Tan Lines? Come ON!!!

We are all old enough and wise enough to know that truth is always stranger, and more amusing, than fiction. In a future blog, I'll muse over the less than comic aspects of this ridiculous story. In the meantime, enjoy the following....

CNN has culled the best of the best from emails exchanged between Gov. Sanford of South Carolina and Maria of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"You have a particular grace and calm that I adore.You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty," Sanford wrote, according to the e-mails published on the newspaper's Web site.

"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 ..."

"...while all the things above are all too true -- at the same time we are in a ... hopelessly impossible situation of love...." he added.

"How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes ..."

Earlier, "Maria" -- whose full name has not yet been released -- also proclaimed her devotion in a July 9 e-mail.

"You are my love ... something hard to believe even for myself as it's also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation," she wrote. "Sometimes you don't choose things, they just happen ... I can't redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you."

Well, at least she was smart enough to NOT write about the magnificent things he may have been holding in the "faded glow of the night's light."

Let's face it. We, as a society, love this stuff. Stories of other people's escapades serve as a complete distraction from the stress and anxieties staring each one of us in the face on a daily basis. The higher up the sinner, the more interested we are in his/her fall.

The incredible part of this story is that, once again, a man's individual desires have led him away from his wife, children, home, career, job, future aspirations, and moral responsibility. It is one thing for a man to run from his shrewish wife and eight children; it is something else for a governor to run from his state. Doesn't he have any close friends who could have prevented him from taking these actions? Couldn't his Argentine mistress have visited South Carolina? Why didn't his wife file for divorce months ago when she first learned of the affair? Why didn't he just resign as governor (which, by the way, I am still betting will happen) and move on quietly?

Oh, yeah, because then it wouldn't be as much fun for the rest of us.

P.S. I felt it only fair to post a link to Mrs. Sanford's statement on the whole affair. Some background on her: Born 1962, Winnetka, IL, degree in finance from Georgetown University. Here's the link: http://winwab.com/2009/06/mark-sanford-wife-jenny-sanford-jenny-sanford-statement. Really glad I'm not her today.