Sleazy

Sleazy - definition
a : lacking firmness of texture : FLIMSY b : carelessly made of inferior materials : SHODDY
2
a : marked by low character or quality b : SQUALID, DILAPIDATED

What a fine word, "sleazy." I haven’t heard it much lately. I find this a bit strange as it is by far the finest one word description of Newt Gingrich you will ever find. In fact, I find it hard to believe it was not first coined with him in mind. I was also surprised to learn his picture did not appear with the definition.

I don’t say he is sleazy because he has been married three times, lots of people have been married more than once, but when you confront your first wife with your demands for a divorce while she is lying in a hospital bed suffering from cancer, that’s sleazy. And then when you announce she was not pretty or young enough to be the First Lady, that’s pretty sleazy. Similarly, when having finally ditched your first wife, you marry your second, that’s not necessarily sleazy, but when you admit to having had an ongoing affair with her while still married to your first wife, that’s sleazy. And then again, while married to your second wife you are having an affair with who is to become your third wife, that’s sleazy. And what is super sleazy is leading a charge to impeach President Clinton for an extramarital sexual affair while you are engaged in exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, hard to beat that for pure sleaze. One might wonder how many other fine “adventures” one might have with a half million dollar line of credit from Tiffany’s.

Then, when you have made millions of dollars peddling influence, you claim not to have been a lobbyist, that is sleazy. If you are collecting money from clients you represent to members of Congress, claiming your influence there, and attempting to influence decision making on Capitol Hill, you are in fact working as a lobbyist. Trying to claim you were really acting as a historian while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for your “advice” is sleaze, pure and simple, to say nothing of a lie so transparent as to leave you gasping.

Then, when Speaker of the House, you are charged with ethics violations (a mere 84 of them), fined $300,000, and forced out of your position in disgrace, that, too, is pretty sleazy, especially when you are the only person in the history of the country to be so disgraced and thrown out of office by your own party. Threatening to shut the country down unless you get your way is even more sleazy. You tried, and lost, but that doesn’t make it any the less sleazy. Of course making up a list of bad words to provide to your party for use against the opposition party is not exactly a procedure lacking sleaze, and dividing the country for political gain is equally if not even more sleazy.

Denigrating poor children as lacking a work ethic, having parents who likewise don’t work, unless in criminal enterprises, is almost below sleaze. It might help if you had any idea what the hell you were talking about, but that never seems to keep you from blurting out your spur of the moment idea that is going to solve our problems. It would, I suppose, seem obvious (at least to Republicans) that poor children should clean toilets and scrub floors, a truly brilliant idea to combat unemployment and the deficit. And claiming to be the only person to keep us safe from the fantasy of a “secular fascist takeover” is egotistical sleaze run wild, besides being utter bullshit. Constantly telling us how wonderful you are, how intellectual, how brilliant, how only you have the know-how to save the world, is in itself sleazy. Lying is also sleazy, although we all recognize politicians regularly lie. But your lying goes beyond the ordinary, being so fanciful and exaggerated that even a small child recognizes them for hogwash. President Obama is a socialist, for example, or he hates capitalism. Your description of your contribution to the defeat of communism and contribution to the Contract for America would make us believe you were one of the Founding Fathers. I’m surprised You haven’t claimed to have been with Hannibal when he crossed the Alps.

In short, there could not possibly be a better adjective than sleazy to describe Newt. He is a walking, talking, living manifestation of sleaze, the personification of sleaze, the Poster Boy of sleaze. It oozes it from his pores, it surrounds and envelopes him, it slides from his tongue so readily it can be mistaken for erudition by the morons he has convinced of his remarkable brilliance, he is Newton Leroy Gingrich, the King of Sleaze! It is remarkably fitting and symbolic, perhaps even inevitable, he be chosen to represent the Republican Party in the coming election. Rest assured, he will not hesitate to tell President Obama what’s what. I can hardly wait.

I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.

Richard Nixon