Newt Gingrich Blinks 139 Times in Presidential Announcement Video
In the video announcing his run for the presidency, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich blinks 139 times. 1-3-9.
I admit it, I counted. 139. The nascent candidate was blinking so fast at the beginning I actually had to download the video and play it back 2x slow.
While the video itself is only 2:08 minutes long, with 139 blinks, that equals out to 0.928057554 seconds between each blink. More than 1 blink per second!
Newt Gingrich blinks every 1.5 seconds.
As Frank Herbert once wrote, the beginning is a very delicate time. When the first thing potential voters see of your campaign is highly refined video of you blinking your way through a two minute speech, it makes us nervous.
Do you always blink that much? Is there a medical problem that needs to be addressed? The lights seem pretty soft and low, is everything okay? We worry that you’re going to blink your way through the presidency. We worry you might miss an important detail in a classified document, or that your retinas can’t handle the persistent flashing of press cameras, or that you might stumble in the spotlight.
Newt, baby, your video is set in ideal conditions. As every president discovers, those ideal conditions vanish the instant you announced your candidacy.
We know you’ve had good eyes in the past, at least lingering ones.
After cheating on your first wife and marrying your mistress, you had eyes for another mistress and cheated on your second wife and married your second mistress -or something like that.
Your blinking eyes and not-good-enough marriages have got us confused and disoriented. But we understand, those fervent eyes are always searching for the next best thing. This HuffPost slideshow lays it out:
But don’t worry Newter, you’re not the first pol to blink their way through an important event:
So keep those eyes on the prize, Mr. Gingrich. Just don’t count on America blinking.
That’s 139 blinks in 129 seconds, or more than 1 blink per second!
Good catch, David. Fixed it!
I guessed there was some sort of self promotional video of his on the interwebs but I had never dared to search for it. Seeing the lovely freeze frame of Newt on your site inspired me to incorporate him (another frame from same video) into my latest cartoon. He does look like a cherub doesn’t he? Raphael couldn’t have done him any better.