Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Lizard King

"She turned me into a newt!" cried the angry villager played by John Cleese, who waits a moment before adding, "I got better."
Imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and discovering that you were not simply an aquatic amphibian of the family Salamandridae, but a Republican Presidential candidate who suddenly found himself thrust into the limelight once again. That would be "Newt" with a capital "N." Which is the slimy one?
You won't find a lot of salamanders suggesting "The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument." The one that walks on two legs did.
While most amphibians do not mate for life, one wonders if a toad would have said this about his first wife: "She isn't young enough or pretty enough to be the President's wife." Maybe that's why he left her. And his second. He is currently on his third wife, and there is no word from Newt on whether or not she passes his First Lady litmus test. With all his infidelities, it is interesting to note that he considers himself a staunch defender of the institution of marriage. Heterosexual marriage, anyway.
His lizard brain has some solutions, too: He suggested that poor children only be put to work in nonhazardous "three- or four-hour-a-day" jobs, such as "assistant janitors," librarians or "greeters in the school office." Adding, "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. They literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."
Yes, I think the thing I like about the newts that live under rocks is that they are content to stay there and keep their mouths shut.

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