The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Sanford Admits Affair

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Acromion — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:04:40 -0000

Deb -

One can only hope that through his own personal foibles, Sanford will extend his reach of compassion to include those he once considered less than himself. Maybe after his sexual sins are exposed and served up on a platter for America to gawk at he might be able empathize with those who are similarly mocked and degraded.

The Kwame Kilpatrick case though was much more serious than marital infidelity. He almost certainly took out a hit on the stripper Tamara Greene (AKA Strawberry) as well as another stripper that tried to escape to Atlanta.

http://tinyurl.com/nnm2ww

http://tinyurl.com/moeu2a

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Juba — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:45:43 -0000

Kinda suspicious he spent Fathers Day Weekend with her and not his kids.

Or maybe he spent it with his OTHER kids.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Juba — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:43:17 -0000

I saw that too, cracked me up!

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

IDTT — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:57:56 -0000

If face to face meant going to Atlanta or even Phoenix I would totally agree, but not going all the way to Buenos Aires when he's the governor without anyone knowing where he is or being able to contact him. What if a disaster like the commuter crash in DC had happened while he was AWOL? Given the fallout, would he rather be an insenstive prick or an irresponsible idiot who abandoned his duties and the people of South Caronlina for 5 days? On top of all that, it's not really clear if he broke off the relationship or just broke her off while he was down there. Finally, I wish the Dems who are gleefully dancing on his political grave would focus more on the actual duty related issues rather than the affair itself. Most of the time these things happen you can make the case that the affair was private and didn't really affect their job performance, but this isn't one of them.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Deborah — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:14:52 -0000

Okay, I think I've nailed down what bothers me on the hypocrisy angle. There's a little of that "before you cast stones at Bill Clinton, maybe you should have made sure you weren't standing in a glass house."

But mostly it's on family legislation--banning adoption by gay couples and by singles is my big beef with Sanford here. And the related bashing of certain types of families (e.g. gay, single parent) as not being right, and so he and his brethren want to prevent them from even trying to make a family, or at least berate them for existing. When you take that line, your own family life had damn well better be a model. Sanford would rather a child languish in foster care forever than be adopted by a gay couple, or by a single parent. Yet the model he sets is to drag his children and his wife through this--not only does he ditch them on Father's Day to spend a week with his mistress, he goes about it so ineptly (trying to avoid Kwame Kilpatrick's fate, so he ditches security?) that he plays out his infidelity on a national stage.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

MAJeff — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:37:38 -0000

For me, there's a bit of schadenfreude in the hypocrisy. But, the bigger issue is that he left the country for a week without making any arrangements to let people know where he was or to make sure the state was being managed in his absence. He may even have used state resources.

Dude should be out on his ass for that kind of negligence.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

BreakerBaker — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:36:33 -0000

Anyone else read these email snippets and taken aback by the fact that he actually writes pretty well?

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Deborah — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:35:45 -0000

Okay, I finally watched and I agree. Much better, as DT says, than Edwards et al. I couldn't help notice that he first brings up how he hurt his lover, and I think it's evident things are not at all over there. (Like it takes a week to break up with someone, anyhow.)

But I will give him props for asking for a zone of privacy around his wife and sons. I'm not sure he gets any credit for his wife not standing in the background in the official pearls and blue scarf combo of wronged politician's wives--that may be all Jenny--but if it didn't occur to him to ask I give him some props for that, too.

But no props for carrying on the affair by e-mail and frequently vanishing, but hoping it would stay secret.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Deborah — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:28:11 -0000

Yeah. I clicked, was sorry I clicked, and glanced down at the comments: this is horrible. All these people talking about how beautiful it is, and can't you appreciate the special magic for these two people, and completely ignoring how his wife and children would feel reading about why their dad ditched them on Father's Day. Yuck.

It's very old-fashioned of me, but I go with first divorce, then find the next one. And I agree with the truism, personified by Newt, that if you start out as the other woman but he leaves and marries you, he will cheat on you, too. (And vice versa, but all the he or she, wife or husband made that sentence hard to read.)

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

colby — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:13:38 -0000

You're right, but guy left admirable behind a while ago in this imbroglio. He could've done the one extra thing. :)

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

The Ninja Zombie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:12:21 -0000

A fun quote on hypocracy from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age":

You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Finkle-McGraw said. “It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? … Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.

...

We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy,” Finkle-McGraw continued. “In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it’s a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing.”

...

“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,” Major Napier said, working it through, “does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.”

I think it's fairly apt here.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

colby — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:10:40 -0000

Someone might (indeed, I want everyone to forget that there's e-mails out there, that's just disgusting), but they'd be wrong. It wasn't "just sex", it grossly affected his job. Had any of us disappeared from our job for five days, we'd be rightly sacked. I dunno if Sanford should be, I'm willing to give him a second chance, but he doesn't have the same defenses that, say, John Edwards had.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

FOARP — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:00:55 -0000

Now wouldn't that be pure awesomeness if it was the case . . .

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Acromion — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:37:02 -0000

WOW

This was the most candid, heartfelt apology I've heard from a politician in - well - ever.

We all make mistakes at least this guy had the balls to just get up there, admit he was wrong, and ask for forgiveness.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

eric k — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:41:02 -0000

Yeah I agree with you on that,

But does it take 5 days?

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

piledhighanddeep — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:11:13 -0000

I think you're on to something there.

He's the governor of a U.S. state; you can't go AWOL from that job for more than 24 hours without raising suspicions of some malfeasance.

As soon as his wife was quoted as saying she didn't know where he was, I immediately declared "that man is off having an affair."

You don't go AWOL from your wife and four kids on Father's Day weekend. If you're gone, they know where you are and why.

The combo of him leaving for that long, and her saying "I dunno," = giving up on the career.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Hicks — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:37:19 -0000

Let me just say that breaking up with someone who obviously means something to you by email is not that admirable. Facing her was the right thing to do, IMO.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

lebecka — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:07:14 -0000

Arghhh! How did you even get through the first one!!??!! Too much information!!!!

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Maya — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:38:27 -0000

I hate to say this because Sanford is a hypocritical "moral values" s**tsack, but I think he went back for 5 days because he actually may be in love with this Argentinian woman and wanted one last time together. It's one thing to dump someone when you're sick of them and want them to eff off, but it's another to have to do it when you don't really want to.

I'm ecstatic another moralizing GOP hypocrite has bitten the dust but I can't help but feel for the guy.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Darth Thulhu — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:21:36 -0000

(Sigh) ... that *was* written on the Reply button to Trevortb up above ... but down at the end it goes, apparently.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Darth Thulhu — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:18:45 -0000

There's very likely some kind of blackmail involved in that end, even if it's merely emotional. If he were in a position (personally/ emotionally/ power-wise) to kick her to the curb, he'd have done so as much as Clinton did to Lewinsky, letting her cry herself out and callously trying to move on. The fact that he didn't implies some hold over him, whether true love, a child, threats to go public, whatever. Which means it's going to get worse for Sanford before it gets better, and that abject look of personal misery on his face is a genuine reflection of what he expects to come out as this keeps unravelling.

Kudos to him for having the integrity to be openly and publically ashamed of it, though. Craig and Clinton and Ensign and Edwards just denied or faux-apologized and kept on keeping on.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

keith — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:38:23 -0000

Except in this case, where his inability to perform his duties directly led to the need to cover up his actions.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Adolphus — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:12:37 -0000

Again, I agree. I just wished more politicians, and other people in power, felt (and acted) the same way when they are controlling the lives of others and not wait until they are caught in compromising position to recognize human frailty.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Domonic — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:02:16 -0000

My gut tells me that we all engage in this type of self-deception. That if we do the moral or just thing then it will keep us from those corrupting and primal urges that we have. My hope would be that we could talk about them, perhaps the Jimmy Carter "I have lusted in my heart" approach, and then have a discussion about how we can support people and help them deal with their urges.

Re: Sanford Admits Affair

Adolphus — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:57:35 -0000

I Agree.

But why is it that we only see the recognition that we are all human from some people when they are the ones in need of compassion? It's not just sex, it's Limbaugh and drugs, Bennett and gambling, etc. Why is only THEIR weaknesses and THEIR fail that needs empathy? What I hated about Spitzer was that he was such an unforgiving bully in the courtroom when it was other people's weaknesses and I have no doubt that if and when he gets back in the saddle, so to speak, he will forget what it was like to be weak and be tempted and be just as unforgiving. Just as Gingrich and McCain et al can go back to being such judgmental prigs even though they themselves know what it is like to be a sinner and weak and cheat on people who love them.

In the same vein I wonder why there are so many politicians who have done drugs (including presidents and presidential aspirants) who can be so heartless and throw people in jail for such piffling amounts.

I want them to be as forgiving to the powerless and weak as they want from others when they fall. I recall some aphorism in that regard, something about doing unto others...

I am not optimistic.