Gingrich doubles down on France Bashing

[pampango]

5. AFP: Gingrich puts his French in the past; I did speak French once upon a time," he allowed.

Republican US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich admitted Friday to speaking French "once upon a time" but said his dalliance with the language of Moliere was over.

Gingrich's comment came as a French reporter asked him about Afghanistan and apologized for her French accent.

"Do you know John Kerry?" he said, referring to the Democratic senator and failed 2004 presidential candidate, who speaks French and was mocked as looking French during that year's campaign.

The journalist followed up by asking Gingrich -- who spent several years in Orleans as a youth when his father was posted there as a soldier, during a period when France still hosted US military bases -- whether he spoke French.

"No. I did speak French once upon a time," he allowed.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g7AnAhG6785F-fUgPqFmbqD-nIQw?docId=CNG.f8d47f3d107676b518cf4fe2da38ad72.2d1

If Newt "can't find France on a globe" despite having lived there for several years, he has bigger memory problems than whether or not he remembers how to speak the French that he knew as a youth.