COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF.
DIDN'T TRY.
LEFT IT TO CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD.
Back when Toronto's National Post ceased being a great paper and hemorrhaged all its best writers, including Christie Blatchford (Mark Steyn, John O'Sullivan.....), security should have paid closer attention to what was being removed in the file boxes when Christie cleaned out her desk. Predictably, she walked off with their balls.
A woman for whom the term "broad" was coined (and she'd be proud to know we think so), Blatchford has once again unleashed her acerbic wit and keen eye to deliver what should be the definitive pronouncement on the pathetic public follies of Michael Jackson and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Swoosh, whack, schwing, Christie successfully puts both in their proper place (way off centre, by any measure of sanity and human dignity).
(If you think she looks scary, check out her subjects...)
Truly, Michael Jackson defies any category of explanation -- Blatchford calls him a train wreck, and says it all. She cuts a wider swath through the notion that Jackson is being remembered in "makeshift" memorials throughout the world. Kitsch and ghastly, yes, but not since Princess Diana's demise have the teddy-bear temples been in the least bit spontaneous or makeshift. (Christie: "Makeshift, my arse.")Sanford, unfortunately, is easily explained: have gun, will travel. Still, one may reasonably ask, "What the hell is it with these philandering political weasels, that they must come snivelling before the TV cameras
to tell the world stuff that's nobody's business?"There's at least a partial answer to the question: they do it to rationalize and excuse their transgressions, even as they pretend to ask forgiveness and call their actions "inexcusable". Sanford is one of the most transparently unrepentant ever to present himself for public atonement.
I'm not sure who is leaking all his Harlequin Romancified emails -- if he's doing it himself to paint a sympathetic picture of a man in the thrall of Great Passion, he has misfired completely and made an even more colossal ass of himself. I would never have guessed that they came from his wife, but even she is now granting interviews about the chronology of their shattered relationship, so who knows what else she might consider appropriate? What is wrong with these people? Does every soiled underthingy go right out on the line, in view of a deliberately assembled audience?
TOO-O-O
MUCH-CH-CH
INFOR-R-MA-A-A-A-A-TION-N-N-N-N.
Anyway, back to Blatchford. I defer to the honorable gentlewoman. Money quote:
...if ever a lover had looked deep into my eyes and said something like “I love you more than life itself,” or written, as Mr. Sanford did, “my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body,” I would have either vomited or kneed him sharply in the nuts... To me, it's a miracle that Mr. Sanford found two women (wife, Jenny, and lover, Maria) who think his verbal wanking sexy or endearing.Read and enjoy.
