from www.ajc.com – On Friday afternoon, the Web site of Washington City Paper offered the spurious news that American Solutions, former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich’s organization for tackling the nation’s maze of problems, had named a “porn purveyor” as its “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2009.

Dinner, apparently, was included in the invitation.

Allison Vivas runs the DVD production/distribution company Pink Visual of Van Nuys, Calif., which specializes in adult films.

Wrote City Paper, sister to Creative Loafing in Atlanta:

Vivas’ PR representative, Brian S. Gross, is circulating a letter dated Wednesday ostensibly from Joe Gaylord, a consultant working for Gingrich, telling her “Newt’s Business Defense and Adviory Council” had agreed that she was deserving of the honor in “recognition of the risks you take to create jobs and stimulate the economy.”

Ridiculous, of course.

But an hour and some minutes later, writer Dave McKenna followed with this from Gingrich spokesman Dan Kotman:

“We have notified Allison Vivas that the notice she received was sent by mistake,” Kotman says. “We regret the error.”

This morning, Gingrich made an appearance on a more strait-laced medium, National Public Radio. But his partner in the conversation was only slightly less startling than the president of Pink Visual. It was Al Sharpton. The duo have joined with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a push to fix failing schools.

Now, we don’t doubt that the intersection of Newt Gingrich and a distributor of adult DVDs could result in many, many witty observations.

But because it’s the weekend, and because the prospect of spending Saturday with a finger on the delete button doesn’t thrill, we’ll decline commenting on this one.