Your Daily Newt: Mighty Morphin’ Gingrich


TK: Tk/TK; TK/TKThe path not taken: James Colburn/ZumaPress; Andrea Renault/Globe Photos; photo illustration by Tim Murphy.As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Newt Gingrich’s big ideas about killer-lasers and Moon colonies and highway-illuminating space mirrors do tend to make him sound like a super-villain. But on his first day as Speaker of the House in 1995, Gingrich solidly aligned himself with the forces of truth and justice and tights by inviting the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers to perform for the House Republican Caucus (and their families). As the Los Angeles Times reported:

After going through their high-kicking, fist-throwing and crime-fighting television show routine, the Power Rangers stood, arms akimbo, as Gingrich rushed onto the stage.

Linking the Power Rangers’ popularity with youngsters to his appeal with their parents, the Speaker noted that the Rangers’ emphasis on “family values” and “anti-drug” messages fit nicely with GOP political themes. And, he added, “they are multiethnic role models with male and female characters.”

Because it was the 1990s, Gingrich faced mild criticism for endorsing a television show that promoted violence—violence against the evil and often inept forces of Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa, but violence nonetheless. The show had been pulled from the airways in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and banned by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. But Gingrich was undeterred. “You ride the waves in America, and if something’s hot, it’s hot,” he told his fellow Republicans. Yes, there’s video:

Gingrich, has elsewhere warned that the United States is under attack from gay and secular fascism, so we suppose it’s worth pointing out that the blue ranger, “Billy,” is gay.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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