{"id":2673,"date":"2012-01-23T13:34:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=2673"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:03:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:03:17","slug":"callista-gingrich-sign-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2012\/01\/callista-gingrich-sign-of-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Callista Gingrich: Sign of the Times?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

James Dobson, scourge of Spongebob and the Teletubbies, has found a live target. Speaking this weekend at a conference in Texas, he condemned Callista Gingrich as \u201ca mistress for eight years.\u201d Karen Santorum, who \u201cset aside two professional careers to raise those seven children,\u201d he said, would \u201cmake a fabulous first lady role model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobson\u2019s very use of the word \u201cfabulous\u201d is sign enough the world\u2019s spun right off its axis. But in Forbes,<\/em> Victoria Pynchon predicts<\/strong><\/a> his point will land flush with many of the conservative evangelical Christians who make up his audience. \u201cLack of \u2018purity\u2019 in a First Lady is unforgivable,\u201d she writes. The \u2018First Man\u2019s\u2019 impurity (so long as it is heterosexual) can be given a pass.\u201d In other words, in the world of the Christian right, what\u2019s bad for the gander is infinitely worse for the goose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hard proposition to test. In politics, outrage follows no logic save politics itself \u2014 Dobson may simply prefer Santorum\u2019s hard-line stance on immigration to Gingrich\u2019s somewhat gentler view. Or, to put it another way, would Dobson have swatted Sarah Palin with the same heavy hand had she won Todd away from his second wife? However Dobson\u2019s attack may affect her husband\u2019s bid for the presidential nomination, Callista Gingrich\u2019s story is one that Catholics may soon have to start taking seriously.<\/p>\n

To hear Catholic social critics tell it, American society turned into Sodom and Gomorrah sometime in the 1960s, and shows no sign of turning back. In large part, feminism, in all its forms and waves, is to blame. Rod Dreher\u2019s condemnation of Stephen Daldry\u2019s Academy Award-winning film The Hours <\/em>features all the relevant tropes.<\/strong><\/a> It\u2019s a \u201cfeminist film,\u201d because Laura Brown, its heroine, abandons her family in pursuit of personal fulfillment, and doesn\u2019t particularly blame herself for it. \u201cWe are meant to sympathize with this existential heroine instead of seeing her for what she is: a selfish, cold-hearted bitch who walked out on a decent man and two little children to go off in search of herself,\u201d Dreher fumes. The essay\u2019s title calls the film \u201cAn Apologia for Evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Brown defected from domesticity in the 1950s. Among women pundits, there seems to be a general consensus that the clock shouldn\u2019t be turned completely back, nor all the toothpaste returned to the tube. Caitlin Flanagan has, at least according to Ann Hulbert,<\/strong><\/a> conferred on herself a kind of prophethood for having it all in a way neither traditional housewives nor feminists could ever have dreamed. \u201cThanks in part to a husband with a big paycheck, [Flanagan] works cozily from home, on hand for her now preteen twin boys, and in command of a panoply of household help\u2026she scrutinizes the selfish pretensions and self-defeating contradictions that sprout like marigolds in affluent American mothers\u2019 hearts and hearths.\u201d <\/p>\n

Flanagan\u2019s ideas and delivery may have \u201cginned up a catfight\u201d or two, as Hulbert puts it, but she\u2019s not going away. Her contributing editorship at the Atlantic,<\/em> her two books, her occasional spot on Colbert\u2019s couch all attest that her collage of tradition and innovation is finding a receptive audience.<\/p>\n

The Catholic blogosphere, at least, is filling up with women who are like Flanagan in the sense that they defend tradition, but do so in voices seasoned by modernity. Some have even violated the norms Dreher upholds (though not not a Laura Brownish degree), but repent with more brio, with more swagger,<\/em> than tradition would likely have afforded them. At the Crescat, Katrina Fernandez, a divorced single mother, rails against feminism.<\/strong><\/a> On Shirt of Flame, Heather King, a self-described \u201cex-falling-down drunk,\u201d calls following Christ a \u201cmetaphorical orgasm.\u201d<\/strong><\/a> Margaret of Cortona they ain\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Callista Gingrich fits very neatly into this matrix. On the traditional side, she appears in public wearing triple strands of pearls, plus the helmetlike hairdo Amanda Marcotte believes<\/strong><\/a> could cut cheese. She\u2019s written a children\u2019s book, Sweet Land of Liberty,<\/em> featuring an elephant named Ellis who \u201ctravels through American history, delivering lessons in rhyming couplets.\u201d She has said she\u2019d use the first lady\u2019s platform to promote music education \u2014 \u201cprecisely the kind of uncontroversial passion that plays well with everyone,\u201d according to Ariel Levy.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On the modern side \u2014 well, Callista\u2019s husband has denied he asked his previous wife, Marianne, for an open marriage. Nevertheless, Callista has testified<\/strong><\/a> that she and Newt began their affair seven years before marrying. Now, a bare dozen years after the marriage, here she is, singing in the choir of the National Basilica, proudly bucking for first lady, and looking like she wouldn\u2019t be caught dead at midnight in sackcloth. <\/p>\n

Her role in Newt\u2019s conversion looks like a new twist on woman\u2019s old role as witness and redeemer. After the two married, reports Time Magazine, <\/em><\/strong><\/a>Newt \u201cGingrich found himself dragged to church whenever they traveled.\u201d Callista, he says, is \u201cadamant that we go to Mass.\u201d This is pretty much what Clothilde of Burgundia did for Clovis, King of the Franks, back in the 5th century \u2014 only Clovis and Clothilde didn\u2019t, in the interest of personal fulfillment, begin as illicit lovers or take advantage of generous divorce laws. Also, Newt hasn\u2019t taken an axe to anyone for demanding more than his fair share of treasure, though God knows that could change.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Dobson, scourge of Spongebob and the Teletubbies, has found a live target. Speaking this weekend at a conference in Texas, he condemned Callista Gingrich as \u201ca mistress for eight years.\u201d Karen Santorum, who \u201cset aside two professional careers to raise those seven children,\u201d he said, would \u201cmake a fabulous first lady role model.\u201d Dobson\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[318,49,107,319,284,188],"class_list":["post-2673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-callista-gingrich","tag-catholicism","tag-gender","tag-james-dobson","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nCallista Gingrich: Sign of the Times?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"James Dobson, scourge of Spongebob and the Teletubbies, has found a live target. 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