This is a job for… Captain Kirk!

Newt Gingrich’s spox has an epic meltdown about his boss stumbling out of the gate:

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

Is there any doubt about who should recite this on Letterman this evening?  Any at all?

Oh please oh please oh please oh please….

Author: Jonathan Zasloff

Jonathan Zasloff teaches Torts, Land Use, Environmental Law, Comparative Urban Planning Law, Legal History, and Public Policy Clinic - Land Use, the Environment and Local Government. He grew up and still lives in the San Fernando Valley, about which he remains immensely proud (to the mystification of his friends and colleagues). After graduating from Yale Law School, and while clerking for a federal appeals court judge in Boston, he decided to return to Los Angeles shortly after the January 1994 Northridge earthquake, reasoning that he would gladly risk tremors in order to avoid the average New England wind chill temperature of negative 55 degrees. Professor Zasloff has a keen interest in world politics; he holds a PhD in the history of American foreign policy from Harvard and an M.Phil. in International Relations from Cambridge University. Much of his recent work concerns the influence of lawyers and legalism in US external relations, and has published articles on these subjects in the New York University Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. More generally, his recent interests focus on the response of public institutions to social problems, and the role of ideology in framing policy responses. Professor Zasloff has long been active in state and local politics and policy. He recently co-authored an article discussing the relationship of Proposition 13 (California's landmark tax limitation initiative) and school finance reform, and served for several years as a senior policy advisor to the Speaker of California Assembly. His practice background reflects these interests: for two years, he represented welfare recipients attempting to obtain child care benefits and microbusinesses in low income areas. He then practiced for two more years at one of Los Angeles' leading public interest environmental and land use firms, challenging poorly planned development and working to expand the network of the city's urban park system. He currently serves as a member of the boards of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (a state agency charged with purchasing and protecting open space), the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice (the leading legal service firm for low-income clients in east Los Angeles), and Friends of Israel's Environment. Professor Zasloff's other major activity consists in explaining the Triangle Offense to his very patient wife, Kathy.

12 thoughts on “This is a job for… Captain Kirk!”

  3. Greatest. Spox purple prose. Ever.

    And the bongos should dance a lurid staccato after this: …unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim…

  6. Star Treck is where Newt belongs. Can’t you just see him in a toga wearing some gawdey jeweled amulet playing one of those arogent quibbling and misguided dignitareys on some small planet doomed to destruction by their blind adhearance to an out-dated philosophy that only James T. Kirk can persuade to the path of wisdom.

  7. Can’t you just see [ Newt]in a toga…blind adhearance to an out-dated philosophy that only James T. Kirk can persuade to the path of wisdom.

    Fizzbin!

  9. That’s a magnificent, inspired idea.

    On the other end of the spectrum, I would have loved to see the late Foster Brooks recite this ode. You may remember him as the guy who imitated a drunk better than almost anyone in history. And in any case, I have a sneaking hunch that Mr. Tyler may indeed have been drunk when he donated his views - if he talks like that when sober, Newt may be in bigger trouble even than we thought.

  11. Heh - it would appear Stephen Colbert might be a member of the RBC. He had John Lithgow on to do exactly this tonight.

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