All influential politicians attract rumors. Like tar babies, no matter how much denied or improbable, sticky rumors do not disappear if they capture something defining about their target. They are too good to be false. For several weeks before our consumption of all things bin Laden, Americans speculated on the meaning and significance of President-elect Barack Obama’s birth certificate. There was never much evidence to suggest that the president was born outside of the United States, but it had a certain cultural cachet. Even if the rumor was not explicitly racist, Obama with a Kenyan father, schooling at a Muslim school (although not a madrassa) in Indonesia, and a globalist political stance could be seen as extra-American. The birther rumor had a political logic, even if the facts were against it.
However, Obama is not the only politician to have to confront a rumor that skips lightly over the truth but that addresses public concern, allowing us to use beliefs to reveal our hidden attitudes. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (and my former Congressperson) has announced that he will be running for Obama’s job. He would like to be discussing policy positions, but to many Americans he also brings a character deficit. To be sure, those who hold most strongly to this belief are not likely to be in the Newt camp, but the same could be said of the birthers and the president.
Gingrich is currently allied with a third wife. He is a serial adulterer, not necessarily a disqualifying trait for father of his country. However, in Newt-world the juicy rumor involves his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher whom he wed at 19. The rumor is that when his first wife was dying of cancer, Gingrich popped up cheerily and cheekily in her hospital room to ask for a divorce (perhaps he felt that she was “a little square” [I couldn’t resist a little geometric humor!]). The story, in the way it has been told, has flaws and holes. It lacks a birth certificate, but it does have legs. A quick Google search reveals that the story is all over the Internet.