(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)



(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)



“For me, it was embarrassing to be a janitor at my own high school. ... I was poor. My mom was working super hard. I did not feel empowered by serving my classmates,” Cendejas said. “Why not invest on these kids to work for a law firm?” He added: “Thank God I had Georgetown to save my butt, you know? ... All my friends, they’re pregnant, they’re in gangs, in jail, and we did the same job, working as janitors. So for me, your remark was a little offensive to me.”

“But they come from a wealthy family,” the young man said, to some boos from the crowd. “I wasn’t wealthy,” Gingrich responded, to applause. “I wasn’t wealthy. You know, I just disagree.”

At a campaign appearance at Georgetown University, Newt Gingrich was questioned by 2010 Georgetown graduate Hector Cendejas, who had lived Gingrich's proposal that poor kids should serve as school janitors cleaning up messes made by their wealthier classmates:Gingrich responded by citing his daughters having worked as teen janitors.Wealth is always relative—while it's true that Gingrich was basically middle class at the time daughter Jackie cleaned bathrooms part-time at their church, she wasn't working to support herself or anyone else in the family, spending her earnings instead on "clothes and eight-track tapes." To someone who actually needed to work as a janitor—at his high school, not a church—that would look like some kind of luxury.

Cendejas should just be glad Gingrich is functionally out of the Republican presidential race. Otherwise, his comments would make him a big target for right-wing talk radio. (Starting with the fact that he went to Georgetown ... just think about who else goes to Georgetown. That's right, Sandra Fluke, and that would be clear evidence of a conspiracy if Glenn Beck gave a damn about Gingrich at this point.)