DOWN GOES JACKO AND THE WILD BULL OF THE PAMPAS

I woke up this morning and Michael Jackson was still dead.

I couldn't care less because, personally, I never gave a shit about this guy when he was alive. So, why concern myself with him now.

However, for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford Jacko's demise couldn't have come at a better time. Toss in Farrah Fawcett croaking yesterday as well and Sanford can rest assured that in a 24 hour news cycle, his name won't be mentioned but once, perhaps twice.

This is because contemporary media, especially broadcast, has a history of jumping all over a breaking story involving some celebrity and riding it until its legs fall off and it collapses on the ground. Remember when Anna Nicole Smith went down? (Note: that's when she died, not all the guys she blew.) The media was on that story around the clock for a solid week. And for what reason? That broad had contributed absolutely nothing to society unless you think marrying some 90-year-old altacocker for his money, flaunting your tits in Playboy and continually getting fatter by the week is important to our societal well-being.

So Sanford, the violent unrest in Iran, health care reform, the economy and tonight's episode of "So You Think You Can Dance Your Stupid Ass Off" will disappear from the public eye for the foreseeable future.

This Blog will, nevertheless, stay focused on what matters. Like an elected official having a piece of ass on the side 5,000 miles from home.

So, let us return to Mark "the wild bull of the Pampas" Sanford. First the specifics of his affair take the prize among the most recent marital indiscretions by American politicians. I mean you can't top "he's hiking the Appalachian...oh, wait, he's in Argentina." Second place. I suppose, would have to go to Bill Clinton for getting head in the Oval office and then taking the cigar to new levels as a sex toy.

The real issue, as the vast majority of us know, is the hypocrisy that accompanies all this. It is also about the GOP brand and the fact that is now tarnished to a point never before seen in modern American political history.

First, we must acknowledge that naughtiness isn't confined to the Republicans. Besides the aforementioned Clinton, we also have Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards. Throw in Rod Blagojavich and Louisiana Congressman Bill "Deep Freeze" Jefferson and the Democrats have certainly contributed to the world of sleaze.

The difference is, of course, that the Democrats have not spent the last 25 to 30 years pontificating about so-called morality and "family values." Not doing so in no way justifies bad behavior. The critical point is that Republicans leapt to the far right a few decades back and convinced enough American voters that Democrats, especially the liberal kind, were immoral, dope-smoking, atheistic, lustful sinners (hey, that kinda' sounds like me!") and in doing so controlled American politics. They did so by conning enough gullible citizens that God was supporting their party and their candidates and covered the various mediums with images of them, their spouses (in almost all cases, wives) posing with their very cute and very white six to eight kids.

Now the chickens have come home to roost because enough of them have been dragged out into the bright sunlight and revealed to be like so many of the gays they denigrated, the skirt-chasers the wagged their fingers at and the Robber Barons who were stuffing the money into their own pockets instead of tithing on Sundays.

Family values is the phrase they milked to death. They were clever enough to use "family" in the names of their various advocacy groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. They loved to tell us that "the family" was the cornerstone of American society and without it (in the way they envisioned it) we were collectively doomed.

The media bought into it by never asking the question, "what are family values?" The answer is that there is no one standard for family values. Virtually every family has something called "values." The ultra-right, bible banging fruitcakes convinced America that it meant going to church every Sunday, making sure every pregnancy went to full term, putting your kids in Christian schools and stomping the shit out of every guy and lesbian you could find.

However, the rest of us have "values" for our family. For mine it means loving and supporting each other, teaching tolerance, being well-educated and informed and seeing to it the dogs have fresh water in their dishes.

A single mother with two kids has her "family values." The person committed to being single all their life has "family values." Hell, Ma Barker and her boys had "family values."

Simply, your family values are yours and not anyone else’s. And if you don't break the law in exercising them then they are just fine.

Mark Sanford seems to have his particular and rather peculiar set of family values. His wife and kids would appear to have a different set.

On a bigger scale, how the GOP views family values from here on out is up to them. But on the heels of Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Mark Foley and the Reverend Ted Haggard, they would be well advised to keep them to themselves and not interject them into future political debates. The great masses in the middle are simply not buying it anymore.

Oh, and Michael Jackson? Still dead.