I’m getting some heat for mentioning Newt’s hospital visit to his ailing first wife, divorce papers in tow. A number of less than careful readers have accused me recycling a false story that Newt presented those papers to a wife who was dying of cancer. I didn’t say that. I wrote ”It isn’t the three marriages — though the hospital visit to discuss divorce proceedings while his first wife was recuperating from cancer surgery is not an agreeable image.”
It is not disputed that Newt Gingrich’s wife had been operated on for a tumor the previous day. The tumor turned out to be benign. One of Gingrich’s daughters from that marriage has suggested that her mother, not her father, requested the divorce. Maybe. But there are numerous stories suggesting that Gingrich was cheating on her with the woman who would later become wife number two. The person who requests the divorce is often not the cause of the divorce. In any case, what I wrote was accurate.
You can argue that none of this matters — that Americans don’t care. And perhaps they don’t. But the hospital visit story is still a very unattractive moment, and one that we will all hear a great deal more about if Newt is the nominee.