Word: newt
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...happens, one model for this Scrooge was not Newt Gingrich but Charles Dickens. "He was a very generous man," says Mike Ockrent, the show's director and co-author, "but I think he viewed himself as a potential Scrooge -- what he might have become had his attitude been different." This Christmas Carol grafts part of Dickens' biography (his days as a child laborer, his father's trip to debtors' prison) onto Scrooge. It makes him less a villain than a victim of his times. "Scrooge is really every one of us," notes the show's composer, Alan Menken...
Until now, it's been all Newt. He lectures; he threatens; he denies; he clarifies. Every word, every musing, every hyperbolic expression is recorded and decoded. Newt Gingrich, the incoming House speaker, has dominated the debate as few politicians ever do. Even Bill Clinton, still conflicted about What It All Means a month after the Republicans' midterm rout, seems almost mute before Newt...
...just that Newt is new; it's that he has ideas, 10 simple and simplistic solutions embodied in his "Contract with America." Not all of Newt's poll-driven notions are nonsense, of course, but transparency is their common denominator. They seek to gratify the public's desires and quiet its fears. Conveniently forgotten is the real world's complexity and an appreciation for the long-term consequences of their feel-good prescriptions. Consider, for example, the contract's implicit welfare paradigm: We're against children having children, so unwed teen mothers will be denied welfare and their kids...
...Newt's free ride in the world of big think ends this week. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is issuing its "Progressive Alternative," a more honest and rigorous attempt to address the nation's problems than Gingrich's vacuous bromides...
...foster-care crisis -- and Newt Gingrich -- revive an old idea...