Waxworks

When I read the day after the election about the meeting to be held at Brent Bozell's "weekend" home that would include Leonard Leo, Grover Norquist, and Tony Perkins, sitting around the table to discuss how conservatism can make a comeback, I was taken back to the bridge playing sequence in Sunset Boulevard, with Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond), and Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H.B. Warner (playing themselves).

Two scenes almost sixty years apart of four creaky, creepy has-beens.

Now I read that Newt Gingrich, as part of his "return", wants to make his mark with

I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.

(I think he just called his sister, Candace, a fascist.)

I see. It's Newt Gingrich who's the Norma Desmond in this tale^*.

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* The script could almost (re)write itself:

You're Newt Gingrich. You used to be in politics. You used to be big.
Newt: I am big. It's the politics that got small.

I didn't know you were planning a comeback.
Newt: I hate that word. It's a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the campaign.