A SHRINK'S DISPATCH FROM THE MURDOCH MINISTRY OF TRUTH

Keith Ablow is a right-wing psychiatrist who appears regularly on Fox News; he also co-authored a parenting book with Glenn Beck. Now he's written an opinion piece for FoxNews.com entitled -- wait for it -- "Newt Gingrich's Three Marriages Mean He Might Make a Strong President -- Really." Here's Ablow's reasoning -- and I hope you're sitting down for this:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we'll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

Yes, America, we all share their terrible taste in men!

Wait, there's more:

4) Two women -- Mr. Gingrich's first two wives -- have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

Wow. Just wow. Um, so does this mean that, after 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, when we felt the need to be merciless to foreign enemies, we should have elected a president who was a wife-killer?

Here's my question: Does Ablow actually believe any of this nonsense? Or are you just assigned to write pieces like this when you walk into the Fox News offices every day, the way Winston Smith gets assigned to rewrite stories for the newspapers of Oceania?

(Via Rod Dreher, who for all his faults, is also appalled.)