I want to get Mark Sanford’s love letters off my chest, too

GOP governor Mark Sanford ate a career-ending ration of shit this week. Truly one of the more bizarre state-governor-level news conferences I’ve ever seen (if you exclude Sarah Palin, who has become her own category).

Just happened to click the TV on about 10 seconds before he began to speak live and man, it was… well, bizarre. He came off like an actually decent-enough fellow who simply let his dick lead him astray. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, eh?

As a member of the media-consuming public (as opposed to a righteously aggrieved family member), I’d like to take a pass on the details of his sex life. Everybody knows that guys are ruled by our dicks and for most of us, our fidelity is only as true as our opportunities are limited. (For instance, I keep my opportunities next to nil by staying resolutely out of shape and in a state of perpetual semi-confusion. I’m big laughs to live with, but I wouldn’t want to date me). As a major southern-state governor and a rising star in the national GOP, Sanford’s dick had nowhere to go but up.

My point being, I shrug at the Gov. Sanford thing because he was a man just being a man, and as far as I know, he didn’t make his political career on a Morality & Fidelity campain. He was one of those crazy small-government, anti-tax cocksuckers, that was his ticket to the big time. So as long as his infidelity doesn’t involve political hypocrisy, I’m of the “It’s a personal matter” persuasion. He deserves all the ass-kicking his wife and kids can dish out, but other than directly-related fall-out on his political career (of which there’s bound to be plenty), it’s not really a media issue.

Which is my long-winded way of saying to the TV media, please stop reading his email correspondences with his Latina lover on the air! I don’t care! It’s none of my business!

More to the point, it’s not the story. He lied to his staff, arguably committed some kind of fraud by fobbing off his governarial duties with a pack of lies and going AWOL for four days – there’s plenty of grist for the mill without reading these peoples’ love letters on the air!

If you won’t respect your own dignity enough to refrain, then please respect your audience’s.