Mark Sanford's Erotic New Audiobook "Soul Mates"

I thought I'd linked this yesterday but I hadn't.

Sanford can be criticized for a lot post-scandal alone. For one thing, love is inherently foolish and anyone talking about it sounds like a fool. He should know this; he is not a teenager. There are ways to allude to the fact that this isn't (in his mind) a sleazy one-night affair without gushing on about it like a ten year old.

For another thing, not only did he give the AP quotes about his "soul mate" and his "forbidden" and "tragic" love, but he allowed them to record the interview, and, it seems, gave them permission to run that audio. Obviously you can cut commercials with audio, and they'll be more effective than commercials with print-only text.

This may not hurt Sanford much, whose career is over, but it's not a good thing for all those people, including political supporters and fellow Carolina Republicans, that he spent half of his first press conference apologizing to.

At first I thought I should give him points for maximum candor. But when I wrote that, I presumed he didn't want to talk about these things, so offering maximum candor was a difficult, painful thing for him, and therefore had some nobleness in it.

I don't think that any more. He wants to talk about this. He wants to shout out his forbidden love for his soul-mate from the rooftops. So this is selfish rather than selfless.

Worse than selfish, really. Many serious-minded men are very selfish at times, but it doesn't reduce their seriousness. (It does reduce their virtue, of course, but that's one of the first luxuries to go in politics.)

What this is is self-indulgent, which is more unforgivable. You can get away with being a bastard, but you can't get away with being a buffoon.

I have long thought that the real way to win on a television reality show, if you must be one at all, is to keep your dignity. Whether you win the money is secondary to whether you keep your dignity intact. Sanford has failed in the impromptu reality show he's decided to both produce and star in.

P-shop by Slublog, thanks to an idea by a commenter.

posted by Ace at 11:32 AM

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