If It's Tuesday Wednesday, It's Boehlert!

I'm a day late and a dollar short, but Boehlert hits another one out of the park this week with his take on Zombie Newt:

Who cares what Newt Gingrich thinks?

Newt Gingrich made headlines late last week during an interview with ABC News when he unloaded on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding the unfolding Beltway process gotcha story about what she knew about the use of torture seven years ago. ... Personally, I thought the Gingrich slap was of marginal interest. (Gingrich attacked a prominent Democrat? Wow, get me rewrite.) And as often happens when I read breaking, this-is-what-Newt-said dispatches, I couldn't help thinking, "Who cares what Newt Gingrich thinks?" And I don't mean that in the partisan sense. I mean it in the journalistic sense: How do Gingrich's daily pronouncements about the fundamental dishonesty of Democrats (Newt's favorite phrase) translate into news? Why does the press, 10 years after Gingrich was forced out of office, still treat his every partisan utterance as a newsworthy occurrence? In other words, why does the press still treat him like he's speaker of the House?

It's unprecedented.

If you don't think the press' treatment of Gingrich is bizarre, then please point out the prominent Democrat who was driven from office during the 1990s, suffers from dreadful public approval numbers, has no actual base of political support, hasn't been elected to office in more than a decade, hasn't had his hands on the levers of powers since before the iPod was invented, and yet is treated like a Beltway big shot. Who is the wildly partisan '90s Democrat who spits out falsehoods with stunning regularity, wallows in sophomoric name-calling, and yet the press corps obediently follows around, making sure to report his or her every utterance as news?

Read the whole thing here.