There was much entertainment on television during this excessively long break.
After all of my friends left me to go back to school, I was stuck in the same crevice of my couch watching “Who Wore it Best” at the Golden Globes, how Kim Kardashian is handling her divorce and, in the same spectrum of “trashy” TV, ABC’s exclusive interview with presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich.
Despite the fact that Marianne’s interview was for a presidential campaign, it strayed from politics and focused on infidelity and a failed marriage.
Newt Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, was seven years his senior. They first met in high school — Jackie was his math teacher. They continued their relationship despite the extremely inappropriate age difference and initial teacher-to-student association.
Jackie and Newt married in 1962 and had two girls, Kathy Gingrich Lubbers and Jacqueline Gingrich Cushman. Unfortunately, their marriage experienced a series of unfortunate events. Jackie was diagnosed with uterine cancer and soon after, Newt filed for divorce, to then marry the woman he was seeing, Marianne Gingrich.
Newt and Marianne wed during the summer of 1981. Their marriage was rocky from the start, and it ended in July 1999. For about six years while Newt was married to Marianne, he was having an affair with his current wife, Callista Gingrich. Newt and Callista married in August 2000 and today, Callista is a fundamental part of her husband’s campaign.
Beginning with his relationship with his math teacher, Newt’s track record with love has not been a good one. And now, 12 years later, in the midst of his campaign, he is being accused of having asked ex-wife Marianne Gingrich for an open marriage.
Regardless of the fact that an open relationship completely undermines the sanctity of love and marriage, and that this accusation is still only an accusation, the problems a married couple face together are not for the public eye. They are exclusively personal matters that should be kept in the privacy of their own homes.
These matters shouldn’t, by any means, be the highlights of a presidential campaign.
I am disturbed that ABC News would take the time to interview the ex-wife of a presidential candidate, when undoubtedly her main concern was solely to get back at a man who ended her marriage.
In Marianne’s interview, she claimed that Newt “lacks the moral character to be president.” While I think that what Newt is being accused of is wrong, I don’t believe that individual mistakes define moral values as a whole, or truly display the ethics by which this country would be run.
Furthermore, based on former President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings from 2000, nearly 70 percent of the country agreed that Clinton’s unfaithful acts did not impede his ability to run the country.
Not only was it tasteless to interview Marianne in the first place, it was even more so that the first question of the evening at the South Carolina Debate was a provocation by moderator John King, asking Gingrich to respond to his ex-wife’s allegations.
Gingrich heatedly replied, “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”
I do not agree with the platform on which Gingrich stands, but I do agree that involving such private and petty issues in a serious presidential campaign and debate, only two days prior to the primary, is, as Gingrich said, “as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”