It may seem a bit cruel to dwell on the smoking ruins of Newt Gingrich’s presidential ambitions at this particular moment. But the rejoinder sent to Huffington Post by his press secretary Rick Tyler yesterday really must be mentioned as one of the great masterpieces of unintentional humor in American political history. Gaze in awe:

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

I’d normally feel sympathy for Tyler, who has just suffered through a truly nightmarish week. The poor guy is probably updating his resume as we speak. But the bizarre mix of paranoia, idolatry, and idiocy in the passage just quoted indicates that Tyler needs a good long vacation somewhere far away from any keyboard or microphone–just like his boss.
UPDATE: Via Salon‘s Alex Pareene, check out this hysterical cartoon illustration of Tyler’s statement.