[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Hasn’t our moral mercury gone on the fritz when we can awaken this morning knowing more about married Mark Sanford and his mistress than what Barack Obama, our Dear Leader, thinks about Iran?
Does that remarkable disparity trouble anyone?
Boys and girls, here is the difference between a forthright, honest man and a slippery, dishonest, coldly calculating one.
As of yesterday, Mr. Sanford only trails former President Clinton by 51 cheating affairs outside of his marriage, which I presume means he qualifies to be a Democrat candidate for President in ’12.
Why would journalists ask Mr. Sanford if he was going to withdraw from public life, in disgrace, when they did not pose the same testy question to President Clinton after he cheated on Hillary the Punching Bag in the White House? Mr. Clinton and liberals bragged that Monica Baby was an accomplishment, another notch to be proud of, not a debit.
For all of the sophistication abounding in Culver City and on the Westside, I would have had to walk10 miles before encountering anyone who knew that the 49-year-old Mr. Sanford was the Governor of South Carolina. And a few more miles before anyone would correctly guess that he is a Republican.
Thank heaven that passive President Obama did not decide to end 12 consecutive days of dithering on the daily street slaughtering in Tehran because there would not have been room for even Obama news in the nation’s newspapers.
Mr. Sanford’s very impressive confession yesterday of a year-long fling with a South American woman managed to push the most important story in the world off the front page of the Los Angeles Times — all the way back to page 18 — to accommodate the Sanford coverage.
The first five stories on the home page of The New York Times this morning were on Mark Sanford. I guess Imam Khamenei converting to Christianity will have to wait.
By contrast with a former governor of Arkansas who shamelessly hustled women all the way to Washington, without penalty, and then lied about the affairs, Mr. Sanford emerged from obscurity with his honor intact.
Before banks of television cameras and teeth-baring journalists who demanded to know what the couple did when alone, Mr. Sanford assumed a brave, commanding and sincere stance as he confessed straying from the marital path.
I knew what the Governor was feeling.
He looked as if he were dangling before my favorite ex-in-laws who, to my best recollection, acknowledged me only one time in the15 years that their saintly daughter and I were a twinkling twosome.
Following our second date, the dainty damsel’s daddy declared — with all the fury of an aging, angry Democrat addressing a sensitive young Republican — that I was barred from their home until, approximately, my death, which could come none too soon.
At least the howling wolves who stood before Mr. Sanford spoke to him.
Upon deeper reflection, there was a second occasion on which my in-laws, with classy and understandable distaste, acknowledged the existence of an under-cherished son-in-law. An unsolicited and unattractive chair, funded in a weak moment by my wife’s beguilingly generous parents, turned up on our doorstep in North Hollywood, begging to be let in.
Several days later, Stone Face, my mother-in-law, who boastfully led her Beverly Hills street in Most Facelifts Since 1950, summoned us to the family home for what wittily was known as a command performance. At this four-cornered sweaty Sunday afternoon summit, only one person was allowed to speak, the Boss of Bosses. For 60 minutes, which may have inspired the CBS show, the grimacing B-o-B severely lectured daughter and what’s-his-name for their intolerable serial ingratitude in the face of world-class generosity.
As Mr. Sanford compassionately said yesterday, being a sensitive, passionate Republican can drain a guy’s precious reserve fund.
