Lunch Spoiled By South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Last Thursday was the first I heard of the disappearance of South Carolina's governor, Mark Sanford. I'd turned on the Rush Limbaugh show, on WBAP, to find Mark Davis was subbing for the day. Rush Limbaugh can get on my nerves due to what he's ranting about, but I find him pretty funny. Mark Davis quickly gets on my nerves due to his overly affected speaking manner grating on my ears.

So, I only listened long enough to hear Mark Davis go on about the mystery of the missing governor of South Carolina.

So, I got back here a bit after 1. It was Wednesday, so I'd been up north, in Southlake, and yes, as usual, I went to Sprouts Farmers Market. I got back here, made lunch, sat down, turned on the TV, hoping to see how Iran was doing.

Instead all the cable news stations were covering, what seems to be being characterized as, the Mark Sanford Scandal. He had somehow led people to believe he was off for some solitude, hiking the Appalachian Trail, when in reality he was down in Argentina, crying for 5 days with his Argentinian mistress, who is also married.

Apparently the affair has been going on for years, with Sanford and his wife working on the problem the past 5 months or so.

All the cable stations were either covering Sanford's news conference, or commenting on it. Evidently, recently, another Republican, this one a senator from Nevada, fessed up to an affair. Some of the commenting was along the line of what dire doom does this epidemic of cheating husbands do to the Republican party?

What bugs me is I don't care if some politician has an affair. Unless that affair somehow messes up with his job, or he is engaging in the affair by somehow abusing the power of his office. With all the serious stuff that should be focused on and debated, going on and on about some poor guy's stupid infidelity, is just wrong.

I was so annoyed it gave me a headache. I don't know if Sanford's affair indicates a character problem, like John Edward's tacky affair did. Edward's revealed himself to be a shallow, self-centered, insensitive bad man. His political career is over. I found myself liking this Sanford guy, listening to him confess to his bad boy behavior.

John F. Kennedy was a serial adulterer. He was all over the place, from Marilyn Monroe to Judith Exner, she being a mob boss girl friend. Now, I think JFK's behavior was not a good mark on his character, but did it have anything to do with how he did his job? I don't think so.

If the JFK era were like it is now and it became public fodder that he was busy boinking Marilyn Monroe, while Jackie was shopping in NYC, well, it'd be non-stop scandal blather on all the news stations, eventually the JFK/Marilyn Scandal would grow so HUGE that JFK would have been forced to resign to restore calm to the country.

Had that happened, JFK would not have been in Dallas that fateful day in November. Lee Harvey Oswald would not be buried in my neighborhood. And Marilyn Monroe would likely be alive today, having married Jack, after he and Jackie got divorced. I suspect even John Jr. would still be alive, due to his dad still being alive to advise him that he was too scatter-brained to be an airplane pilot.

Okay, I realize what I've just done with my circuitous stream of consciousness rambling. I've just made the case that airing all dirty linen is for the greater good in the bigger scheme of things. That really is not the conclusion I had intended to come to.