It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth/the minor fall, the major lift/the baffled gov composing...
Hallelujah! All the Mark Sanford news that's fit to repost.
(picture by aissle)
Sanford: King David Didn't Resign, So Why Should I?
Mark Sanford has been holding a televised cabinet meeting this afternoon.
And the South Carolina governor started out by using an interesting comparison to respond to calls for his resignation. King David didn't back down after his own sex scandal, he told his colleagues, and neither will I.
Said Sanford:
I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.
As King of Israel and Judea, David saw Bathsheba in the bath (he was walking on the roof at the time, goes the story) and immediately had to have her. After getting her pregnant, he tried to conceal it by ordering her husband Uriah to return from war and sleep with Bathsheba, so that the baby would be thought of as Uriah's.
But Uriah preferred to remain at war. So David gave an order that Uriah should be abandoned in battle, ensuring his death. Then he married Bathsheba.
When all this came out -- thanks to an intrepid reporter from the Bethlehem-based State, who was tipped to emails exchanged between David and Bathsheba, then staked out David at the Jerusalem airport -- David refused to resign as king of Judea. His presidential hopes also took a hit.
Late Update: In a statement issued after the meeting, Sanford doubled down on the David analogy:
I remain committed to rebuilding the trust that has been committed to me over the next 18 months, and it is my hope that I am able to follow the example set by David in the Bible - who after his fall from grace humbly refocused on the work at hand. By doing so, I will ultimately better serve in every area of my life, and I am committed to doing so.
Source
Jenny Sanford: I Learned Of Affair In January
South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she discovered her husband's affair in January when she found a letter to the governor from his mistress.
Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press on Friday she told him to end the affair and was shocked this week when she found out he'd gone to Argentina to see his mistress. She says she believed Gov. Mark Sanford had gone somewhere to work on writing a book.
Jenny Sanford says she stayed with her husband while their four sons were attending their private school in Columbia. She waited until the school year ended to leave him for their coastal home on Sullivans Island.
She wept as she displayed her boys' stellar report cards and said she most worries about how they're being affected by the scandal. Jenny Sanford says she plans to take them out of the state for the weekend.
Meanwhile, Sanford was back at work today, telling his state agency chiefs that he's sorry for keeping them in the dark when he went to see Argentina to see his mistress.
The Republican on Friday held his typical public meeting with the agency chiefs, but started with apologies and likening his confession and future to the biblical plight of King David.
Sanford says King David fell mightily but picked up the pieces and built from there.
Sanford made specific apologizes to the head of agencies that handle his security and economic development trips, saying he put those leaders in awkward spots.
He dismissed his security detail before flying to Argentina last week and he also took a trip with Commerce Department officials to South America and saw his mistress.
Source
Argentine Man Is Said to Be Source of Sanford E-Mail
The mystery of who revealed Gov. Mark Sanford’s e-mail messages may finally be solved. A business associate of Mr. Sanford’s Argentine mistress said Friday that private messages between the two lovers had been sent anonymously to a South Carolina newspaper last December by an Argentine man the mistress had briefly dated.
The associate, who asked not to be identified, is a Buenos Aires television executive involved in hiring the woman, whom he identified as María Belén Chapur, a producer at the television network America from 2001 to 2002.
Last December, the executive said, Ms. Chapur was dating a young Argentine a few months after her affair with Mr. Sanford began. The man happened to see the e-mail messages being exchanged between the governor and Ms. Chapur, said the executive - who said he had direct knowledge of the situation - and hacked into her e-mail account to see the rest.
Infuriated, the man sent the messages to The State, the newspaper in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia.
When she found out, the executive said, Ms. Chapur immediately ended the relationship with the man, whose identity has not been disclosed.
In one of the published messages, dated July 9, 2008, Ms. Chapur wrote Mr. Sanford that she had seen another man.
“He is a very nice guy, great heart,” she wrote, “but unfortunately I am not in love with him. 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.”
In publishing the e-mail messages this week, The State said they had been sent anonymously. Asked on Friday about the executive’s account of the source of the messages, Steve Brook, the managing editor, said he had no comment, adding only, “That’s interesting.” Joel Sawyer, the governor’s spokesman, also had no comment.
Ms. Chapur did not respond to messages left on her cellphone. (woah stalkery much NYT?)
The executive said Ms. Chapur’s main role at the network was to monitor international press coverage of Argentina, preparing a summary each evening from the financial and European news media.
“She was a follower of international news,” the executive said, “an avid reader of foreign news and regularly attended policy seminars.” He said she spoke fluent English and French.
She appeared on the air only once, reporting from New York in October 2001 on the month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A video of her appearance, now widely circulating on the Internet, first appeared on Thursday afternoon on Argentine television.
Ms. Chapur, who has two sons and is separated from her husband, has since left the television business, the executive said.
Source
I'm glad he pulled the King David card because now we can reference "Hallelujah" and "Dead" along with "Maria" and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina".