Snooki & Newt Gingrich Become BFFs as Apocalypse Draws Nigh

Last night, Jay Leno interviewed both current Jersey Shore Madonna With Child Snooki and once and always pompous pain in the ass Newt Gingrich. Two totally different expressions of everything that is wrong with America, on a show hosted by a guy who probably appeals to people who appreciated the Garfield movie. And the world didn’t collapse into a singularity. In fact, Snooki and Gingrich sort of bro’d down.

During the appearance, Gingrich admitted to Snooki that he’d never watched the show, but offered the reality star (ugh. “reality star.” Star of… reality!) congratulations for having two New York Times bestselling books. But before all of the viewers were able to respond to that factoid by simultaneously committing ritual seppuku, Snooki shot back, “Thanks. I’m trying to be like you.” Where was she during the GOP primary debates?

The event was preceded by a couple of Tweets from Gingrich that would have been endearing if he wasn’t Newt Gingrich. Yesterday afternoon, he Tweeted (and 5 minutes later deleted) “I will be on leno wednesday night with Snooki! It should be an interesting evening! I hope she likes zoos and animals!” which would be a kind of bizarre thing for an almost-70-year-old man to Tweet until you understand my favorite weird factoid about Newt Gingrich: he loves zoos, like how an 8-year-old who doesn’t yet understand that not all zoo animals are totally happy loves zoos. There’s an entire page of zoo recommendations on his production company’s web page, complete with a picture of a delighted-looking Gingrich with a polar bear cub. And earlier this year, his hand had to be bandaged after it was bitten by a penguin at the St. Louis zoo, which he was visiting because he was in town for the NRA convention.

Some lucky photographer was also able to capture Gingrich, Gingrich’s wife Callista, and Snooki in a photograph that Gingrich later tweeted. Between Callista’s platinum, immovable bob, Snooki’s wild streaks, and everyone’s orange glow, it was a veritable rainbow of skin and hair colors and textures that aren’t normally found on humans.