Newtonian Optics

Looper Report (Des Moines,Iowa)

The Looper Report interviewed former Speaker of the House and presidential aspirant, Newt Gingrich on his campaign for the Republican nomination in Iowa.
LR: Thank you for this opportunity and good to see you Mr. Speaker.
Gingrich: Good to see you!
LR: Mister Speaker you got off to a rocky start but you seemed to have righted your ship and are now cruising with a full head of steam. Is that correct?
Gingrich: Well I think "rocky" is too strong of a word to use here. We just refer to it as mild turbulence, the normal sort thing we always see at the beginning of any epic journey. You can see on my web site, American Solutions, that after Picket's charge in the battle of...
LR: Excuse me sir. Let's press on. About this $500,000 bill you owe Tiffany's; does that strike you as something that is fiscally conservative?
Gingrich: Put in context it is conservative. Bear in mind I've was very young when I got married and while I've always admired the beauty of natural Zirconium Jackie preferred a genuine diamond and not having much money I charged it. The ring. It's as simple as that.
LR: You wanted to give your first wife a phony diamond?
Gingrich: It's called diamond simulant jewelry.
LR: By whom?
Gingrich: By the staff at HSN.
LR: HSN? That would be in what department?
Gingrich: It' not a governmental agency it an interactive retailer.
LR: What does HSN stand for?
Gingrich: Home Shopping Network.
LR: Well what did Jackie say?
Gingrich: Since I embraced Roman Catholicism I've forgotten almost everything about my first marriage.
LR: Everything? Really?
Gingrich: Well, I do remember her saying that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the square of the sides.
LR: That's right, she was your high school geometry teacher. So you been paying on your ring since 1962? Must have been some ring.
Gingrich: Well I had to buy two more wedding sets and some Oneida flatware.
LR: Oneida flatware from Tiffany's?
Gingrich: No from HSN but I charged it on my Tiffany's card. See when we partnered with HSN....
LR: You are a partner with the Home Shopping Network?
Gingrich: Not me personally but American Solutions partnered with HNS's Home Solutions to market a German made synthetic fabric.
LR: Gore-Tex? That is remarkable?
Gingrich: Actually it was Shamwow. You know the Germans always make good stuff. Callista hardly ever buys paper towels anymore. Anyway this Vince guy stole the product from us and we suffered a little set back that we put on the Tiffany's card.
LR: Okay, we have one failed business venture and two failed marriages and one active marriage on the card. But Mr. Speaker you have made a tidy sum of money. Surely there must be more to it.
Gingrich: There was a large campaign donation.
LR: To Whom?
Gingrich: It was a congressional race. I backed the only true conservative in the field. Dede Scozzafava.
LR: Add in one failed political campaign. Anything else?
Gingrich: Well there was an over draft. I put it on the Tiffany's card too. It was the result of a business venture.
LR: What sort of venture?
Gingrich: I was chatting online with a close friend I met on Craig's list when this Nigerian banker IM-ed me. He needed my expertise to help him move a large sum of cash from Sri Lanka to Singapore and all I had to do was put up $200,000 to make $2 million. Anyway to make a long story short he was robbed by the KGB and we ended up loosing everything. And I was long Bear Stern in 2008.
LR: I can see the private sector hasn't been good to you.
Gingrich: That's not true. Callista and I hope to bring to market soon a line of Yasser Arafat DVD's and boxer shorts. And then we have the Thomas Merton diet plan, and the Mother Teresa cook book and we are planning a Dag Hammarskjold skiing trip to Sweden. The beauty of all this is none of them are protected by copyright laws. Just like Pope John Paul.
LR: Getting back to the primary, Mr Speaker, what do you think of Sarah Palin?
Gingrich: She's too flakey!