Perhaps the single lovable aspect of condescending egomaniac Newt Gingrich is his adorable fascination with zoos. Nearly sixty years ago, "Young Newton Gingrich" was written up by the AP for his efforts to start a zoo from scratch in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Since that time, Gingrich claims to have toured about a hundred different zoos. He even expected, "early on in life," that he'd end up with a career as a zoo director, he recently told CNN. For whatever reason, that childhood ambition was never realized. Instead, Gingrich used all the power and influence of the Speakership to gain, at every opportunity, access to animals both exotic and mundane. He found excuses to bring them to the Capitol, or to involve them in his interviews and photo ops. He held them in his hands and arms — closely, intimately. Not like a common zoo patron, viewing wildlife from afar, but like the zoo director he had always dreamed of becoming.