Mark Sanford Gets Some:
If you've ever fucked an Argentinean woman, you'd understand what he was going through. (Ah, Vera, if you ever make your way up here from Cordoba again, give a call.)

Let's give a bit of credit where it's due. Unlike so many other men (and, c'mon, it's always men), not only did South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R [unless you're Fox "news," which can reassign parties based on morality]) have the obligatory confessional announcement, but he stood there and took his lumps from the press. In his epic preface to his admission that he disappeared for five days because he was balling a woman in Argentina, Sanford said, "I guess where I'm trying to go with this is that there are moral absolutes and that God's law indeed is there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that. This press conference is a consequence." And he lived the consequence, taking questions, pathetically trying to explain that his deep desire to plunge his cock into the cunt of a woman not his wife was based on love (which it may very well have been), but ultimately nutting up and owning his fuck-up almost as far as he could at the moment.

Look at the end of the press conference. The poor bastard didn't want to stop talking, even after he had said,"Last question." It was as if his words would stop the bleeding, but they were not made of gauze, and eventually he had to be halted and led off by his staff, who, no doubt, were wondering what the fuck they were going to do with their lives. And Sanford looked utterly lost. If it was possible to eke out a turd of compassion for the man who was willing to starve his state's schools to make a political point, it was then. To read the emails between him and Maria the Mistress is to look at what real people say when they stumblingly, embarrassingly, try to reveal the confusing intensity of the urges of the heart and genitalia.

But, mostly, truly, fuck him. Chalk up another public dive for a repressed Christian conservative dickwad who had to have his midlife crisis in public. Republicans might as well change their motto to "We're probably fucking around on you."

It helps that Sanford was a self-righteous bag of douche about marriage all along, calling on Bill Clinton to resign, condemning gay marriage, putting himself out there as a model for husband and father. As he told closeted homosexual Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends on March 8, 2007, "My wife and I have four young sons, great little boys, but we're kind of focused on those guys. And then the rest of the day you've got your day job. And so like I say, we have our hands more than filled right here." Sounds like a man who's got his priorities straight, no?

Then there was his comment on Congressman Bob Livingston's confession of an affair during the Clinton impeachment process: "The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it's got to be taken very, very seriously." That was from CNN's Crossfire on December 18, 1998.

And there's the very real possibility that his affair, which he says began only as a friendship eight years ago, consummated over a year ago, literally fucked away his chances to be John McCain's vice presidential candidate. On MSNBC on September 2, 2008, Norah O'Donnell asked, "You were vetted to some degree, right?" To which Sanford coyly responded, "Well, my wife and my kids vet me everyday." Yep, to push this narrative a bit further, Sarah Palin may have been inflicted on the lower 48 because Mark Sanford was busy going gaucho down on his mistress's pampas.

Yeah, he's done. For now. His wife said she tried to get him to stop fucking around. He didn't. And thus we see him, the man who thought he was confidently standing up to the bad federal government, reduced to asking for forgiveness from everyone in his life.

He should have resigned then and there not because he was advancing South Carolina's trade in his semen with Argentina, but because he abandoned his state while in office. He was willing to possibly give Livingston a pass because he didn't betray the oath of office, but, he said, Bill Clinton lied under oath and therefore should be out. Considering the violation of the trust of the people of South Carolina, who deserve to be able to at least know the governor is reachable during his brief time in office, Mark Sanford should have said that he's packing his shit up and leaving the job to the Republican lieutenant governor, who Sanford choked up for upon mention.

It's not the sex and it is the sex. All Bill Clinton asked of us when he didn't resign was to believe that he wouldn't lie about sex if ever asked under oath again. David Vitter asks us to believe that he won't be fucking hookers. Mark Sanford asks us to believe that he won't ever run off again. If you were a bettor, what's got the best odds?

There's more to this, of course. When we get to the red Corvette and the blow he snorted off Maria's tits, will anyone be surprised? Or when we get to how he misused the state's funds to keep the whole thing secret? Is any of this surprising anymore when it comes to the moral gatekeepers of this nation?