Newts, Selective Truth, Lies and Sex

OK, I'M JUST A TOQUE-WEARIN' LEFTY FROM THE GREAT WHITE NORTH.

But I know doublespeak and B.S. when I see it and hear it.

I know about appearing before a sympathetic group to confess your past sins, knowing you won't be held to the kinds of objective standards you never used to o begin with.

THIS IS A NEWT

AND THIS IS A NEWT

One is a gentle, amphibious creature that spends the first part of its life in the water breathing through gills.

It then morphs into a land animal with lungs, eating insects and hiding under leaves and things to conceal itself from predators, but as an amphibian, it still must stay moist.

The newt below is Newt Gingrich.

He also spent part of his life submerged, but in the depths of right-wing religious rhetoric and judgment about others, including U.S. President Bill Clinton.

When Wild Bill got involved with Monica Lewinsky, Ne'er-Do-Wrong Newt, as the biggest Republican Right-wing Rat in Washington, raked him over the coals and exposed him for his sexual escapades.

It was all about politics and religion, of course, because people like Newt feel a need to link the two...How Clinton was a moral menace to the God-loving American republic.

And all that crap.

Well now fast-forward to 2007.

Newt, who had more or less disappeared from the U.S. national political scene and apparently returned to the water, resurfaces as a potential Republican presidential candidate.

An agenda, ya think? Oh, no. Of course not.

But Lordy, what does Newt do? He goes on a nationally syndicated radio show, the ultra-right wing Focus on the Family, and admits that he also had extra-marital affairs. GASP!

Not only that, but he was having an extra-marital affair and deceiving his second wife...at the same time as he was calling Clinton out and trying to run him out of office. DOUBLE GASP!!

I know I'm not supposed to get up in arms about this. After all, I'm just a hick from Canada. I say "Eh."

Still, Newt's New Makeover was in the news for a couple of days this past week.

But I haven't heard another thing since, so Newt has apparently achieved his objective of breathing both water and air at the same time and living to tell about it, because righteous people like him do.

All I can do is declare Newt the winner of my initial instalment of the Newt Awards, presented to the biggest arse who manages to speak out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.

I figure the least I can do is name the awards after the human being who more resembles a real newt than any other I have ever seen, a slimy creature that goes from one existence to another.

The only difference is once real newts make the transition, they stick with it and don't try to pretend to be what they're not...or what they used to be.

Clearly, Newt doesn't get that.

And if he gets the Republican nomination, I pledge I will return to the water and live happily ever after under a lily pad, waiting for a dragonfly or fish to swallow me whole.