Mark Sanford is Determined to Destroy The Last Shreds of Hope for His Marriage

That is all one can deduce from his fatal proclivity for continuing to talk to the press when he needs to just pipe the hell down and ride out his last year as governor before disappearing quietly from the political landscape. This latest round of “tearful, emotional” interviews (per the Associated Press) has him saying that this wasn’t just any affair. Oh no y’all, nothing so tawdry as that. This was a “tragic and forbidden love story.”

I KNOW. I KNOW. I’M DYING TOO. CAN. YOU. EVEN. IMAGINE. When did he start taking his cues from the back covers of Harlequin romances? When did the A.P. become his pastor/therapist/bartender? And don’t you feel like he’s somehow trying to create a moral high ground in which this is not in the same class with other people’s affairs, because it was True Love?

And then he said that she wasn’t the first woman he had “crossed lines” with.

Well, of course she isn’t. Who ever is? She’s the first one you got caught with, Mark. We were all clear on that without you saying it and further embarrassing your wife.

And THEN, because apparently he has never heard of the phrase “no comment,” he said that he would “go to my grave knowing I have met my soulmate” but that he owed it to his kids and 20 years of marriage to “try this larger walk of faith.” He is, and again I quote, “trying to fall back in love with Jenny.”

Well.

Well then.

I bet Jenny is awful grateful for that, Mark. It must have warmed the cockles of her heart. Why don’t you toss her some more crumbs from your table?

Remember how people got upset when Bill Clinton wouldn’t answer questions like these and said he was irate that people even had the nerve to ask? A little of that outrage would stand Sanford and his family in good stead right now. Why won’t he just stop answering questions? Why the public confessionals? Aren’t we all uncomfortable enough?

This guy doesn’t need a press corps, he needs a therapist.

Favorite tweet seen on this: “We can’t judge until we too have slept with a woman in Argentina. Who’s up for a road trip?”

Maureen Dowd at the New York Times is apparently sharing a brain with me on this, and does it better than I do, so go read her column "Rules of the Wronged" at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/opinion/01dowd.html?_r=1.

I will post about actual South African things soon, including my work, and how I am hoping to mobilize some people to put on our Barack T-shirts and go be obnoxious Americans for the 4th of July. Even though I really try and live as if loving one's neighbor transcends all borders and nationalism leads us to war and destruction, there is a tiny (but, it turns out, oftentimes loud, particularly when it's had a couple of drinks) voice that feels like on general principle, but *particularly* since the November election, I should get free drinks on July 4. Like on my birthday. Come on, we're the country that brought you brilliant constitutions with kickass bills of rights, Michael Jackson, blue jeans and iPods/iPhones/iMacs. We deserve to be a superpower.