Aspects of Gingrich divorce story distorted

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For almost as long as Newt Gingrich has been in public life, an unflattering story has shadowed him: That as a rising young Republican congressman from Georgia, Gingrich ended his first marriage by serving his wife with divorce papers while she lay in a hospital bed dying of cancer.

The story has been trumpeted by Gingrich’s political opponents, endlessly recycled by the news media and repeated even by would-be allies, including social conservatives, who have long had doubts about the thrice-married former House speaker. As candidate Gingrich has risen to the top of some polls in the past few weeks, the story has inevitably surfaced again. Variations have turned up on MSNBC and in National Journal, various columns and blogs and two British newspapers in just the past week.

Over the years, Gingrich himself has declined to comment on the story’s details, although when asked about his divorces and extramarital relationships, Gingrich has usually relied on some variation of the comment he made to the New York Times earlier this year: ‘’There are things in my life I’m not proud of, and there are things in my life I’m very proud of.’’

Yet while the thrust of the story about his first divorce is not in dispute — Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, has said previously that the couple discussed their divorce while she was in the hospital in 1980 — other aspects of it appear to have been distorted through constant retelling.

Most significantly, Battley wasn’t dying at the time of the hospital visit; she is alive today. Nor was the divorce discussion in the hospital “a surprise” to Battley, as many accounts have contended. Battley, not Gingrich, had requested a divorce months earlier, according to Jackie Gingrich Cushman, the couple’s second daughter. Further, Gingrich did not serve his wife with divorce papers on the day of his visit (unlike a subpoena, divorce papers aren’t typically “served”).

Gingrich’s marriage to Battley had been troubled for many years before it dissolved 31 years ago, both parties have said. Battley, who is seven years older than Gingrich, had been Gingrich’s high-school math teacher in Columbus, Ga. They began dating after he graduated and were married in 1962, when Gingrich was 19 and a freshman at Emory University in Atlanta.

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Thank you, Curt. I’m glad to know the rest of the story. It sickens me to know the main stream media has been able to distort the facts of this divorce for so many years. A married couple unable to work through their problems is sad but an altogether human failing. The concoction of this awful story is a deliberately evil choice by the main stream media and those they serve to use a double tragedy of divorce and the cancer of Jackie Battley to destroy the character of another human being.

CURT
that is the real true story, his daughter has given it herself,
I have read it too,
why would the MEDIA still play that dirty game, viciously

Great post and extremely useful.

The Washington Post no less…… 🙂

I’ve never actually seen a mainstream media claim that Gingrich served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital dying of cancer. The story I’ve heard most often is that he was in an adulterous relationship with wife #2 before he was divorced from wife #1, and in an adulterous relationship with wife #3 before he was divorced from wife #2. Maybe someone will clarify that misconception.

Like most liberals, I don’t dwell on such things. My big problem with Newt is that he has reversed his stated positions so often that I don’t believe he has any that aren’t subject to reversal.

Newt has admitted to being a serial adulterer. His family values pitch “do as I say not as I do” tough to stomach.Tirade against Clinton hypocritical.
Did take a nice pic with Nancy P.
Bachmann to Perry to Cain to Gingrich to ??? Apologies to 1906 Cubbies.

Richard Wheeler
with what you come in with
the CANDIDATES ARE WAY UP BETTER THAN WHAT YOU HAVE LEADING THIS COUNTRY,
and can do a lot of cleaning and jobs creations for the PEOPLE, AS COMPARE TO A DO NOTHING BUT ONLY TALK AND CAMPAINGN LEADER.

Richard Wheeler
you call him a serial adulterer,
that make you a serial killer of profiles
you cannot get lower than that
people like you are dangerously spitting lies
to kill a profile of a potential president, so you can save
your mediocre choice which incite the young students to occupy
the parks of this AMERICA, like they did to depose the leaders of other COUNTRIES

GREG
you come in with all kinds of reversals yourself. so don’t blame other if they reverse some
within a gap of many years, which is called EVOLVING AS YOU GROW AND LEARN.
it is good for a person seeking to rise on top,
better than another who keep doing the same mistakes like OBAMA, THE WAY HE ACT

Isn’t divorce a sin?

Dear Ms. Bees Newt has admitted to affairs during his first 2 marraiges.Serial means more than one. Therefore— No apology required. Who would YOU like to see nominated?

Richard Wheeler
he did not try to hide it,
it take courage to become a CANDIDATES TO SUCCEED TO WHAT KIND OF AMERICA WILL BE GIVEN TO HIM OR HER, AND TO BARE THEMSELVES TO AMERICANS, WHO FOR SOME WANT TO PLAY GOD, TO BE JUDGE BY THEM TO BE SCRUTINIZE BY THOSE OPPONENT READY TO SINK YOU PUBLICLY FOR HAVING BEEN A HUMAN BEING WHILE THEY DON’T KNOW ANY whys and hows and whens, AND WHILE YOU LOVE AMERICA SO MUCH AND KNOW THAT YOU CAN SAVE HER FROM DISASTER,
DID YOU DO THE SAME RESEARCH FOR OBAMA, BEFORE YOU AND OTHERS VOTE FOR HIM,? HELL NO

It takes bare-faced cheek and hypocrisy to lecture a nation on morality and family values whilst not practising what you preach.

Best if Newt keeps away from mentioning the Bible or religion or as Jesus puts it….
“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Luke 16:18

GaffaUK
IT doesn’t take away the ability of the person to do a good job he is assign to,
you throw the stone, without knowing the inside story,
no one is perfect, including you

@ILOVEBEESWARZONE

Absolutely – I don’t think a candidate extra marital affairs and divorces should be considered at all (imagine all the leaders that would be barred from office historically if that was the case) -unless- they preach about morality and family values. If they do then they are fair game. So that leaves Newt just with flag then as you can’t take him seriously as a serial adulterer on faith & family.