BILLINGSGATE POST - Last night, CNN's John King opened the debate by deliberately throwing a slow pitch into Newt Gingrich's wheel house. Newt turned on it and blasted it out of the ball park to the raucous cheers of his South Carolina fans.
Earlier in the week, ABC announced that investigative reporter Brian Ross had interviewed Marianne Gingrich about her marital relationship with Newt that was terminated by her not agreeing to an "open marriage' with her vagabond cheating husband. She told Ross, a man with impeccable journalist credentials and who was twice honored by ABC for "creatively combining fact with fiction" in his reporting, that Newt had called her from Callista Bisek's apartment and asked her if she would agree to share him with his new squeeze.
Telling Ross that she could hear girlish giggling in the background, she warned her husband that "life was fickle." The tape of the interview showed the pupils of Brian Ross' eyes spinning out of control upon hearing this revelation. She also recalled admonishing Newt with old bromides like, "What goes around, comes around" and "Man who looses key to girlfriend's apartment, no get new key."
By this time, Ross was frothing at the mouth and hardly able to contain himself from framing his acceptance speech for his expected Pulitzer Prize.
Footnote: If Billingsgate doesn't receive the Pulitzer Prize for this story, there will be others even worse.
