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Have You Seen This Governor? (Updated) (Updated Again)

June 23, 2009 11:04 PM

erhaps I should have included South Carolina on my poll of ridiculous state governments. I woke up this morning to a headline telling me that their governor was missing. "Missing," I thought, "Like some stranger offered him candy and now police are combing the neighborhood looking for clues?"

How the fuck does a governor go missing, exactly? The real story is much lamer than you might think. It turns out Mark Sanford wasn't abducted by aliens or terrorists or anything. No, instead he went for a long walk after getting his ass handed to him by his state's legislature. And it turns out that he didn't tell anyone he was going. Not his wife or his children (even though he was gone over Father's Day), or, you know, anyone in the state government he's responsible for running. His cell phone apparently went straight to voicemail. And now his office is saying that they knew he'd be checking in infrequently for a few days.

Let's think about this for a second. Let's say I'm still an undergrad or law student and I need to miss a few days of school for whatever reason. The first thing I'd do is e-mail my professors and let them know, asking them to send me any homework we're going to have to do over that period of time. I'd tell my friends I was gonna miss, and I'd ask them to e-mail me their notes.

Let's say I'm the CEO of a major corporation and some personal emergency requires that I leave the city where my company is headquartered. I'd ask my secretary to clear my calendar, tell her where I was going to be, and ask that she forward urgent matters to my Blackberry.

Let's say I'm me, a criminal-defense attorney in private practice, and I have to fly to California for a few days to deal with something important. The reality is that I probably wouldn't be able to do it, but in order to even think about it, I'd have to spend hours on the phone with various courts and I'd have to strike up some deal with my partner in order to have him cover whatever court dates I couldn't reschedule.

In other words, very few people live lives where they can simply disappear for a few days. And it looks like jobs with increased responsibilities are generally those where it is harder to disappear. So one would think that the governor of a state has a job where he can't just disappear. But apparently, in South Carolina, that's cool. The governor can disengage from the entire world whenever he needs a few days to recharge, get away from it all, take his mind off all of those meddlesome governing duties, and just really concentrate on himself. Never mind that he's the only person able to act in certain situations, that being unavailable but alive renders the authority of his others in the government questionable at best, and that it's just plain strange to leave your family on a holiday weekend. The guy really needed to get away, it seems.

But here's what I think'll be really interesting: what's the fallout from this whole thing going to be? I'm envisioning protesters in Columbia (which is apparently the capital of South Carolina) holding up giant milk cartons with the governor's face on the side. Honestly, if that happens, I'm going to root for more governors to randomly disappear.

Update:
I saw this morning--and then Santi pointed it out to me--that Sanford wasn't on the Appalachian Trial as had been originally reported. In fact, he wasn't even in the country. Or on this continent. No, instead he headed to South America! Argentina, specifically. With no security and apparently without telling his office where he was actually going.

Wait a minute. Argentina? According to The Superficial, Bill Clinton was in Argentina recently. And he was busy hanging out with strippers.

Coincidence?

Second update:
Are you fucking kidding me? He was banging his Argentinian mistress and he couldn't come up with a better cover story than "I was hiking. Umm . . . . I needed some time to recharge . . . . I was hiking to recharge. Except that I was in Argentina. I was hiking in Argentina? I was driving in Argentina. Yes, that's right!" I'm honestly surprised that his statement didn't include the phrase "Yeah, that's the ticket!"

And read the excerpts of the e-mails--they're like the love poetry of an over-achieving sophomore nerd. Take this passage:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light--but hey, that would be going into sexual details . . . .

Fucking seriously? "Two magnificent parts of yourself"?

This guy deserves everything he's about to get if for no other reason than that he's a fucking idiot. Wow.

6 Comments

Santi said:

The story got even stranger in case you haven't heard -- the dude was apparently in Argentina. W. T. F.

June 24, 2009 9:16 AM

The Reeg said:

Yeah, that's WEIRD. I remember reading last winter about the governor of Rhode Island (or Connecticut, or Delaware, or one of the other itty-bitty New England states) who had the audacity to call her state sexist because people were iffy about her taking maternity leave--I don't remember if she ended up taking leave or not. I remember being disgusted. The world doesn't stop for politicians, and if they expect it do so then they probably shouldn't be in office.

June 24, 2009 12:12 PM

Anonymous said:

It's more than just that ... he's having an affair; he was in Argentina with his mistress, and trying to cover it up.

June 24, 2009 1:31 PM

mindy said:

i dunno, the whole thing reeks. It almost sounds like he is using the "i was cheating on my wife" thing to cover up something bigger....like he pulling a "look at the dancing monkey" with that story while in reality he was in columbia doing rails off a hookers ass or something. Im NOT a gov and theres no way i could disappear like that. I LOVE that he says his wife has known for months and they are trying to work it out. really? so she knows youve had an affair and your method of repairing that huge violation of trust is disappearing to argentina to fuck the reason for the strife without telling anyone? That chick must be the best lay hes ever gotten if its worth completely fucking up your entire life, personal & professional, for her. holy crap do we elect some dumb motherfuckers...

June 25, 2009 6:46 AM

The Reeg said:

All I know is from now on I will only refer to boobs as "the two magnificent parts." As in, "My two magnificent parts are kinda sore; I hope I'm not pregnant!" or, "The best way to detect cancer early is to examine the two magnificent parts of yourself every month."

June 25, 2009 9:27 AM

morenonsense said:

The biggest story here, which you def. alluded to, is that people in the south, or conservatives, or everyone, whatever, care more that he had an affair than the fact that he LEFT THE FUCKING STATE AND DIDN'T TELL ANYONE FOR ALMOST A WEEK! i'm sorry, but you can't just dismiss your professional duties when you hold of job of that magnitude without serious repercussions. dude has to leave office. how many high ranking professionals cheat on their spouse? alot. how many fucking leave without telling anyone? uh, one. Mark Stanford.

June 25, 2009 10:48 PM