If Newt Gingrich runs for President and wins - which I hate to say I think he actually could, but then again I am negative about the '08 elections to the point of complete insanity and can no longer tell wehre being negative ends and not wanting to jinx it begins - I will, most likely, be writing this blog from jail (I bet the computer I will have access to there will be nicer than the one I have at work, and the IT people will probably be a lot smarter).
I have a particular hate for Newt Gingrich because he has been a part of my life longer than he has for most of you lucky stiffs. I grew up in what was, from 1990 on, Georgia's 6th District and Newt's undisputed kingdom of very rich, very loyal, very Republican, and very stupid idiots (yes, I said stupid idiots and I am aware that's redundant). Newt had been around a little before that but the 6th district hadn't been gerrymandered/DeLay'ed to his liking until '92.
Since it is probably no news at all to most people who read this (ie, R2B2, my parents, and the occasional Brazillian who tries to sell me a t-shirt - or at least, I think he/she is trying to sell me a t-shirt but my Portuguese is fair at best...okay, it's non-existent. Oh, wait, no it's not! Obrigado! Christiano Ronaldo! Mas que nada! Nem vem que nao tem!!) that Newt Gingrich really, really sucks, I will not harp on about it, but rather will attempt to entertain with a little story about growing up in the 6th district.
The year was 1992. I was a senior in high school. Newt Gingrich was running against a poor, doomed schlub of a lawyer called Tony Center (for a blast from the past, see this profile of the contest from the New York Times archive), who would wind up losing by a shockingly narrow margin - Newt took 57%; Center took 42% - at the time it was represented as a thorough trouncing, but it's actually kind of amazing given how red the district was and continues to be (current grade-A asswipe/Georgia Senator Johnny Isaakson was involved in local politics at this point and his equally unappealing son, Kevin, went to my high school).
Anyway, it was the week of the homecoming football game and, accordingly, Spirit Week, which meant that each day had a different theme, usually involving some kind of dressing-up, and always culminating in the cheerleaders dressing in football uniforms and the football players dressing in cheerleading uniforms. I remember one particularly Ogre-like fellow who wore a cheerleading skirt around each huge, fleshy thigh (note: I would, that following spring, do shots of Evan Williams with this guy in a hotel room in Panama City Beach. At the time, he was wearing swim trunks and had a Confederate flag tied around his neck like a cape, and Skynrd's "Simple Man" was playing. Oh, the irony-flooded memories! Spring Break '93!!). One of the themes was 80s day, when everyone got to come to school dressed all 80s (something most people just can't ever get enough of, as discussed here). Senior year was the year that most of us took US Government as our Social Studies class, and, as a part of our political education, Gingrich and Center held a debate at the school, with the entire senior class as their audience. It was awful. The 7-10 of us who identified as Democrats huddled together and fearfully, half-heartedly cheered poor Tony on as the remaining 590-ish students waved the Gingrich lawn signs they had yanked out of thier parents' yards that morning and whooped and hollered and drooled all over Newt. A contingent of very slutty girls went mental and screamed "baby killer!!" at Tony Center when the subject of baby killing - I mean, abortion - came up (again, irony, as I'm quite sure some of these girls were pregnant shortly thereafter and either had or could have used abortions. Irony was big at George Walton High School).
The best part about the whole affair (you mean none of that was the best part?!)was that the Atlanta news media was, naturally, on hand to document this and interview the student body (sans brain). Unfortunately, none of the news outlets bothered to explain that it was 80s day, so there we all were (well, not me), on the evening news, looking like we were in some kind of time warp, with dudes with pink sweaters tied around their necks, gummy bracelets galore, huge bangs, etc.
Walton High School had only been on the news two other times that I knew of prior to this. One time was when a Cambodian immigrant was found to have TB (Maddox Jolie! You scamp!) and we all had to be tested and all the popular girls pretended to be really traumatized by the little pricky test thing and screamed and fake-passed out and shit and one really big guy actually did pass out, and my test came up red and I was going to have to go to the CD fucking C but then it turned out it was all a big mistake; I don't recall why. The other time was a year or two before I started school there, when someone let a greased pig go on the football field during the homecoming game and our campus cop, a very disturbed Appalaichain-type Vietnam vet with what seemed to be a serious case of PTSD, was humiliated by falling flat on his face while trying to apprehend said slippery pig, and proceeded to take out his gun and shoot it in front of about 2,000 people, many of them children and fans of Charlotte's Web. He had a his gun taken away and, thereafter, had to stab, suffocate, garotte, strangle, or beat to death all greased pigs released onto the football field.
The school has been on the news since then but I'll save those bedtime stories for another time. In summation, if Newt Gingrich is a dick, and he made my school look out of style to the entire metro area.
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