How Innuendo Works

By Daniel Rigney

Let me be perfectly clear, as President Obama says too often.

I am not saying that Mitt Romney has engaged in intimate relations with Mormons. Neither am I suggesting that Ron Paul makes Calvin Coolidge look like a progressive, nor that Rick Santorum was an “altar boy” in his youth.

It would never cross my mind to suggest that Ann Coulter or Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain would stoop to any depth to sell books, or that Rush Limbaugh would play cynically upon the fears and resentments of his uncritical listeners.

I’m tired of hearing people whisper that Rick Perry is a hand-puppet of Texas oil and real estate interests. When will this cheap and sleazy name-calling end?

Nor do I believe persistent rumors that members of the Fox News and Wall Street Journal staffs have been seen together at backroom “parties” after dark, engaging in acts of "collegiality" which I cannot disuss here.

Above all, I stand firmly and sincerely against anyone who implies that Newt Gingrich has made a political career of launching innuendos against his political opponents.  A person of character and integrity would never do such a thing.