COMMENTARY | The woman who describes herself as a hybrid of “Nancy Reagan, Laura Bush and Jackie Kennedy” may actually have far more in common with scandal-ridden reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
Newt Gingrich’s third wife, Callista Gingrich — who engaged in an eight-year affair with the Republican presidential candidate while he was still married to his second wife, Marianne — would be the very first First Lady in American history to be the former affair partner of a president.
Unlike the milk-and-cookies images of Ann Romney and Karen Santorum — the wives of Newt’s Republican presidential candidate rivals — the helmet-headed Callista used her sexual powers to seduce the portly politician in an effort to secure her own powder room in the White House.
Kim Kardashian has also used her sexuality to move up the social ladder. She made a sex tape with singer Ray J that mysteriously got leaked to the media and parades around town in seductive clothing. In a recent ad for Sears, she and her sisters Kourtney and Khloe posed topless, wearing only Kardashian Kollection jeans.
Whether Callista will start spelling her name with a K and become an honorary Kardashian is doubtful since she is attempting to re-invent herself as a hybrid of the most refined First Ladies of recent history. But her attempts to airbrush her biography have not fooled women, a majority of whom have refused to vote for her husband no matter how many times his campaign manager tries to Wite-Out her Wikipedia page.
Just this past week, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a rebuke of the woman who has been likened by some to a robot. “She feeds his ego like a goose destined for pâté, but drains support among some women and some evangelicals who disapprove of a man who keeps trading in wives, even sick ones,” she mocked.
During the recent Florida Republican primary campaign, reporters from Vice.com asked the Gingriches if they were in an open marriage, an attempt to embarrass the pair after Newt’s second wife remarked to Brian Ross of ABC’s “Nightline” that Newt wanted her to accept his running around by telling her, “Callista doesn’t care what I do.”
To signal that she is as wholesome as clotted cream, the modern-day June Cleaver wears pearls around her neck, most likely from Tiffany. The former Callista Bisek also boasts about being a devoted Catholic, as if attending mass makes up for messing around with another woman’s husband.
Ironically, a video of the third Mrs. Gingrich and her husband being interviewed by Greta Van Susteren shows the perfectly coiffed blonde beaming with religious pride as she explains how much God was a part of early American history. What she conveniently forgets to mention to the Fox News talk host was that she herself would be walking around the colonies with a big scarlet “A” on her chest instead of hosting fancy parties at the White House.