Today, documents were released to the media regarding Newt Gingrich's first divorce from Jackie Battley Gingrich. The documents seem to show that the first Mrs. Gingrich fought the grant of the divorce because her husband would not admit that the marriage was irretrievably broken. This contradicts statements that the Gingrich campaign has made indicating that his wife sought the divorce.
While snippets of the pleadings filed in a high profile case can make for some interesting sound bites for the media, they do not tell the entire story. The statements made can reflect a position taken by a party at one time during the case or could just be a part of some legal wrangling by the Warner's to get a better position with the Court. Once the entire file is made avaiable to the public, the documents can be placed in thier proper context and wil unfold the entire story of the divorce. Of course this will not fit into a 15 second sound bite or even a newspaper article.
You said: "The documents seem to show that the first Mrs. Gingrich caught the grant of the divorce because her husband would not admit that the marriage was irretrievably broken. This contradicts statements that the Gingrich campaign has made indicating that his wife sought the divorce.
ReplyDeleteThis raises two questions. First: How does a party "catch a grant of divorce"? Second: If Newt "would not admit that the marriage was irretrievably broken", doesn't this SUPPORT Newt's claim that his wife sought the divorce, rather than contradict it, as you claim?
To answer your questions, you caught my typographical error. I have corrected it. Second, the point of my article is that the snippet that the news media has released about the Gingrich divorce does not necessarily give the entire picture. The Court filings in a divorce case can be voluminous and each document needs to be placed in context. I do not contend that the media sound byte supports or denies Mr. Gingrich's claims without reviewing the entire file.
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