Sanford Spills Secrets
Remarkable.
That is the word that came to my mind about ten forty five last night after watching Larry King and Anderson Cooper do their part to fill the world in on some of the details behind the affair Governor Mark Sanford recently had with an Argentinian woman. Sanford's hangdog face looked even more forlorn as he proceeded to explain to the reporters packed in at his news conference yesterday what has been going on in his personal life for the last few months.
What was remarkable about his confession was the amount of intimate details Sanford chose to reveal. He reminded me of Gary Cooper, not because of his looks, but because of the shy manner in which he tried to avoid looking at the cameras, the way Cooper used to do when he was forced to come clean about his feelings for the romantic interest in his pictures.
It was a Shakespearean soliloquy come to life, giving his air of resignation to the public flogging that is sure to follow for weeks to come the feeling of a grand, epic failure in the tradition of the great Elizabethan dramas. Sanford's statement was the kind of thing that the Lifetime Channel has built its entire stable of made for TV movies around - the cheating husband.
In my mind, at least at first, it was a fitting comeuppance for someone who could treat the plight of Ty'Sheoma Bethea and the rest of my undereducated South Carolina brethren as if they were nothing more than mere chaff to be separated from the wheat.
But as I watched the political pundits and so called relationship experts on CNN, the disgust I felt rising in my chest wasn't for Sanford's bone headed and clumsily executed attempt to re-experience the throes of new found love, but for the dry, wooden sanctimony that these talking heads seemed to manufacture as they regurgitated the same old tired and inaccurate reasons on why these things happen.
My father, who is a big fan of Sanford and his no nonsense, bare bones style of leadership, has often told me the story of what happened immediately after Sanford's father's death. The Sanford sons buried their dead heart surgeon father themselves, some of them digging the grave while Mark himself built the casket.
"You hammer the nails closed, you carry it out there in the back of the pickup to a certain part of the farm. You lower the thing down there. You and your brothers do it on your own, and then grab shovels. We say a little prayer, fill the grave, walk back up to the house. It was an intensely personal experience that really hit home for me: you ain't taking any of this stuff with you."
Mark Sanford
To my father, this illuminated Sanford's commitment to his parsimonious economic policies. To me, though, it has always spoken to a deeply emotional current raging beneath the surface of the son's taciturn exterior, to physically bury your own maker.
I was awake last night long enough to see a few pictures of Sanford's wife. I thought about the things we do as Americans to women in our society as the array of photos of the governor's wife, an ex-investment banker who was the mother of his four sons, flashed across the screen, the things we do to idealize their femininity, while divorcing them from their sexuality, as if those four boys had popped neatly out of the accessories section of a Talbot's catalog. I thought of the perverse way the press has castigated any woman who has not fit their preconceived mold of proper political wife, whittling away all these years at the public's imagination until all we are willing to accept is the narrow field of view they have convinced us to adopt as our own.
Next door to me lives a middle aged Puerto Rican woman who is married to an American man from Seattle. She understands this mainstream American fetish for women who are supposed to act like men well enough to play along when necessary, displaying the demure restraint that is the hallmark of professional women all across the country. She can often be seen nodding gravely, or flashing a quick, clipped off at the wrist wave the way women do in any downtown office building.
It is when this neighbor woman takes a moment, when we are all in the driveway, catching up, or in somebody's house, sharing a glass of wine, that she taps back into her natural emotional wellspring. At times like this, it only takes thirty seconds to see why her husband married her. That a woman can flash her eyes and roll her 'r''s voluptuously without any intention of coming on to a man sexually is not a part of our mainstream American culture.
My buddy and I were talking earlier this week about the events in Iran when he asked me if I remembered an Iranian girl from back in our college days.
"Rima?" I said.
"Damn, you remembered her name?"
"Dude," I said, "I used to call her at night sometimes just to hear her talk on the phone. That voice was magic."
Governor Sanford wanted that thing that many of us want from time to time - to relive that beginning feeling you get when you are first in love, when there is more unknown than is known to you about your lover, a void you happily fill with a runaway imagination, with endless possibilities - but most of us have neither the opportunity or encounter the rare circumstance of having the other intangibles line up in such a way that we feel it is worth the risk to try to have our cake and eat it too.
Does it mean he was right to do it?
No. But unlike all the other recent lover boy politicians, beginning with the modern day Lothario-in-Chief himself, Bill Clinton, and wending our way through all the other names and faces that have been plastered all over the news these past years, Sanford seems to have chucked the "politician caught red handed" damage control playbook out of the window.
However naive it may seem, the man wants his family back
I'm not worried about my home state of South Carolina. The personal notoriety of an individual politician won't make or break it. Educating the Ty'Sheoma Bethea's will still be the number one issue when the TV cameras leave.
All politics aside, may Mark Sanford live long enough for his sons to bury him with the love and pride with which he buried his own father.
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Did he have vanilla cake and also want spice cake, or was cake no longer on the menu at home?
June 25, 2009 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very thoughtful commentary, and I mean that for the blog post, not Donal's snark above.
June 25, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I second that emotion. This is a beautifully written post.
June 25, 2009 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is well written, and even plausible, but on such limited information, we can't really know why Sanford strayed. He may have been as restless as Kris described, or just opportunistic, or he may have been spurned within his marriage. I don't know, so I can't judge him on that.
June 25, 2009 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's important that we don't judge him based on limited information. It's also critical that we don't rule out, absent more information, the possibility that he's a whacked-out, irresponsible jerk with a kingsize sense of misplaced entitlement.
June 25, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beautifully written or no, I'm voting for the snark. I don't care for all this sentimentalism.
June 25, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post, marred only by the unnecessary Bill Clinton snark. I'm sure Sanford's family believes he is no nobler a man than any other.
June 25, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
There was a time when every major corporation required its executives to take intensive psychological testing. I remember my father shaking his head about it, describing to us the detailed Freudian-based questions on the test that were designed to reveal potentially problematic feelings about both one's father and mother, attitudes that allegedly might translate into problematic issues or relationships within the corporate structure. One essay question I remember him laughing about was: "who was the more formative influence in your childhood -- your mother or your father? Why?"
Later, my first husband, just out of undergraduate school, took a battery of psychological tests to gain admittance to officer candidate school in the Vietnam-era Navy. He satirized the questions when he came home, reporting that he had been asked to choose from answers A or B in questions like: "would you rather walk along a dangerous precipice, or attend a play?"
(It is my understanding that all pilots, astronauts, etc.. still have to pass such tests.)
Whether or not anyone should have to do this is debatable, as an issue of personal privacy. But if all these categories of people must take them before being given substantial decision-making authority, why, then, are our political candidates given a free pass in this department?
Perhaps everyone running for office, at the state and national level should be required to take such tests before being accepted as a viable candidate?
Wouldn't it have been helpful for us to know about W's competitive, oppositional father fixation? Ever notice, btw, how much Monica Lewinsky looked like Bill Clinton's mother as a girl? How did Cheney feel about his father, or mother for that matter?
Which brings us to Mark Sanford. A man who personally buried his father, and rather than waiting for his sons to do the same for him, buried himself.
June 25, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
A good play *is* a dangerous precipice.
June 25, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha! Only if it's a wordplay, Donal.
June 25, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting comment to an equally interesting post.
A question about your suggestion that candidates be required to take a test. Who then decides which answers are "correct" and what makes a candidate viable?
I think our current nomination process and media tests do some of this before the votes for candidates to the highest offices, but on a local or state level (where most start), there are nutters of all stripes who can do a fairly good job of representing folks in government, just like there are likely ones who'd pass the test with flying colors who aren't worth a bucket of spit.
June 25, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point, Turnip.
June 25, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points as always, Wendy, but remember in 2000 and 2004 there was a very high-class test of competence:
WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE A BEER WITH?
And in this last one, what were the tests that voters for McCain/Palin applied? I just seemed like they had to win the "tough talkin' bullshit" test; and an awful lot of the popular vote went to them.
June 25, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I try so hard to forget this "have a beer with" test, C'Ville. It is the ostrich syndrome.
Would you actually want to have a beer with W if, for example, you might have one with, I dunno... Joe Biden? Harrison Ford? Really, almost anyone else?
Thanks, though, for the reality test, the only one that counts.
June 25, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, and there's the weird contradiction that as an alcoholic W would just have to watch!
June 25, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, that quote from Sanford about burying his father was like something out of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. And no disrespect intended, but Southerners certainly are a breed apart.
June 25, 2009 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are husbands and fathers all over the world that think a bit of "strange" now and then may be nice but then they remember they have a wife and children at home and don't turn the thought to action. F Sanford and his talk of loving his wife and sons. What order did he list who he had hurt? How far down the list was his wife? He has taken a private problem between husband and wife and made her pain and humiliation public. I'll bet his kids will feel wonderful watching the video some years from now listening to their father say he cried for five days (and one of them was fathers day) over the mistress. Now that is the first part of the rant.
Here is the second. The man LEFT HIS JOB with no one knowing where he was. His job was an elected office that if he was not available to do it (or wanted a break to go hiking), he was to let the Lt. gov that he was to take charge. Did Sanford do that? Nope, he took his tears, his desires, his self-centeredness and left the country with not a word. I don't give a rats ass if he was madly in love, his job is 24/7 until his term is up.
June 25, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sanford would make a fine character for a novel. Unfortunately, this isn't fiction.
I can understand how Sanford could be tempted and fall from grace. But I can't give sympathy to a guy who hardened his heart to others. Plus, I'd think the concept of noblesse oblige would be rather southern wouldn't it? Clinton was considered a bit "white trash" by some, but Sanford? Doesn't his fine southern social rank require a sense of responsibility equal to his status?
June 25, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mark Sanford's fine southern rank merely gives him permission, as it gives all his peers permission, to be self-indulgently sentimental (about his lover) while, at the same, he has a heart of stone where his regard for his wife and his children should be. (BlueSplashy -- I, too, noticed the order of his apology, as I shuddered when I heard him refer to his own children, twice, as "those children.")
June 25, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have nothing good to say about Mark Sanford, whether as a governor, or as a husband and father. But I can imagine why he built his father's coffin, himself, and why he and his siblings loaded that coffin on the back of a pickup to carry it to a grave dug by the children themselves.
Southerners, in general, seem to me to be not as afraid of death -- or at least the tangible necessities/accoutrements thereof -- as are people who have distanced themselves from a visceral experience of the land as well as from the ritual of laying their loved (or hated) ones to rest in it.
Having been partially raised in the north, I was taken aback, as an adult returned to the south, by the graveside service in which people throw clods of dirt (as compared to flowers) on the lowered casket. But I understand it now, even though my own family espouses a more compost-oriented, "greener" cremation. That gesture of dropping a clod of earth, with all its attendant visuals, sounds, and scents, allows the private expression, unique to each person, of their feelings about he or she who died. If the relationship was peaceful, the ritual seems to accentuate the natural "dust to dust" aspect. If the relationship was troubled, the ritual allows a range of private response from a fatalistic "oh, well; it's too late now" to a "take that, you bitch/bastard."...In any case, I get why Mark thought that meaningful.
That said, I am wildly suspicious that Mark suffers from a flawed 19th century Romanticism, which is evident not only in his burial of his father, but also in his emails to his Argentinian paramour.
What good can come of a sentimentality that is a poor substitute for real connection, real commitment?
Mark seems to love the idea of impassioned love more than he actually lives as a man committed to it.
I was very moved, KB, by this comment of yours in your post, which I think very true:
"I thought about the things we do as Americans to women in our society as the array of photos of the governor's wife, an ex-investment banker who was the mother of his four sons, flashed across the screen, the things we do to idealize their femininity, while divorcing them from their sexuality, as if those four boys had popped neatly out of the accessories section of a Talbot's catalog. I thought of the perverse way the press has castigated any woman who has not fit their preconceived mold of proper political wife, whittling away all these years at the public's imagination until all we are willing to accept is the narrow field of view they have convinced us to adopt as our own."
The facade that Jenny Sanford manifests is a defensive, armored cover for a woman not allowed to just be herself -- that essential self being a far warmer, kinder and generous person that those who see only the cover perceive. It is the conundrum of the proper woman, who yearns to be allowed the relaxed, even blowsy ease of the "exotic" woman.
Thanks for your post.
June 25, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
you
unoriginal, but heartfelt.
June 25, 2009 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I despise the sob, myself. But this post is one hell of a post and I congratulate you on it.
Life is complicated. There are different perspectives to events. They must be written about and confronted.
I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
June 25, 2009 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sanford's infidelity is a tawdry pedestrian affair that seems to be a specialty of politicians on both sides of the aisle. But the irresponsible abandonment of his job as a public official is just plain stupid. He has shown an appalling lack of judgement in both his private and public life.
Perhaps Sanford is in the wrong business. Perhaps he should be a poet, judging from this emails to Maria.
June 25, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I can imagine the reaction of my boss if I disappeared for a week to meet a South American lover (and she is a Republican).
June 25, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant post. So right on.
I see Sanford as being a man in all kinds of turmoil. He did some pretty serious rambling at the press conference. Like, someone who is imprisoned and wants to be free.
June 25, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Considering as how his wife asked him to move out about two weeks ago, and that she's known for 5 months and he's been involved with "Maria" for about a year, what was his trip to Argentina about if he want to keep his family together? Did he go there to say good-bye to the lover? If so, did he need to do that if his family is really what's important to him?
If he wanted his family back, he's sure taking a long detour.
June 25, 2009 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it legal to bury a human in your back yard? That just occurred to me. Seems like a kind of slippery slope, if you know what I mean.
June 25, 2009 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe there is a family cemetery on the property.
June 26, 2009 2:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'm just betting he's not too broken up over the Michael Jackson news.
June 25, 2009 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other than:
(1)looking like Gary Cooper,
(2)making a casket and burying his own father,
(3 seeking exotic experiences with the opposite sex while married with a family,
(4)and voting to impeach that other 'Lothario':
..can the poster reminisce about any courageous act of compassion Mr. Sanford took to improve the lives of folks in South Carolina, in his job as Congressman or as Governor?
Please give something personal and real that touched the lives of families or people having hard times in the state...(please,not involving tax cuts).
June 25, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm still asking if it's okay to bury a human in your back yard.
June 25, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, but the price is right.
June 25, 2009 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Depends on if I like 'em or not.
June 25, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, seriously! Could you just bury your children and husband/wife in the back yard? Seems like if it isn't illegal it ought to be!
June 25, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm pretty sure it is.
Fineable maybe
Certainly "frowned upon."
=D
June 25, 2009 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I prefer the basement. A nice bed of lime, some ready-mix concrete from the home supply... Usually do my digging during the day, so the light from the basement windows don't attract undue attention. Heh, heh.
June 26, 2009 3:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Family cemeteries have been common in this country, esp when the owners have extensive property holdings. Wikipedia lists 16,046 of them, in fact.
June 25, 2009 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! Something to think about in this economy, eh? I wonder if you have to divulge it when you sell your house if you have a whole bunch of people planted out there?
June 25, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. In fact, I think the fact of the cemetery's existence and its location is normally recorded in the deed to the property. And there would probably also be an easement for a right of way to the cemetery from a public road and a specification of who was entitled to use it. There are usually laws that obligate buyers of property with private cemeteries to protect the gravesites from disturbance.
June 26, 2009 3:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I should add that I doubt most states would allow you to establish a cemetery just anywhere. I would think there would be certain acreage requirements, for one thing, and it would need to be some minimum distance from developed property. And probably outside the limits of a city, town, village, etc.
June 26, 2009 3:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I confess I am mystified about why Kris Broughton or anyone else would feel the need to author a probing psychological disquisition, individually tailored to the character and experiences of Gov. Mark Sanford, on the special causes of what is after all one of the most commonplace phenomena in the human world.
I thought it was generally understood that most married men violate their sexual fidelity vows at least once during their marriages, and frequently more often. And it's not very unusual for those wanderings to develop into full-blown love affairs. You don't need to probe very deeply to understand this phenomenon.
It's not like Sanford was caught selling nuclear secrets to the Iranians. He cheated on his wife. It happens millions of times every day. And most of the people doing it didn't bury their fathers in any particularly unusual way.
June 25, 2009 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe he was just trying to sort it out, and give it an angle that needed to be given.
June 25, 2009 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
But all the unfaithful husbands don't get the opportunity to vote to impeach a President for being unfaithful.
They say Sanford is going to pay back South Carolina for his southern hemisphere trip last year.
Maybe the state can use the money to fix the leaky school roof that wwstaebler talked about on another thread.
June 25, 2009 10:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, it is the commonplace that is the least understood. Sometimes getting a new perspective on it is enlightening; not so much for the person being discussed, but for those thinking about it.
June 25, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you find it hard to understand?
June 25, 2009 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a well written and thought provoking post and it is truly one angle of the drama. actually the points made on sensuality and life and soul are so true.
It has been painted out of our existence hasn't it?
Who knows what the real story is. It is an intensely personal and private story involving real people we do not personally know.
I do know this: long distance sex and romance thing is a HUGE narcotic/aphrodesiac.
If Sanford were a woman and writing to the "advice to the lovelorn" column, he would be advised to ignore those deep burning feelings, the intense bond, because over distance, anticipation is heightened and reality stretched.
You give the distant lover your best, without the restraints of dull, habitual everyday life. i.e. could they really handle daily life in the apartment?.
"Girlfriend" ,we'd say, it isn't real, that deep love is one HUGE booty call. When we do hear the siren call from our own heart/libido combo, it IS hard to resist. Sanford has made every mistake anyone would make when they are hit with a "deep affair".
And Single women? gawd save us from married men in love!
But is he the deeply soulful poetic lovesick man caught in an impossible situation, or is he just smart, trying out the "romance" angle? giving us the ol Gary cooper, (who i understand was also quite convincing in other ways..)
maybe this is all just pulp we love to gulp.
i am waiting to see a book cover with Sanford depicted as Fabio, something any gal would pick up for a nice escapist read on a sultry summer day.
Well I don't know any of the main characters here so everything i say is just my own spinning.
i hope this whole scenario does lead to a deeper understanding of the complexities of life and love.
we tend to cheapen and flatten our public characters into sterotypes.
last thought:
women who seek legal abortions also care for their loved ones and face difficult choices . same sex lovers also... hmmm
is everyone dining on compassion cake, or is it just us dumb liberals?
June 25, 2009 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
huh? I can't make one piece of sense out of anything you wrote. After the first sentence, nothing makes any sense, and most are not even complete sentences.
June 25, 2009 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, I was thinking about the long distance thing myself. I almost barfed when I was watching Chris Matthews blather on the other night about how this was "a matter of the heart". Sure, Sanford seems genuinely troubled, but I don't know that I'd call this a love affair. He's in a long term marriage and claims to be trying to work things out with his wife while at the same time he books an extended vacation to see his paramour. Sounds more like a midlife crisis.
June 26, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I never thought about it that way, but I think you may be absolutely right about that.
June 26, 2009 3:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
A beautifully written post ...
... wasted on a stupid, crooked hypocrite.
Keep writing though - you have talent.
June 26, 2009 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink