Newt Gingrich Gets Mic-Checked--doesn't think there is a 99%

He's a pro--Newt Gingrich is. He went from saying that the Occupy movement was divided between reasonably angry people who just weren't aiming their anger at the right folks and destructive people who wanted to destroy everything, and then saying there is no 99% in response to the chants of "We are the 99%":

Hold on," Gingrich told the crowd. "I want to answer you very directly. There is no such thing in America as 99 percent! We are 100 percent Americans! We are all part of America!"

It's a great tag-line because it's absolutely true--we are all 100% American. It's just that 99% of us are kind of pissed at the double-standard 1% of us are getting. I also, as one of the 53% who are paying income taxes, not at all begrudging protesters space to protest or camp out in parks, right to use the bathrooms, or the ability to eat on my dime. And many of the protesters happen to be taxpayers too.  They are, after all, Americans, right?

And who is trashing anything? All of the belongings the Occupiers have placed in their temporary encampments can be swept up and put in a dumpster--we know that, because cops in multiple cities have done it. What isn't temporary is the lives of people who have been trashed for real--retirement accounts emptied out, homes foreclosed on, credit wrecked, people whose lives are severely impacted by student loan debt before they've even really started their lives--

Are we going to be asked by Newt Gingrich to get pissed off because human beings protest in an untidy fashion, when we have a system that financially wrecks people--even ones who do work hard and are trying to do the right things?

Oh, there's a 99% all right. The existence of 1%-ers like Newt Gingrich underline that reality.  We can't all be million-dollar historians like Gingrich or provide valuable services to the Big Special Interests like, I dunno, health care lobbyists, but I think we can all recognize that this land of opportunities doesn't really give equal opportunities for success everyone--and it gives a lot of opportunities for failure for people who don't have quite the skills Gingrich does.

I don't begrudge him his talents, either. There are, some things, after all, not all of us would do to get ahead. But that doesn't mean protesters don't have a right to be called American--and be recognized as the 99%.  Somehow, his claiming there is no such thing as the 99% when they are right there--and when the economic reality of income inequality should be well known to such a public intellectual as himself, rings rather hollow.