"We have, according to Mr. Gingrich, “an absolute obligation to minimize damage to the natural world,” a “moral obligation to take care of the ecosystem,” but since this collides with his wish to lift the “ridiculous burden” of “environmental regulations hatched in Washington,” the fulfillment of our moral obligation to take care of the ecosystem is left to a constituent in Mr. Gingrich’s district, Linda Bavaro, who turns two-liter Coca-Cola bottles into T-shirts, which she sells at Disney World. “Linda,” Mr. Gingrich notes, “has a good chance of doing well financially by doing good environmentally. That is how a healthy free market in a free country ought to work."
—
The Teachings of Speaker Gingrich by Joan Didion | The New York Review of Books
Making the rounds lately: Joan Didion’s great essay on Newt Gingrich in The New York Review of Books from 1995. One pull quote can’t do it justice, though the part where she offhandedly describes the To Renew America audiobook as “marginally less tedious” than Gingrich’s 400-page WWII alternate history novel probably deserves special mention.
