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Since I’m from South Carolina, it stands to reason that I would have an opinion of the whole Governor Sandford thing. Once again, our state has made less-than-flattering national news headlines that our friends up north find hilarious. Except this time, it’s not some redneck standing outside the Piggly Wiggly announcing on national television the latest improvements to his trailer that he hopes to make with his newly-won lottery money, or some redneck calling Barack Obama the “n word” during a random televised street poll on Election Day. It’s the redneck that nearly every adult I know voted to put in our state’s Governor’s Mansion down in Columbia. And guess what got him on the news?

Yup, our governor has now joined the legion of Cheating SOB Politicians. From Thomas Jefferson’s “baby momma drama” (1802) to the allegations of Grover Cleveland being a “nonconsecutive two-timing” kind of guy in more than just his presidential terms (1884) to Bill Clinton being Monica’s harmonica (1998), our presidents and other political leaders have a pretty long rap sheet of sex scandals.

But does Governor Sandford’s affair constitute relevant news, or just too much information?

When you were in sixth grade, you probably had that awkward semester in your science class. You know what I’m talking about. Mrs. Cooper’s fabulous pencil-going-into-the-pencil-sharpener demonstration of where babies come from. And if you’re like me, you were gobsmacked with the realization, “Oh my GOD, my PARENTS did that!” And that was a pretty horrifying thought, wasn’t it? In fact, even now –at nearly eighteen years old and by no means a virgin—I still cringe at the thought of my parents “getting their groove on”.

So why in the name of God would we want to know about our Governor doing it?

In my opinion, this whole scandal is a big load of TMI, or in other words, Too Much Information. I mean, the fact that the governor kind of disappeared for a week without telling anyone, that’s kind of relevant. And if during that disappearance, he had been, say, selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, I would want to know about that. I want to know what he’s doing with my dad’s tax dollars, what he plans to do to improve my public high school’s embarrassing dropout rate, and where he stands on gay marriage and the Blue laws. But I really don’t want to know if he’s been doing the dirty, and with whom, and I certainly don't want to read online excerpts from his not-exactly-family-friendly emails with her.

I’m not saying he was right to do it; I’m just saying it’s none of our business. But I also think, and I say this with all the respect and Carolina pride in the world, that he needs to shut the heck up about it.

Okay, so when you screw up, you want to admit you screwed up, and apologize. I get that. And I totally respect that he didn’t say under oath “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” or otherwise try and deceive the public about it. I'm all for fessing up to your mistake and apologizing.

But good lord, Governor Sandford, how many times do you have to say it? Every single day he’s on the front cover of my local newspaper issuing some statement about the situation. He has committed marital and political suicide.

My advice to him is to, in the eloquent words of the rapper Lil Wayne, "take them shoes off yo teeth, and quit runnin yo mouth."

A very good next step for him would be to be very quiet until he gets his crap together and figures out where to go from here. He really needs to use his head (the one on his shoulders) and think long and hard (pardon the pun) about the direction his life is going, and how to best rectify his mistake.

So what do you think? Leave a comment on the blog if you have an opinion.

Sources:
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