Sunday, November 13, 2011

Newt Gingrich’s Second Wife Dishes Hard To Esquire: His Money Woes, His Philandering, His Meltdown

I'm including this in my blog because a couple of days ago, NPR had a program where some people suggested Gingrich could end up as the Republican nominee for president in 2012, and they interviewed some woman who referred to him as "honorable".

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/gingrich_profile_featuring_ex-wife_begets_question.php

Megan Carpentier August 11, 2010, 8:42 AM

In 1999, after refusing to take the seat he won in the 1998 elections, Newt Gingrich left his second wife, Marianne, for a much-younger staffer with whom he’d been having an almost-ignored affair. As in his first marriage, he did so shortly after Marianne was diagnosed with a serious illness; as in his first divorce, he fought Marianne tooth and nail over any financial settlement. And then he had the Atlanta archdiocese inform Marianne that their marriage was invalid in the eyes of his fiancée’s faith; 9 years later, he completed his conversion to Catholicism.

[...]

Before marrying Marianne, Gingrich presented his first wife, Jackie Battley, with the terms of their divorce as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. Gingrich had pursued Marianne from nearly the moment they met at a January 1980 fundraiser:

[...]

Of course, they weren’t. In April 1980, only one day after Jackie’s surgery, Newt went to her room to present her with the terms of the divorce. That summer, he introduced Marianne to his parents, according to Esquire. By October, he was already refusing to pay alimony or child support. Marianne admits she knew little of that at first.

At first, she had no idea that the wife he was divorcing was actually his high school geometry teacher, or that he went to the hospital to present her with divorce terms while she was recovering from uterine cancer and then fought the case so hard, Jackie had to get a court order just to pay her utility bills.

[...]

The divorce was finalized in February 1981; Marianne and Gingrich wed six months later in August. She says now that she probably should have known better. She told Esquire that he asked her to marry him after only a few weeks and before he was divorced, adding, “It’s not so much a compliment to me. It tells you a little bit about him.”

Esquire goes on to describe the financial pressures faced by the new couple: Gingrich declared keeping a budget “too stressful,” so Marianne took that over, looking to maintain homes in Georgia and D.C., pay Gingrich’s alimony and child support and reduce his massive personal debt. A Vanity Fair article from 1995 indicates that Jackie, too, was in charge of the household finances because of Gingrich’s spendthrift ways: in fact, the debt the couple faced when they married in 1981 wasn’t paid off until 1994.

[...]

Marianne said that, in the summer of 1997, Republican leadership attempted to stage an intervention with Marianne’s help. The problem was Gingrich’s “volcanic” temper — and when Gingrich arrived a the meeting, they told him that his anger was dysfunctional, and the dysfunction was causing the American people to turn against Congress and the Republicans. Gingrich appeared to listen - but, according to Marianne, “But from then on his behavior only got more erratic.” Despite his increasingly erratic behavior, Gingrich proceeded to hammer out several compromises with the Clinton Administration to balance the budget and cut taxes — until 1998, when the Lewinsky scandal exploded.

[...] [See the linked article for sordid details about some of Gingrich's extramarital activity]

It was then that Marianne went to the doctor and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In early May — just before Mother’s Day — she went to Ohio to visit her mother. She told Esquire that Gingrich didn’t return her calls for two days — which, for a man that usually checked in several times a day, was quite unusual. And when he finally returned her calls, that’s when she knew.

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ “

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

[..]

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

Undoubtedly, his mistress — a Callista Bisek, a former Hill staffer who was then 32 — would not have appreciated the comparison. Bisek and Gingrich had reportedly been having an affairs for 6 years before Gingrich told Marianne.

After Gingrich’s phoned-in confession, they talked at their home — just after he’d given a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania about the importance of family values. She told Esquire she asked him how he could give such a speech days after he’s admitted his affair to her and asked her to tolerate it

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

[...]


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