Nature & Respite

Of course, you will recall that:

Gingrich doesn’t have any pets at this time, but he told ABC News today he and his wife Callista want a dog in the White House…

There is a section called “Newt’s Favorite Zoos” – with a flash gallery I cannot describe to you because Steve Jobs said I’m not allowed to – which makes it clear why a great animal lover like Newt has never found the time to buy a sodding dog.

Newt has liked animals and zoos since he was a little boy. His relatives used to take him to the Hershey Zoo, the Philadelphia Zoo and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  When he was ten he went to the Harrisburg City Council and made an appeal for a zoo for Pennsylvania’s capital city.  As a teenager, Newt wanted to be either a zoo director or a vertebrate paleontologist.  As a young college professor, he coordinated the Interdisciplinary Program on Environmental Studies at West Georgia College. Newt and Callista visit zoos and museums everywhere they go.  Newt has visited nearly 100 zoos around the world. Callista is catching up.

It all becomes clear. Newt Gingrich is a ten year old boy who is still stamping his feet and holding his breath because he didn’t get a zoo, and if he can’t have a zoo, then no mere mutt will do. Except if it was the President’s dog, because that would be cool. And maybe, if you’re President, you could have a White House zoo with pandas and elephamps that only the President gets to see (and maybe Callista, if she is good), and maybe they’d keep the Smithsonian open for you late at night so you could go and laugh all the fossils that God put there to fool the atheists.

That final:

Callista is catching up.

almost makes me feel sorry for poor Callista as well, as I imagine her trailing along behind Newt, trying to stop the grandnewts falling into the lion enclosure or inserting their entire hands up their noses, all the while smiling like a jack-o’-lantern on crack, but knowing that all the future holds is the occasional consolation of a pair of ten carat, marquise-cut Tiffany earrings or perhaps something with emeralds this time.

Thence follows a lovely list of Newt’s favorite zoos, notable mainly for this:

My daughters were first zood (if that is a word) at Audubon Park ….

which, frankly, sounds like something that should have resulted in a call to the police and ongoing visits from a child protection agency.

The highlight of the entire site, however, is on the front page, where punters of the kind that would vote Newt fucking Gingrich for President of the United States have submitted pictures of their furry and/or feathered anthropomorphic children, such as this:

Holy tapdancing fuck, that’s depressing.

My dear Olsen family – forgive me if I use you as an example. It could just as easily have been the adorable Harley and his dad Hamoun, or Gisele, Bailey and family in their simply darling Christmas outfits.

You seem like a nice, if maniacally misguided, family. Gidget looks like a happy doggy, even though it does appear in her photo that you have stuffed her into a christmas sack and stuck a cigar in her mouth.

However, no matter how much you may wish to believe it, Gidget doesn’t give a shit about putting America back on track or any of that other twaddle, because she is a dog. She cares about you, food, pats, other dogs’ bottoms, chasing crap, chewing crap, sleep, weeing and poo, in about that order.

I suspect you and I don’t agree on much politically. I’m a sweary, fictional, 93 year old drug-fiend, while you (if your picture is to be believed) are not.

However, I hope we agree about each other’s right to freedom of speech about our polity and its politics, and the importance of exercising that right and defending its exercise by others, no matter how much we may disagree with them.

Politics (despite the best efforts of most of our actual politicians) is important.

Pets are also important, as well as loving and loyal and a source of joy for many.

A campaign website that, without a hint of jest, inserts your political views into the mouth of your dog, especially as part of a cynical campaign to make a slimy bottom-feeder like Newt Gingrinch look like a human being, is demeaning to you, to me, to Gidget, and to our democracy.

We should all feel shame that this is what we have come to.

Now, where did I put that drink?