Category: Writing

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the wrestler and the dollhouse: a smackdown

I was just clicking through a friend’s Facebook photos of his three daughters and it got me thinking about my own daddy, who also has three daughters, and couldn’t be happier.  It reminded me of a funny story about something my dad used to loooooove to do when we were kids.  Mind if I tell you a story about when I was a kid?

See, my sister and I (at the time there were only two of us, our third sister was adopted later), had an elaborate Victorian dollhouse that my parents had built for us one Christmas.  More than we played with any other toy, we spent hours playing with that dollhouse.  All the people and furniture were Playmobil.  So they were sorta like overgrown Legos.  Like this: We didn’t just have the traditional dollhouse figures, either.  There was an entire “school” set up in the “attic,” a hospital complete with surgery unit on the lower porch, a police station on the upper porch, an ambulance, and EVEN A HOT DOG STAND:My dad, of course, loved more than anything to make us giggle and squeal.  Usually this was related to telling us that the Belle, a riverboat in the town where we lived, had sunk, which was a guaranteed way to elicit squeals; or good old fashioned “tickle torture.”  But when it came to the dollhouse, he had a secret weapon.  Macho Man Randy Savage: Macho Man would regularly show up to “visit” the dollhouse and basically wreck the place, while my sister and I howled “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO MACHO MAN! NOOOOOOOOOO!” In our little minds, we could SEE this wreslter man, stomping his feet, kicking over furniture, punching the dollhouse people.  My dad would just laugh an evil laugh as we tried to pull Macho Man out of his hands and push Dad away from the dollhouse.  I have a feeling it was the only way this “boy” knew to play dollhouse with us.  And really, we secretly loved it.  We’d exact our revenge by finding Macho Man around the house and hiding him, so dad couldn’t find him and make him “come visit.”  Of course, this all ended the day we “hid” Macho Man in the trash and forgot about him until after trash day.  Whoops!

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taking Palin at face value doesn’t help her cause

So, Sarah Palin resigned almost a week ago in a rambling, babbling speech punctuated with the honking of waterfowl in front of a hastily gathered group of mostly local news reporters.  In the week that followed, pundits and bloggers have been going nuts analyzing Palin’s resignation and trying to figure out WHY.  Palin doesn’t understand why anyone would be wondering about underlying reasons or scandals.  Wearing her waders, she told ABC News “You know why they’re confused? I guess they cannot take something nowadays at face value”.

OK.  So, here’s what she said (emphasis mine):

“Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations….

“The state has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to ‘opposition research’ — that’s money not going to fund teachers or troopers or safer roads…. Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources — spending other peoples’ money in their game.

“It’s pretty insane — my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this instead of progressing our state now.”

Let’s take this apart one point at a time, shall we?

  • Palin seems to suggest that most of the ethics complaints are filed against her by “political operatives” and enemies.  I’ll let Salon’s Joan Walsh take this one (emphasis mine):

    All but one of them were filed by her constituents in Alaska. That one exception was a complaint by a DC watchdog group about her $150,000 clothing gift from RNC. It was ultimately dismissed, but it dealt with an unclear area of campaign-finance law…Four of the complaints were filed by a Republican former ally of Palin’s, Andree McLeod, who turned on her because she felt Palin was cutting ethical corners, hiring cronies and using a private email account to conduct public business outside the realm of public records. Many of the complaints predated her vice presidential nomination. And at least one of the complaints was clearly justified; Palin had to pay back about $8,000 in travel expenses for her children. Another is still pending: A seemingly reasonable complaint about Palin charging the state per diem when she’s living in her own house in Wasilla rather than the governor’s mansion.

    If you’d like to read a complete listing of the ethics investigations, the Anchorage Daily News has compiled a list.  As you can see, only one complaint was filed by a political operative, and many were quite serious, the opposite of “frivolous.”  Even in some of the cases in which Palin was found to have done nothing wrong, other actions were taken.  The list mentions one member of her administration who was ordered to undergo ethics training because of “troubling emails.”

  • Now about those hours wasted and dollars spent.  Where does Palin get this “millions of dollars” total?  David Murrow, a Palin spokesperson, acknowledged to a Plum Line reporter

    that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing.

    Greg Sargeant continued:

    The ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.

    So once again we return to the total cost of the ethics investigation, as tallied by the Anchorage Daily News: $296,000. And where do the bulk of these charges come from? Again from the Anchorage Daily News:

    The bulk of the expenses — $187,797 — appear to stem from Troopergate, the messy case involving Palin’s former brother-in-law, a state trooper, who got on the wrong side with Palin and her family. Palin herself initiated at least a part of the ethics case to counter a legislative investigation into the same matter.

    And when they report that Palin initiated part of the case “to counter a legislative investigation” what they mean is, she tried to have the investigation moved to the jurisdiction of people she had the power to fire if they returned a verdict she wasn’t happy with. Palin, as Talking Points Memo notes, “has the power to fire the personnel board’s members, the independence of its judgments is hardly beyond reproach.”

  • And now for Palin’s argument that the burden of these investigations is so crippling that she and her staff can do little else.  As Talking Points Memo reported, at the time of her announcement, there were only 3 ethics investigations still pending against Palin, hardly an overwhelming number.  And none of those three is as serious as the Troopergate investigation, which she managed to weather while remaining governor AND campaigning for the Vice Presidency.  I just don’t buy that she can’t keep doing her job in the face of the remaining cases.  If they really are as frivolous as she claims, they’ll be dismissed as quickly as the others have been.

So.  Palin is wrong about who is bringing the ethics complaints against her, she is wrong about their level of seriousness, she is wrong about how much they are costing the state, and she is most likely wrong about how crippling they are of her ability to do her job as governor, the job she promised to do for at least one full term.  Moreover, she is using the very ethics reform she champions as one of her crowning achievements as an excuse for being a quitter.  Steve Benen points out that there is more than a little irony in this, and that perhaps instead of quitting, Palin could use her immediate knowledge both of what it takes to pass ethics reform and of the flaws in the current ethics law, to improve the law:

To hear Palin tell it, her opponents are now using her own achievement against her — exploiting the law to waste taxpayer money, bankrupt the state’s governor, and paralyze state government. Doesn’t that suggest there’s something wrong with the new ethics laws? If the measures were written in such a way as to make it easy and cost-free for anyone to cripple the state’s political process, then don’t the reform laws need reforming? Indeed, even putting Palin aside, won’t all future Alaskan governors have to deal with the same problem? It sounds like Palin has firsthand experience in identifying the flaws in her own law. If she weren’t quitting, and letting her own flawed ethics rules force her from office, maybe she could work on improving the system and helping the state.

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AWEsome

Picture 2Today, two of my favorite thinkers seem to be in a weird synchronicity, so I thought I’d share.

First, Colin aka No Impact Man asks, what fills you with awe?  Colin is not, as far as I know, a Christian, but he’s a very spiritual person, and often in his writing I find things that resonate with what I think and feel and believe as a person of faith.  Today he has a video of whales and writes:

Once in a while, even though it’s trendy, these days, not to talk about other species when we talk about environmentalism, I like to reconnect with that about our planet that fills me with wonder. And for me, one of those things is whales….Meanwhile, what about our planet fills you with awe?

Second, Rob Bell, a pastor from Michigan whose sermons I often listen to via podcast and whose book Velvet Elvis recently changed my  life, has his latest Nooma film availble for free viewing online today, until midnight.  You can check it out here.  This video is about the story of Job, and how God speaks to a man who is in the midst of unspeakable suffering and despair and reminds him that the story is so much bigger than he is, and that his suffering is not the final word in the middle of the grand story of our creative Creator God.  Bell says

We want to know why we suffer like we do…and there are times when the only honest, healthy, human thing to do is to shout your question and shake your fist and rage against the heavens and demand an explanation.  But true wisdom, the kind we find here with Job, the kind that endures…that kind of wisdom knows when to speak and when to be silent.  Because your story is not over.  The last word has not been spoken.  And there may be way more going on here than any of us realize.  So may you be released from always having to understand why things happen they way it does…May you have the wisdom to know when to say ‘I spoke once but now I will say no more.’

What is it that God says to Job that inspires him to be silent?  That changes the way he feels about his suffering?  It’s the thing that ties in with Colin’s question above.  What God says to Job is truly awe inspiring:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone–while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?…

Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.

What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up [God’s] dominion over the earth?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water?Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

Who gives the ibis wisdom [about the flooding of the Nile], or gives the rooster understanding [of when to crow]?

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?

Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? Do you count the months till they bear? Do you know the time they give birth? They crouch down and bring forth their young; their labor pains are ended. Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds; they leave and do not return.

Who let the wild donkey go free? Who untied its ropes? I gave it the wasteland as its home, the salt flats as its habitat. It laughs at the commotion in the town; it does not hear a driver’s shout. It ranges the hills for its pasture and searches for any green thing.

Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Will it stay by your manger at night? Can you hold it to the furrow with a harness? Will it till the valleys behind you? Will you rely on it for its great strength? Will you leave your heavy work to it? Can you trust it to haul in your grain and bring it to your threshing floor?

The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, though they cannot compare with the wings and feathers of the stork. She lays her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, unmindful that a foot may crush them, that some wild animal may trample them. She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers; she cares not that her labor was in vain, for God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of good sense. Yet when she spreads her feathers to run, she laughs at horse and rider.

Do you give the horse its strength or clothe its neck with a flowing mane? Do you make it leap like a locust, striking terror with its proud snorting? It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength, and charges into the fray. It laughs at fear, afraid of nothing; it does not shy away from the sword. The quiver rattles against its side, along with the flashing spear and lance. In frenzied excitement it eats up the ground; it cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds. At the blast of the trumpet it snorts, ‘Aha!’ It catches the scent of battle from afar, the shout of commanders and the battle cry.

Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south? Does the eagle soar at your command and build its nest on high? It dwells on a cliff and stays there at night; a rocky crag is its stronghold. From there it looks for food; its eyes detect it from afar. Its young ones feast on blood, and where the slain are, there it is. (Job 38:4-39:30)

So I will answer Colin’s question. One thing that has always filled me with awe is the stars. Perhaps I inherited this from my father, who was always calling us outside, sometimes even after bedtime, to point out Mars and Venus in the night sky, to trace the lines of Orion or the Pleiades in their constellations (just like the part I bolded above). Who calls me from 1000 miles away, even now, to tell me to go outside and look at the moon, or Jupiter, or some other stellar thing. When I would go to camp in the summer at Mo-Ranch in Texas, my favorite thing was after vespers, when we’d all go lie on the tennis courts in the dark, their concrete still warm from a day’s baking in the sun, and stare up at the sky, so far from any city that even the Milky Way was visible. And more than any sermon ever could, this would fill me with awe and wonder and a deep awareness of the presence of God. The sight was so overwhelming and beautiful and humbling that tears would well up in my eyes and in the back of my throat.

And my love of seeing the stars is one thing that inspires me to take better care of the environment.  To keep the air clean so we can even see the stars.  To be mindful of light pollution and its effects on ecosystems.  As Rob Bell says, “How we treat creation reveals how we feel about its Creator.” (my paraphrase)

So. I answered Colin’s question. What fills YOU with awe?

Photograph above is by Jim Richardson, via National Geographic.

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doggie doctor’s orders

i'm plottin' mah escape
i'm keepin mah teefs clean

The day before yesterday, we took our two dogs to the vet for their annual checkup. Bessie was her usual rock solid, reliable self, lying down on the floor of the waiting room and patiently waiting her turn.  Olive was….well…Olive.  She barked insanely at every dog who came in, including a poor deaf dog who was already so confused and scared that he just cowered in a corner.  I have no idea if she thought that the trembling deaf dog was a threat, or if she was just trying to speak up loud enough for him to hear.  HAI! I’M OLIVE! WHY U NOT TALKIN?  MEBBE IF I’M LOUDER U CAN HEER ME? HELLOOOOOOO?  Jon eventually took her outside to wait our turn where she couldn’t terrorize any other people or puppies.  Thankfully our vet has separate waiting rooms for cats and dogs or it could have been worse!

Once we got back into the exam room, everything went great.  Both girls were patient as they were weighed, as the scale suddenly rose and became an exam table, as they were palpated and poked and probed, and even as they had blood drawn, stool samples taken, and shots given.  And through it all, I swear, Olive must have been LISTENING.

See, the vet was very impressed with how clean our dogs’ teeth are, and he also discussed how much of an ordeal it is for pets to get their teeth cleaned, as they have to be put under anesthesia.  He also explained that chewing food and rawhides helps clean the teeth and prevent the need for teeth cleaning.  And I swear, the threat of anesthesia and another trip to the vet must have scared poor puppygirl, because when we got home, she had her same puppy dinner, but she ate it at 1/4 speed, carefully chewing every bite.  She has so far kept this up through two breakfasts and two dinners.  Watching her eat so carefully, where usually she’d be swallowing each bite whole, I could almost hear her singing to herself, “brusha brusha brusha!“

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Sarah Palin is right about one thing?

XXFactor writer Emily Bazelon thinks “Sarah Palin is right about one thing.”  Bazelon believes that Palin may be correct in that she would not be able to accomplish much as governor in her final year and a half in office.  Bazelon writes:

I’m starting to see the unvarnished point. Given what a target of controversy she’s become, what legislative agenda could she push through?…It’s a funny sort of toppling: I resign because of the damage my detractors are doing to me, even though I did nothing wrong and I am still tough as nails.

I think this gives Palin not nearly enough credit for her strained relationship with the Alaskan legislatures and other government officials. Prior to being tapped as McCain’s VP pick, Palin achieved most of her successes in Alaska through bipartisanship. Time Magazine’s Jay Newton-Small brought this up in his piece on “Five Reasons Alaskans Think Palin Quit.” He quotes Harry Crawford, an Anchorage Democrat:

With Sarah, we were able to do things that we’d been trying to do for 25 years. Everything she can point to in terms of achievements was done with nearly uniform Democrats votes and just a smattering of Republican votes.

And then Sarah went and bit the hand that fed her all the little victories she highlighted on her resume as she ran for VP by running a dirty, nasty, hateful campaign that culminated in people shouting threats against Obama at her rallies. She accused a sitting Senator of “palling around with terrorists.” Perhaps she expected never to come back to Alaska, but she couldn’t have expected to come back and have everything be hunky dory after she led one of the most despicable campaigns in years. If Palin isn’t able to accomplish anything as governor, it’s her own damn fault.

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no sweat

OK, so, I’ve been wondering whether or not to post about this thing which has changed my life.  Because this thing?  It’s a deodorant, and how lame is that to blog about?  But the thing is, every time I discover something life-changingly awesome, it tends to get discontinued.  SO.  I’m going to tell you, the Interwebz, about it in hopes that if more people buy this amazing thing, the company won’t stop making it.

This amazing, life-changing deodorant is Adidas Cotton-Tech.  Now, about a year ago, I went on a major hunt for an aluminum free deodorant.  I know the aluminum-breast cancer/Alzheimer’s link is unproven, but my thought was, if I can ditch the aluminum and not suffer a loss of quality of life, then it’s worth the peace of mind.  Well, about a week into my experiment with Alba Organics and Tom’s of Maine deodorants, my loving husband informed me that I smelled like a dirty hippie.  So.  That experiment ended abruptly.  After all, I don’t want to smell repellant to the one person I want to snuggle close (this was also the reason a lovely “orange blossom” fragrance did not work out).

On a recent trip to the grocery store (Harris Teeter), I noticed the Adidas Cotton-Tech and thought I’d give it a try.  I was fed up with the Secret I was using, because it was making white marks on all my clothes.  Adidas Cotton-Tech is aluminum free and apparently somehow absorbs the sweat like cotton, while killing bacteria that cause smells.  Dear readers, I had low expectations, but I can now report that the AC has been out in my office all day, and my underarms are not sweating.  Meanwhile my legs, which I habitually cross, keep sticking together.  The Adidas deodorant is also more of a clear-gel type, so it’s not going to make white marks on your clothes.  And I rather like the “green floral” smell.  It’s not baby powdery (though you can get a baby powder variety), which I enjoy, but also not overwhelmingly flowery.  It just smells clean, but not in some sort of Old Spice way, and doesn’t conflict with my other fragrances be they lotion or perfume.  So, please, help me make sure they don’t discontinue this product.  It’s only $3.99 at my local grocery store!

(P.S. If you ever need to guarnatee that you won’t sweat, say, wearing a silk top or something, CertainDri WORKS.)

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the sanfords, spiritual leadership, and submission

Image via the Washington Post
Image via the Washington Post

I’m with PunditMom: I LIKE Jenny Sanford. Reading this Washington Post piece on Jenny, after her eloquent and, I believe, genuine press statement about her husband’s oh-so-public failing, I get the feeling that she is smart, strong, and looking out for herself and her family. I also get the feeling she’s a genuine Christian, and her example stands in stark contrast to the hypocrisies of men like her husband, particularly this, from The American Prospect’s Tapped blog:

Sanford advised spending more time with one’s family (ahem) and praying together. “I don’t want to be old-fashioned here,” he added, “but I think the father has the responsibility of being the spiritual leader of the house, and there are some lessons on a daily, nightly, morning basis that need to go from the father to the little ones in talking about how shall we then live. And I think that particular responsibility is on the backs of fathers.”

Seems to me that Jenny Sanford is the true spiritual leader in that household.  And that her husband abdicated this role when he disappeared to be with another woman ON FATHER’S DAY.

And here’s the part that I’m really thinking about, pondering, and questioning: doesn’t this traditional gender role, male-as-spiritual-leader system really set a marriage up for failure?

Here’s where I’m going with this.  So the Sanfords believe that, despite having an equal education and career experience, despite an equal role in running her husband’s campaigns and PR strategies, despite keeping the home fires burning in such a way that Mark was even able to sustain his political ambitions, Jenny is spiritually inferior to her husband, in need of his leadership, headship, and “covering.”  She is the one expected (I’m fine if it’s just her freely-made choice, as someone who hopes to be a SAHM someday) to give up her Wall Street VP job to raise kids and bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for staffers and reporters.  She’s the one who disappears into home life, to the extent that I’m willing to bet that she wasn’t even the same person Mark Sanford fell in love with in the first place.  And then we act surprised when Mark Sanford, bored with this rigid assignment of roles, perhaps even with his no-longer high-powered wife, decides that a fling with an Argentinian is more exciting?  The entire system is unfair to both Mark AND Jenny.

I’m not excusing Mark Sanford’s actions.  I believe that there is no excuse for cheating on a spouse, and at the VERY least, he should have gotten a divorce before pursuing another woman, preferably not one who is also married (his mistress was apparently “separated” at the time that they met).  However, what I am saying is, this religiously-motivated gender-based spiritual hierarchy that its adherents believe protects marriage and ensures spiritual order actually creates a system in which both spouses are doomed to failure. The woman is left at home with the kids, deferring to her husband constantly, trying not to question him and his spiritual “headship,” and is expected all the same to remain attractive and attracted to her husband.  It’s like asking her to fight with one hand behind her back– how can she still be interesting and challenging and compelling to her husband if, after getting married and having kids, she’s no longer allowed to be the hard-working, high-powered, highly-intelligent person who first attracted him?

And the man is put on a spiritual pedestal, where, instead of answering to his wife, conversing with his wife, being challenged spiritually “as iron sharpens iron” by his wife, he meets with groups of men like C-Street or this Cubby character Mark Sanford seemed to be more broken up about disappointing than he was about disappointing his wife and kids.  And these men, I believe, often feed the very beast they are supposedly trying to tame.

This is why I don’t go in for this “headship” stuff.  I wasn’t looking for a leader, I was looking for a partner.  I wanted someone who can call me on my BS, and who I can call on his.  I wanted someone who would be just as devastated as I would be if I had kids and suddenly lost myself, my biggest fear about parenthood.  And that’s what I have in my marriage.  We see it as “iron sharpening iron,” not one of us inferior to the other.  When I talk about my desire to stay home with our children, my husband asks me if I would really be happy in such a role.  He knows me well enough to know I need challenges and mental stimulation, that I need to feel like I’m being productive and contributing to the world in a meaningful way, using my mind and my talents.  We will raise our children the same way we currently go through life– holding hands and picking up each other’s slack and doing the best we can.  But we’re certainly not going to handicap ourselves with outdated ideas of patriarchal leadership and one-sided submission that set us both up for failure and disappointment.

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programming note

I’ve decided to stop doing posts on the weekend, as no one reads them anyway, and I should really be trying to interact with humans instead of screwing around on the interwebz on my days off.  So.  Check out some of the fun stuff you may have missed this week, like the post about my pet-chauvenism, my take on Jon & Kate + Hate, and a lot of special Mark Sanford news including the Crying In Argentina Playlist.  And now, just for funzies, I will leave you with two videos.  The thing they have in common?  Both are local TV specials, made in the South.

First up is Turtleman.  I love this guy.  As my husband says, “You can just tell that he loves life.”  I’m sure anyone from the South could tell a story of an encounter with someone just like him.  As my boss says: “America.  People are doing crazy shit all over it.”

Next up is Skidboot the Dog.  He’s amazing.  Now my dogs commonly hear the phrase “WHY CAN’T YOU BE MORE LIKE SKIDBOOT??”

Y’all have a great weekend!

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crying in argentina: the playlist

After much joking about Mark Sanford’s country song, “Crying in Argentina,” it occurred to me, I should make ol Mark a special playlist for this special time– I guess it’s a playlist to listen to while hiking the Appalachian Trail all the way to Argentina.

First up, Weezer’s “Island in the Sun“.  Included for the line “We’ll run away together, we’ll spend some time forever, we’ll never feel bad anymore.” (It wouldn’t let me embed the video, but it’s directed by Spike Jonze and pretty cool)

Then:

Next, another one I can’t embed: Justin Timberlake’s Senorita. “Senorita, I feel for you, you deal with things that you don’t have to.” That one could practically BE one of Sanford’s emails.

And speaking of the emails, since Sanford says “there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background”, I give you “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”:

Then Janet’s “Escapade.”  Think by ditching the governor’s office for a week he was trying to save his troubles for another day?

Think the ladies in Argentina are like the ladies in Spain?  “Can’t refuse it.”

And what’s acting like an idiot teenager in love rather than a governor with a wife and kids without a lil Tiffany?

And finally, Madonna, “Holiday.”  “It would be so nice” if you could just get away with disappearing from your elected office for a week, wouldn’t it?

Got any additions to make to the list?