Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

Don't cry for me, Argentina. (Smile, because The Laughorist used the requisite vocative comma.)

Okay, now to the news.

It turns out Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina has not been hiking the Appalachian Trail after all (the explanation given for his mysterious nearly week-long disappearance), not unless, as someone suggested, "hiking the Appalachian Trail" is code for hiking up an Argentine's skirt and following the path to her forested (or denuded) nether regions. ("Nether mind, dear!") Or perhaps it is code for hiking up one's trousers in Buenos Aires after hunting for whatchamacallit -- and finding it.

Today the guv admitted he was really in Argentina. He's been having an affair. With a woman. In Argentina.

This is delicious.

Call it the Ken Starr Deliciosity Effect. (Remember, Mr. Starr, the Cromwellian who was so titillated by the sexcapades of a Mr. William Jefferson Clinton?)

It is delicious because it is a Republican who got caught. Wait: a sanctimonious, pious, prissy, puritanical, gay-bashing (I only presume that), pharasaical politician of a party that delights in its righteousness. That proudly parades its rectitude (but don't mispronounce that word or you'll be talking naughty, Guv).

Of course, Mark "The Sombrero" Sanford had called for Clinton to resign during L'Affaire Lewinsky. Of course.

Really, I could give a rat's you-know-what about this guy or his private life (or Senator John Ensign's or Senator Larry Craig's or Bill or Hillary Clinton's or anyone else's). But if you want to hold yourself up as some sort of moral standard-bearer or subscribe to the hypocrisy surrounding such shallow hype, well, you are asking for a pie in the face, a pie hand-delivered all the way from sunny South America.

To put the icing on the cake or whatever metaphors we are putting into the mixer: this is the same outraged governor who was appalled by all that federal spending and vowed to receive the so-called stimulus money.

Hey, baby, now we know why. He didn't need no stinking money for no stimulus. He was already stimulated, right down to Nether-nether Land, somewhere near the South Pole.