(Or, how do you solve a problem like Maria?)
Where to begin with the Mark Sanford debacle -- so much to unpack that you need the metaphorical jaws of life.
- First, I watched the press conference and was left with the initial thought that I wished deeply for the quiet dignity of the "Checkers" speech. Jesus, I wanted to take a shower -- stop fucking sharing you self-indulgent twit. Your kids are going to watch this thing someday -- and then the therapy bills are really going to mount.
- Will the phrase "I'm going to hike the Appalachian Trail" catch on as some kind of sexual slang -- I certainly hope so.
- Mr. Sanford's description of himself as a "bottom line kind of guy" achieved a certain poetic poignancy when his emails lauding his lover's tan lines were revealed. I'm witcha big guy. There is a purpose to all things under heaven.
- When he reeled off the names of his four sons -- Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake -- I had this uneasy feeling that this was a union busting law firm with whom I had dealt. Also, the members of a whites only country club.
- Sanford actually said "the biggest self of self is self." What the fuck can you get to smoke in Buenos Aires, because I want some of that shit. That was easily the trippiest thing I've ever heard a sitting governor say, and that includes Jerry Brown. I think five days of break up sex were just too much for his little mind.
- Kudos to Sanford's wife for not being there. Double fucking kudos.
- American women aren't good enough for you?
- Sanford -- trying to rebuild the GOP's standing with Hispanics, one Latina at a time. [She probably can't vote Mark.]
- I keep having the great Dylan song "The Groom is Still Waiting at the Altar" running through my head and I realize it's because of the line buried in my subconscious: "Ain't seen her since January, she could be respectably married or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires."
- I love the right wing bloggers and their commenters who are claiming that we Democrats get away with this stuff because we have no standards. Tell that to Eliot Spitzer. And explain to me David Vitter, Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig, and Rudolph Giuliani among others. Also, let me lay this out to you real nice and slow, as they say -- I don't give a fuck about who is fucking whom -- I really don't -- and as soon as you liars, adulterers, closet cases, and pervs stop campaigning on your Christian recitude and "family values" then we'll leave you alone and won't laugh our asses off at your fallen state. But until then, oh we're going to have some serious fucking laughs.
- Who paid for the trips to Buenos Aires? I am willing to bet that this is going to be a major problem for Sanford.
- Stealing from an unknown commenter with apologies, but we could have a Vitter/Sanford ticket with the slogan "Pampers and Pampas."
- Whenever I feel a sense of compassion for Sanford, I think about the unemployed people that he would have deprived of stimulus money, just to be a grandstanding prick. Fuck him.
- It appears that Sanford and John Ensign were in the same Bible study group on Capitol Hill -- what version of the Bible were these guys reading, the Bob Guccione edition? "Dear God, I never thought I'd be writing this letter, but when you created women . . . . "
- I won't quote from the emails -- it's a voyeuristic bridge too far. We have all been fools for love and lust. If only the right wing could simply accept that the heart wants what it wants, then we could be spared this sort of thing as public spectacle.
