I'm sure no one who pays attention has missed the Sanford debacle. And I'm equally sure that almost no one is surprised. I've yet to put together how the local news in SC knew about the year-long affair earlier than the rest of us, but that may be a matter of me not paying attention or them waiting to get their sources and facts in order. Mollie, articulating one of the reasons I have a journalism crush on her, writes that she loves a good scandal, especially a sex scandal. And who doesn't? As an independent, I get to wallow in schadenfreude no matter the party, but I confess to giggling with slightly more impish glee when it's a Christian, Republican, Promise Keeper, Conservative, etc. Sanford fits almost every category. I mean every category, including demagogue—famously refusing stimulus package funds while his state gets the shit kicked out of it. Meanwhile, he can apparently afford to carry on an affair in Argentina. Ah...Christianity as political language game and politics as Christian form of life. Delightful. Oh that Wittgenstein were alive to see this.
Back to Mollie. After her admission, she goes on to write:
And yet what struck me about the media coverage was how it seemed to miss what I found most interesting about the press conference. Sanford will get what he deserves, I’m sure, but have you ever seen such a display of real flesh and blood and torment? Usually when politicians confess to cheating on their wives, they remind me most of robots. I’m still not convinced that John Edwards, Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevey are actual humans. All the emotion seems manufactured. If the speeches aren’t scripted by a high-priced damage control firm, I’d be shocked. But this? This was real. It was downright uncomfortable to watch someone be so honest about their horrendous moral failings. He was visibly shaken by the damage he’d caused his family.Yes, I've seen it before. Jimmy Swaggart crying while confessing, "I have sinned..." while his poor wife and kids watched him ham it up for Jesus. Jim Bakker. Ted Haggard. (By the way, avoid Christian leaders with a double, repeating consonant in their last name.) There are others I'm sure. Agreed, these men weren't politicians, although I'm pretty sure Haggard fancied himself as someone who was important in politics. The point is that there is no reason to talk about a conservative Christian showing emotion at a press conference, even when that man is a politician. I'm not sure who takes claims of faith and fallenness seriously anymore. Christians have insisted for so long that it's a matter of accepting Jesus into your heart or believing the right doctrine that people finally believe them and expect them to be utter hypocrites. Had they been insisting all along that it was a matter of living like you believed in the resurrection or that death didn't matter or that a transformed life was the evidence of faith, then his press conference would have been riveting. As it is, it was just pathetic. The banal stories, the oblique justifications, the "I'm a bottom line guy" shit when it took him nearly ten minutes to get to the bottom line. All of it was tired theater. Like a movie with a canned plot that looks so familiar: remove actor, replace with younger actor, update set and fashions, voila.
What would have been fascinating would have been for a reporter to say, "Enough of the God's law nonsense. You broke a promise to your wife. We needn't introduce your absentee God, nor his tawdry preoccupation with sex, nor explanations of sin and grace or human frailty for you to say very simply that you fucked up." It is time for reporters to stop acting like Christianity has anything to do with Christian politicians who adopt the culture and values of White Dixie Fundamentalists and can't list the ten commandments, no matter how many granite monuments they approve. I may be cynical, but this has nothing to do with religion, except as a cautionary tale for those who actually do use some god's name in vain.
