Kathleen Parker slices and dices "Nutso Mark" Sanford -- now if only she'd troubled to remember who this slug really is

"Nutso Mark" Sanford -- why won't he just shut up?

by Ken

As I occasionally note, sometimes it takes a right-winger to bag a right-winger, and so today we invite Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker to comment on one of the nation's leading sociopathic scumbags, fromer SC Gov. (and now Rep., and eternal Nutso) Mark Sanford.

Kathleen is especially touchy, in her column "Mark Sanford’s pathetic saga with himself," about Nutso Mark on account of their shared South Carolina heritage. She seems to feel some defense or maybe explanation is in order.

As a South Carolinian, it falls to me to examine the peculiarities afflicting our former governor and now-congressman Mark Sanford, who, contrary to decorum and taste, continues to demand attention.

Yes, that Mark Sanford — the erstwhile Appalachian Trail wanderer who in 2009 found himself not out hiking, as his gubernatorial staff had reported, but befuddled and besotted in Argentina with his longtime soul mate, Maria Belen Chapur [note: remaining links onsite -- Ed.].

Fast-forward through a tearful news conference, during which Sanford all but plummeted to a fainting couch confessing his infidelity, through his high-profile separation from his wife, Jenny, then next to his mysterious reelection to the congressional seat he held prior to becoming governor and . . . wait, fire the writer!

Not even a credulous soap opera viewer would buy a tale so tawdry and ridiculous. Not only is it not credible, it’s pathetic. Moreover, leading men do not long hold an audience after they cry over themselves.

These events also remind us of two tropes in no danger of dismissal: Love is a form of temporary insanity; and anti-secessionist James Petigru’s 1860 assessment of his state as “too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.”

Which brings us up to Nutso Mark's latest invasion of our space, which I admit I needed filling in on. Oh, I'd read about his bizarre Facebook screed (a tip: nobody cares, Nutso!), but not about his "hiking" honey's perplexity.

Fast-forward again to a few days ago. Sanford, apparently finding unbearable his irrelevance and growing obscurity, decided to drop his manly charade and write a torturously long Facebook entry in which, among other true confessions, he announced the end of his engagement to Chapur.

“Qué dice?” asked Chapur from Paris, where she had just spent a honeymoon-ish few days with Sanford.

Chapur knew they were no longer engaged, but she didn’t know that Sanford had announced it on Facebook until, like President Obama’s occasional receipt of awful news, she heard it from the media. In Paris, Chapur had hoped for a wedding date but was offered instead another two-year engagement. In light of which, one wonders what ever attracted at least two women to Sanford, whose charms remain elusive.

In his global missive, Sanford explained that he simply couldn’t drag Chapur through any more of this nasty business with his wife (oh, he noticed?), which recently included a request that Sanford submit to a psychological examination before he is allowed to spend time with their youngest son, now 16.

This request is doubtless difficult for Sanford, but under the circumstances it is hardly misplaced. Come to think of it, a state Department of Psychological Welfare might not be wasted.

And this leads Kathleen to another fellow South Carolinian of hers, former State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, better known to DWT readers as "Republican coke freak Thomas Ravenel," who represented their home state so, er, dramatically on the "reality" show Southern Charm.

Kathleen dumps these Palmetto State wackos in a blender and purées them a bit, then comes up with this kind of weird Zeitgeist-y mulch:

With such public exemplars as Sanford and Ravenel, something, indeed, seems aloft — a shift away from the Southern stereotypes the national media love to exploit to a proud narcissism that knows no shame.

Traditionally, South Carolina has been stubbornly defiant, bellicosely belligerent and heartbreakingly wounded by the humiliation imposed by its invasion and conquest. Now that everyone suddenly loves South Carolina — at least its beaches, its plantations and its crown jewel, Charleston — the natives are bustling to pirouette on a pedestal. Add to these sudden tendencies the pestilential narcissism that breeds in social media like “skeeters” in the Lowcountry marshes and you’ve got the Sanford & Ravenel Show.

Huh?


THERE'S JUST ONE LITTLE
THING KATHLEEN'S LEFT OUT

I think where Kathleen has missed her turn -- and this seves as a reminder of why we have to be careful when we turn to right-wingers for guidance, even, or perhaps especially, with one of their own -- is by somehow forgetting to explain who the fuck this whacked-out scumbag Nutso Mark Sanford is. Ah, how quickly they forget over there on the Cuckoo Side.

Mark Sanford was, until he started serially imploding, one of the country's most vicious, wrathful, self-righteously moralizing demagogues, raining down the wrath of God on all those liberal sinners who don't live their lives exactly the way he said we were supposed to. By now, of course, it has come to seem all but automatic: Anytime we encounter one of those right-wing fire-and-brimstoners, either wait just a while or do a tiny bit of digging and we'll discover that we're being browbeaten by a Grade A certified slimebag.

Mark Sanford doesn't have to apologize for being insane, though it would be the decent thing for someone in his advanced state of mental as well as moral decay to get the hell and stay the hell out of public life for as long as he continues, regrettably, to draw breath. What Mark Sanford needs to apologize for is, well, everything he ever said and did as a political person, because it was all based on delusions and lies.

There's some consolation in knowing that if even the tiniest fraction of his phony-baloney moralizing bullshit is true, he'll be rotting in hell for eternity. But I say that's too long to wait for the agonies he has so abundantly earned to commenced. What I want to hear from him is a deeply sincere apology for having been born.

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