omnia vincit amor
Mark Sanford has gotten engaged to the Argentinian lady who was his mistress during his first marriage.
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
It’s probably wrong for me to be kind of happy for him.Report
It’s because he tore off the plastic armour he was encased in when he was a politician and showed off the real, mixed up, mistake-making but really in love goof-up underneath. And rather than retreat to the plastic armour by trying to patch things up (or cover things up) with his first wife “for the sake of the children” he’s going to go off and be real. You can criticize him heavily for what he did to the first family but his embrace of a new life is rather touching.Report
And if you can do all that and still get a cushy job with the network that stands for family values, all the better.Report
I find myself very, very happy to be reading this. I think I had been pulling for this.Report
My feelings are more mixed. I don’t wish anyone unhappiness, and I am not saying that the man has to remain in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of his life, but…how old are his kids?
I dunno, maybe the damage is already done, and eventually they’ll understand. Hopefully they are at least out of high school now.Report
Unfortunately, from pictures I could find in some Google searching, it looks like the kids are all in elementary to middle school range.Report
It’s a bit hard to explain why I am less inclined to come down as hard on him as I am some others. The nature of the affair (one of the heart, not of the loins, with a more-or-less age-appropriate woman), it cost him the opportunity of a lifetime (and he hasn’t whined about it), and so on make me more inclined to wish him the best rather than live the rest of his life in lonely misery for his mistakes (I wouldn’t mind that fate for Edwards, though even there I think it’s time we stopped caring).Report
I do hope he’ll be staying off the Amazonian Trail.Report
Good for him. While he certainly massively humiliated his wife and embarrassed his kids, he seemed more like a love sick clueless dope. Not a bad guy per se. I’m certainly not ignoring the hurt he put on his family, but if he has a chance to have some good love in his life then good for him.
Separate note: RIP Neil Armstrong…how about a tribute thread to him.Report
Borgiboe should do that.Report
Meh, who cares.Report
Good luck to her dealing with the ex-wife and all the step kid issues. Should be a blast.
Yeah, he was in love, but it still doesn’t excuse his behavior.Report
I’m not going to comment about particular behavior and whether or not it warrants excuses, but I’m okay with saying… when it comes to a marriage?
That is something that at the core isn’t about anything other than the two people directly involved.
I’m not even sure the children qualify as directly involved … in fact, I suspect in the grand scheme of things… not. “Staying together for the children” in my experience seems to correlate highly with at best very dysfunctional home life in the here-and-now and really bad spousal candidate selection in the next generation. My experience isn’t authoritative or anything, granted. YMMV and all that.Report
I don’t think staying together for the sake of the kids is a great idea either. I was just making a rather cynical comment on what are often the realities of second marriages and why they fail more frequently than first marriages: step kid issues and embittered exes.
As for Sanford, while I can’t condone his affair, at least he owned up to it once it was exposed, unlike the typical pol.Report