently run into quite a few people who hold an inaccurate understanding of this hospital visit. Many think my mother is dead.

So, to correct the record, here is what happened: My mother, Jackie Battley Gingrich, is very much alive, and often spends time with my family. I am lucky to have such a "Miracle Mom," as I titled her in a column this week.

As for my parents' divorce, I can remember when they told me.

It was the spring of 1980.

I was 13 years old, and we were about to leave Fairfax, Va., and drive to Carrollton, Ga., for the summer. My parents told my sister and me that they were getting a divorce as our family of four sat around the kitchen table of our ranch home. Soon afterward, my mom, sister and I got into our light-blue Chevrolet Impala and drove back to Carrollton.

Later that summer, Mom went to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for surgery to remove a tumor. While she was there, Dad took my sister and me to see her.

It is this visit that has turned into the infamous hospital visit about which many untruths have been told. I won't repeat them. You can look them up online if you are interested in untruths. But here's what happened:

My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.

Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother.

She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor.

The tumor was benign.

As with many divorces, it was hard and painful for all involved, but life continued.

As have many families, we have healed; we have moved on.

We are not a perfect family, but we are knit together through common bonds, commitment and love.

My mother and father are alive and well, and my sister and I are blessed to have a close relationship with them both.

My sister and I feel that it is time to move on, close the book on this event and focus on building a great future. We will not answer additional questions or make additional comments regarding this meaningless incident, which occurred more than three decades ago.

As I said, my mother is a private person. She will not give media interviews. She deserves respect and should be allowed to live in peace.


TOPICS: Extended News
KEYWORDS: gingrich; jackiegingrich; newt; newtgingrich
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To: bkopto

So Mom filed for divorce for no reason, or did she file because she caught him cheating on her, or did she catch him more than once?


61 posted on 11/05/2011 3:16:58 PM PDT by tubebender (She was only a whiskey maker, but I loved her still.)
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To: Hot Tabasco

I think I’m on the right one and you’re trying to bully me off. :D


62 posted on 11/05/2011 3:23:18 PM PDT by BenKenobi (Honkeys for Herman! 10 percent is enough for God; 9 percent is enough for government)
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To: BenKenobi
You will be able.to explain how rich this is on every thread in which a teacher has taken sexual liberties with a student.

I will be pinging you to each of those threads as I use you as an example of a freeper who is on record personally supporting such predations.

You can explain how you make this okay in your mind and defend it each time.

I have just taken jpegs of the relevant posts in this thread, in case it is later deleted.

Students do not take advantage of their teachers.

63 posted on 11/05/2011 3:25:33 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: MrEdd

Waty to go, self-righteous one. You just showed ua which end of the horse you chose your name from.


64 posted on 11/05/2011 3:28:28 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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To: tubebender

Or since mom was a sexual tiger who couldn’t keep her clothes on with highschool kids, had she decided he had gotten too old for her desires and was she doing another kid by this point?

Given mom’s sexual track record, this is a fair question.


65 posted on 11/05/2011 3:28:58 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: knarf
20 years is like 1991. I'd say this is 1980 or probably before. So make it 30 years plus.

Like so many have stated, I did also believe he left her on her death bed. I learned this here on Free Republic.

66 posted on 11/05/2011 3:39:27 PM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Cringing Negativism Network
Wow. How can something like that get such wide distribution, when it’s false?

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was the product of a fertile imagination and left-wing ideology. But the vast majority of Americans (and foreign readers) see it as thinly-disguised fact, when it was completely made-up and had zero basis in fact.

67 posted on 11/05/2011 3:44:06 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: BenKenobi
I think I’m on the right one and you’re trying to bully me off.

Actually I'm not, I just politely tried to tell you to take your thread hijacking and stick it up your a$$ and start another thread dealing with Newt's marital problems........

If you can't understand that message then perhaps I can be more blunt.........

68 posted on 11/05/2011 3:46:46 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco
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To: Cringing Negativism Network
This (absolutely) needs to be debunked publicly.

Wow, I bet snopes.com will jump on this right away. /s

69 posted on 11/05/2011 3:50:17 PM PDT by Right Wing Assault (Dick Obama is more inexperienced now than he was before he was elected.)
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To: MHGinTN
No harm no foul.

He has a position, and he will get to defend it.
I have made my position clear, students are.not sexually available to teachers.

Judge not, lest ye also be judged by the same standard. The scripture if taken as a whole passage not as an excerpted sentence is a call to meet a standard before correcting another on the same issue. It is not an adjuration against condemning sin.

I may be messed up in some ways, but the millstone sorts of sin are farther than I go. Feel free to judge me the same way when I suggest that sex by adults is okay with minors under their care.

I am against drug legalization and legalization of prostitution too.

Ooh, that must make me seem so judgmental to you.

Too bad.

70 posted on 11/05/2011 3:57:15 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: Right Wing Assault
Wow, I bet snopes.com will jump on this right away. /s

Not to mention Politifact and Factcheck.

71 posted on 11/05/2011 3:57:15 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: freespirited

The two accounts are not contradictory. At least Newt did not ask for a divorce when his wife was recovering from surgery as the story often goes; he wanted to discuss the terms.

The daughter’s account does not claim that he did not bring up the divorce in the hospital, only that he did not spring it on her there.

His ex-wife obviously resented the timing; maybe old Newt thought it was a great get-well present, getting shed of him.


72 posted on 11/05/2011 3:59:54 PM PDT by heartwood
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To: Dr. Sivana

Well put. I agree with ya.


73 posted on 11/05/2011 4:04:57 PM PDT by Republic (SO-uhbama sought help from romney MA healthcare authors? DUMP ROMNEY, no way will he kill obamacare.)
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To: bkopto

baggage check


74 posted on 11/05/2011 4:11:48 PM PDT by Huck (TAX TEA NOW==SUPPORT 9-9-9!)
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To: MrEdd

and she sweet talked the Newt into signing on with Clinton’s tax bill just 5 hours after telling Rush’s audience that he would not, no way, no how?


75 posted on 11/05/2011 4:32:16 PM PDT by tubebender (She was only a whiskey maker, but I loved her still.)
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To: tubebender
Newt is not my guy.

But his wife's behavior was inappropriate and if repeated today might rightly get her thrown in the slammer. She was never some poor little.thing used up and tossed aside by a man who wood her out of her maidenhood.

She made the bed they burned, and the poor wife abandoned on her deathbed crap has been thrown at Newt by conservatives (self included until I got straitened out a couple months ago ~ Mea Culpa) as if it were fact for decades...since prior to his leftward meanderings actually.

I don't want him as the nominee, but fair is fair.
His ex wife managed to paint him as a monster (with MSM help) for decades. I can't put that to right but I can absolutely block its continuance now.

If you want to gig him on Scuzzyflavor, or anthropomorphic global warming or any of his betrayals fine - I'm with you. But look the other way on a broken marriage resulting from a teacher seducing a student? Hell no. Newt was not the architect of that first failed marriage.

You attack things that are wrong. You don't attack the victim just because the victim is your political adversary. The teacher isn't
the victim in these student/teacher things. Regardless of sex.

76 posted on 11/05/2011 4:52:37 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: MrEdd

Regardless of this specific event, Newt did cheat on his first 2 wives. It is documented fact. He broke his sacred vows twice. How can we trust such a man to keep an oath to the constitution?


77 posted on 11/05/2011 4:58:00 PM PDT by Stymee (Beat Obama with a Cain!)
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To: MrEdd

I used to stay up late at night to hear The Newt on the floor of a empty House on CSPAN delivering some of the greatest lines in Conservative History only to sell us out and if you’re not in that camp so be it...


78 posted on 11/05/2011 4:59:29 PM PDT by tubebender (She was only a whiskey maker, but I loved her still.)
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To: Jim Noble

Obama banged a bunch of dudes at mans country in chicago so no...not Obama


79 posted on 11/05/2011 5:10:33 PM PDT by Gipper08 (www.travishankins.com...a real CONSERVATIVE)
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To: jpsb
I also doubt Newt wants to fry Mexicans on an electric border fence topped with barbed wire.

Okay, nobody's perfect.

80 posted on 11/05/2011 5:24:24 PM PDT by SamuraiScot
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