Poor, Mark Sanford. The guy just can’t seem to catch a break.
I mean, he shows up on the House floor wearing nothing but his gym clothes and carrying a half-pound of nut sweat and the liberal media has the gall to bust his balls for violating the hallowed halls of this hallowed institution when they should be cheering him for staying in shape.
And before that, folks got their Benedict Cummerbunds all in a bunch when they learned — thanks to another complaint ex-wife Jenny filed with the court — that the Luv Guv thought it was a right fun idea to fly airplanes at his two boys, whatever the bloody hell that means.
And before that, the vox populi went vox rabidi because Sanford thought it was a good idea to kick back and watch the Super Bowl at Jenny’s house when she wasn’t there. To make matters worse, Mark was forbidden from entering the home.
And before that, everybody was piling on him because he used state money to fly to Argentina to see his mistress and got caught. I mean, geez folks. He paid the money back — and his lady love is smoking hot.
And before that, he brought two little piggies to the Statehouse where they shat all over the floor. The media went crazy over that, ignoring all the times that Jake E. Knotts missed the toilet when he was peeing.
Shouldn’t we just cut the guy some slack?
Well, if you’re Jenny Sanford, that answer is a resounding, “Fuck no!”
According to Live 5, Jenny has filed a complaint with the court, pleading with the powers-that-be to force her husband to get a psych evaluation and to take anger management classes. She also apparently wants the court to stop Sanford from having his lady love over at his house when Mark’s 16-year-old son is there.
Now, I take Jenny to be a reasonable woman. She was, after all, the brains behind nearly all of Sanford’s successful political campaigns, most notably his 2002 gubernatorial victory. So with that in mind, you’ve got to think that she has a good reason — other than just spite — to ask the court to intervene. I mean, she surely wouldn’t have asked the court to forbid Sanford from flying planes at his sons if he hadn’t been flying planes at his sons. Nobody makes that shit up.
While much has already been made about Jenny’s above request, nobody is talking about her most damning demand, namely the one forbidding Sanford from “being under the influence of illegal or unprescribed prescription drugs” while their youngest son is around. There’s only two ways to read that: Either Jenny’s just trashing Mark’s not-so-good name for shits and grins, or she’s got cause to believe the Luv Guv is a pill popper. And if the latter’s the case, well, that’s something that the good folks of South Carolina deserve to know a little bit more about.
Which is why I hate to do this, but the time has come to come clean. What Jenny says is true. Mark Sanford is a fiend. I know, because I’ve been with him when he’s been on one of his drug-fueled benders. In fact, here’s an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote way back in October 2007, well before Mark’s Latin American excursion:
We were somewhere around the Clock Restaurant on the edge of White Horse Road in Greenville when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit like Andre Bauer; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the roadway was full of what looked like huge donkeys, all hee-hawing and kicking and jumping on the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down on the way to Walhalla for the town’s annual Oktoberfest. And a voice was screaming “Dick Harpootlian! What are these goddamn animals?”
Then it was quiet again. Gov. Sanford had taken his shirt off and was rubbing fat from the Clock’s fryer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.” I hit the brakes and aimed the Misery Machine toward an abandoned strip club which once featured a statue of King Kong holding Fay Wray in his paws. There’s was no point mentioning the donkeys, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.
My editor at the Charleston City Paper had given me $3,000 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen copies of Atlas Shrugged. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can — and Lord knows, the governor liked to push.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than when Mark Sanford is in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. And when we did, we’d end up in the empty fields of Pickens County riding Ditch Witches like we were two hillbilly Knights of the Round Tab of Acid, jousting at Mother Earth herself. Hours later, we’d gather our senses, only to discover we’d dug a football field-sized trench in the ground and the earth had collapsed around us like a sex scandal. I knew of one already. Did the media know of others?
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