Your family is going to London. Your oldest two kids are traveling there with their school, to spend the week at some kind of Shakespeare camp at The Globe Theater. The rest of you are going to London separately, just for fun. Unfortunately, due to stupid airline shenanigans, your trip now involves a long layover in JFK. So you are headed to The Palm in Terminal 4 for grub. To kill time, yes. But also because even on the much loved Virgin Atlantic, airplane food is six degrees of suck, while The Palm’s Second Avenue Burger can take the Pepsi Challenge against all comers.
As you navigate the airport with your younger kids in tow, you see a wide-headed hobgoblin in a navy suit shambling toward you. You do a double take and confirm that the creature is in fact Newt Gingrich. He is alone, and looks a little disoriented as he scans the airport signs for gates or whatever. He is burdened by some manilla folders and loose papers, which he carries with both hands. He walks as if this modest cargo unbalances his gait, or maybe his shoes are too tight. He has no suitcase or other bag with him – nothing that might be used to contain the manilla folders and loose papers. Who travels without some kind of bag to hold their stuff? What if he needs to take a crap in an airport bathroom – where is he gonna put those manilla folders and loose papers? On the perpetually wet sink counter (where just anyone can see them)? On the dirty floor of the stall? Balanced precariously on the back of the toilet, or above the toilet paper dispenser? (Shudder). None of these are acceptable options for anyone who is not a barbarian or a madman.
Before you can react, he’s walking past you. His face is blotchy and kinda gross, and you realize you’ve always seen it with makeup for the television cameras. As he lurches away, you feel a sense of panic at a lost opportunity. You should say something. Should you say something? What should you say? Nothing rude, because that’s not who you are. (Though you’ve had so many rude thoughts about this man over the years.) But if you don’t interact with him, you’re not going to have a Newt Gingrich story. It’s just going to be “I saw Newt Gingrich in an airport once. Dude had no briefcase.” What kind of story is that?!
Even as you think these thoughts, you realize that you’re not going to say anything. You’ve not had time to think of anything worth saying. Damnit! Why didn’t you prepare for this moment? All that time you wasted thinking about how Gimli was unjustly debased by being made the comic relief in the Peter Jackson Lord of The Rings movies (“Alas for Gimli, son of Gloin!”), or lamenting the lack of a season two of Firefly, or sketching out your arguments as to why you would prefer having a bloodhound’s sense of smell to being amphibious. Not once during that time did you stop to think “what do I say if I run into Newt Gingrich in an airport?”
You gesture, and hiss to your wife: “Erin! That’s Newt Gingrich!” She turns, and glimpses the white hair adorning his huge melon even as it is partially swallowed by the crowd.
“Who is Newt Gingrich?” asks your son.
“Well, he’s an awful man who used to be one of the most powerful people in the nation. Now he just talks on cable TV too much.”
Your son considers the walking ham in the distance for a few beats. Then his sister interjects: “Can we get Jamba Juice?”
“Oh, yeah!” he agrees. “Jamba Juice!”
“No we can’t get Jamba Juice. I just told you we’re eating at The Palm.”
And like that, the moment has passed. You proceed to the restaurant, and Newt proceeds to wherever he was going (Shake Shack?). And minutes later, you are ordering a Cobb salad (thereby giving yourself credit for making a somewhat healthy choice), while harboring the secret intention of finishing what will of course be left of the Second Avenue Burgers that each of your children have ordered (thereby giving yourself what you actually want). Beside you, your daughter grumpily sketches a self-portrait on an index card you have provided. And your son reads Stickman Odyssey for the fifth time. And your wife reminds herself of the arrival details for the AirBNB flat she has procured. And you drink your wine, and conclude that it is good you did not speak to Newt Gingrich.
Because to engage him is a political act, but also a vile one. One does not accost Newt Gingrich to swap cobbler recipes or discuss baseball. One engages the Toad Lord to enter the fray, to fight his poisoned political ramblings as best one can with reason and facts and sanity. But he is immune to reason and facts and sanity. Indeed, he draws his strength from the very rejection of them. And to tilt with him in his world is to be stained by his cynicism, maddened by his hypocrisy, and rendered somehow unclean by his own moral bankruptcy. His world is one of bluster, and bombast, and film flam. His world is not your world. Your world is real.
48 hours later, you’ll be in Hyde Park meeting Roger, one of your oldest friends. And after a warm greeting he will ask you about your flight. And you will tell him “I saw Newt Gingrich in the airport. Dude had no briefcase.”
And he’ll likely say something like “Yeah? Neither do you Mike.”
And you’ll say “But I’m not carrying a bunch of papers, Rog.”
And Rog will get it. Rog always gets it.