Life, love, lust and lunacies from the Sage of Topanga

If I hear one more tearful apology from a politician caught humping like a dog in a cornfield with some beguiling pretty while his wife was home trying to keep the tuna casserole warm I think I’m going to be sick.

The image of a cheating bastard standing at a podium with the brave little woman at his side looking very much like Grant Wood’s solemn farmer in “American Gothic” is more iconic than anything even Norman Rockwell ever produced and it’s becoming tiresome.

What Mark Sanford, a God-lovin’ Republican, did was take off and get himself laid and he did it with his eyes and his fly wide open. He’s sorry because no one but me believed he was on a hike in Tyrolean shorts, yodeling his way over some of the roughest terrain in the Western Hemisphere and through deserts that kill camels. When he was found out it was tears, forgiveness and move on.

Sanford left the statehouse one bright South Carolina morning on what turned out to be one hell of a long hike that took him through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, down the eastern coast of Mexico through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Brazil and along the Peruvian coast into Argentine.

I suspect that he might have hitched a ride here and there but even so it gave him plenty of time to think until he suddenly and inexplicably found himself in a motel bed with Chiquita Banana. Only then did we learn it had been a long-term affair linked by emails dripping with sex and sugar that further ramped up the vomit quotient.

To then drag his humbled wife to the podium while he sobbed an apology was the moral equivalent of wanting his cake and eating it too.

Sanford wasn’t the first American pol to get caught with his pants down. Almost equally as dumb as the Louisiana Gov was former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart who, in 1987, was considered the Democratic front runner for the presidency until he was caught romancing a good friend named Donna Rice.

He might have gotten away with it but then he challenged reporters who, tipped to his marital infidelities, were tailing him. “Follow me around,” he dared them, “I don’t care if anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”

They followed him, photographed him with Donna on his lap aboard a yacht appropriately named “Monkey Business” and that was the end of his presidential dreams.

Even the noisiest Republicans do it. Newt Gingrich was having an affair as he was leading the impeachment movement of Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but I’ll bet that if Clinton were to run for president again the women of America would reelect him and possibly arrange to meet him in a motel somewhere, lining up outside from Kansas to New York City just to see if all they heard about him was true.

Locally, we had our own wildly grinning Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who got himself a little nookie from TV reporter Mirthala Salinas. Turned out he was covering her while she was covering him. When their affair was exposed, they parted, she got canned, he wept and now he’s said to have another female TV reporter, but I don’t care.

Finally, the most pathetic of the mea culpas came from peanut farmer Jimmy Carter who wanted to be a part of the fun but all he could come up with was telling a reporter that he’d lusted in his heart. Huh?

He was talking about the erotic fantasies everyone has but I guess when you’re a born again Christian it’s almost the same as having done, you know, “it.” Maybe he regrets now in his old age never actually having a sexual affair and getting to appear in public with Rosalyn at his side to tearfully confess that while he didn’t actually get laid he thought about it a lot.

Tears, forgiveness, applause, a Nobel Prize for meaningless moral apologies and then on to a mess of pok chops, grits and a down home okra pudding.

Almtz13@aol.com

I totally agree with you. The hpocracy is stagering.

Would that be Antonio Viagra-rosa? Is there a coincidence between the new drugs available and the incidents of public use currently on display… It’s riduclous that the ‘demo-critic’ press (maybe I mean the republi-critic press) makes such an issue of the very acts they commit themselves (as well a every red blooded American) and manage to keep out of the press a la Caroline and the NYTimes as well as others…

And what about the month long (well it seems like a month already) acolades for the singing/dancing pervert?

You don’t want to get me started on this, but you left out John Edwards and John McCain. McCain’s present wife was in an affair with him while he was still married to his first wife, some years ago. I wonder if a woman in politics would be treated so well if she was caught in a similar affair.

A male who thinks women are fair game for their shenanigans can’t think that women’s issues are very important. If he takes time from the job, and his family life, to engage in sleazy encounters; chances are he’s not doing the job he was elected to do as well as he should.

‘Twere ever thus … this is SOP for politicians throughout the Western world. Take a look at England, Italy … in France it’s expected … Not that it’s morally right … it doesn’t stop until the male animal reaches the stage of life about which Willie Nelson said: “I’ve outlived my dick!” And even then, with Viagra, much more is possible. And it seems there’s always a lady who’s willing to be the accomplice. I have little idea what happens in Mideastern or Asian countries in this regard. Maybe I don’t want to know. It might offend my delicate sensibilities. Or more likely my sense of ethics.

Your writings are always “to the point.” So glad we can read your opinions now on your blog; still miss your columns in the LA Times.

“Meaningless moral apologies” is so accurate. What is wrong with these people? Too much reward for so little?

What’s wrong with us for electing them?

M & P

What is it with all this crying? If he (Sanford) gets caught, can’t he at least take it like the man he pretends to be?

This is why I so enjoy the “Apology of the Week” on Harry Shearer’s program.

Strangely, I found myself feeling empathetic toward Governor Sanford. While I never could understand Carter’s disclosure I /did/ respect him for it. In an odd sort of way.

I read somewhere once that among communities of Chimpanzees an interesting phenomenon occurs with regard to testosterone. Seems over time as the dominant male establishes himself his testosterone rises. For the rest of the males in the group, it drops. Seemed only natural to me that this holds true with men as well and power struggles in politics do seem to have all the subtleties of life in a community of chimps.

Poor Governor Sanford seems so chock full of testosterone he hardly knows whats happening to him. When I shared the Chimp story with my wife, she sarcastically observed that “its a good thing /you/ didn’t get into politics. “So it goes.”

You rock, Al. Are you really an “essayist”?…………Cripes, I thought you were just one of the boys who really knew how to turn a phrase. Aw, it’s OK if you want to kinda shine it up a little, we still luv ya. We are all a little tired of these born again jerks telling us how to live and them playing hide the weenie when we aint lookin. Nothing these guys do surprises us anymore. Semper Fi.

Hi Al…I really don’t care who the gov poked where - when- or how often. To me the more significant moral failing is that he was willfully AWOL from his sworn responsibilities as govenor.

And what about that guy Ensign? Those philanderers are all in this sanctimonious group of “devout Christian” legislators. I have to laugh. And non sequitor, I know, but why do the media keep calling them “mistresses”? That is such an archaic, silly word. The men are called “lovers.” Why not the women?

Wouldn’t it be fun to sit down in a room with Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and a bunch of reporters, and watch the tapes of their impassioned denunciations of Bill Clinton’s affair and their demands that he resign IMMEDIATELY? And then, when it was over, we could have them explain for the record exactly how their conduct is so different from his that they shouldn’t have to resign.

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