Oh, You Take the High Road

And I’ll take the low road. I am sure everyone has read all sorts of juicy bits about Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor and proponent of “moral legitimacy,” as his life unravels before our very eyes. I know all the good easy jokes have already been made, but that won’t stop me from attempting to fling a little mud at this fine state’s most upright citizen. Let’s recap, shall we?

Last week, someone noticed our governor was missing and decided to ask a few questions. It’s nice to know the governor of a state can go missing for five days before anyone even realizes it or cares, but then again, this is not an election year, nor is this his first term, so no one was really paying that much attention. They checked with his wife, who claimed to not know his whereabouts. Over Father’s Day weekend. His lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, no stranger himself to bad publicity courtesy of his enjoyment of fast cars (if not fast women) and crashing airplanes, had no idea where he was. His staff thought he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail and unable to be reached by cell phone. No one was a hundred percent sure where he was, exactly, until all of a sudden, the mystery snowballed into the usual media farce. The next thing we know, a state car is found at the Atlanta airport, and novice CNN reporters are peeping in the windows to tell us Sanford left a pair of sneakers on the front seat.

Well, it turns out he wasn’t “hiking” after all, unless that is a new code word. He was in Argentina, trying to end an extramarital affair that his wife has known about for months. He wasn’t home for Father’s Day for a good reason; Jenny Sanford kicked him out (and she knew where he was, which I suppose makes her a liar too). Poor Mark comes home to a face full of microphones, and he is forced to do the morally legitimate thing to do when someone is caught making a very personal and private mistake: he stages a press conference. (I have to admit I didn’t see the whole thing, but I did see enough to bounce up and down on the sofa cushion and clap my hands delightedly.) He stands before his state, his peers, and God, and confesses how he spent five days “crying” in Argentina with his “dear, dear friend” cum lover, with whom he has met on and off and shared a rather sappy email relationship. He cried some more for the cameras, so we all know he meant it when he said he cried, because, see, he is still crying. Anyone feel sorry for him yet? He then went on to do more of the right thing, since he is so moral and all, and resigned as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association, which leaves room for some other pillar of the community to step forward until he too will have to step down amid a tawdry scandal.

So now we wait, like spiders, to see how much further he will fall. He has yet to step down, and the legislature has yet to impale his head on a spike, but it’s coming, as it should. Because, really, his marital transgressions are not the issue here. Sure, it’s great to see a man who fought so hard for Bill Clinton’s impeachment on the grounds of lying about a blow job get caught not being a very good liar himself. Freaking great! And as long as he didn’t use the money of the good taxpaying citizens of this state to fund his little affair, then really, it’s between him and his wife, what does or does not take place in the bedroom. But to be the highest office of the state and not tell anyone where you are for a week, not place anyone in charge in your absence, and to lie to your own staff about your whereabouts, well, that’s just plain irresponsible. If we can’t trust him to do the right thing when it comes to doing the wrong thing, when can we trust him? Jesus, any moron can watch a few episodes of “Cheaters” on the CW channel and learn what not to do. I thought he was smarter than that, and I think he’s an idiot. And you always leave the babysitter a note, because you never know.

Keep in mind this is South Carolina. Even the democrats run as republicans here. We like to debate things like the confederate flag and whether having a Christian license plate is constitutional. And oh yeah, guess who is a big fan of that idea? We pride ourselves on being more judgmental than other states, with that whole free lovin’, if nobody gets hurt attitude. Who better to judge Mark Sanford than his own constituency? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Fuck that! Mark Sanford was the first one without sin, up until yesterday’s press conference. I say: start stockpiling your rocks now, folks! Why should we stand by our man? He has fought long and hard to sabotage the federal stimulus money as South Carolina (State motto: we’re not Mississippi!) prepared to lay off more teachers and cut more education programs while faced with some of the country’s highest drop- out and illiteracy rates. He grandstanded (or is it grand stood?) against unemployment benefit assistance because he didn’t like the dudes running the Employment Security Commission, right before Christmas during a recession, no less, while millions of the state’s unemployed worried about how to pay their rent, let alone a gift or two at Wal-Mart. He was too busy worrying about his position in the next presidential election to concern himself with the office to which he was most recently elected, and turned his fiscally conservative back on the very people who voted for him.

That must have been some fine Argentinean pussy. I hope it was worth it.