I just read an article on Gov. Mark Sanford’s wife Jenny Sanford in Vogue Magazine. Vogue clearly (and rightly) feels some sympathy for Mrs. Sanford but their obvious distaste for her Christianity and all things conservative comes through so obviously that it’s laughable.
Not going to be a whole lot of analysis. I’m just going to use their own words against them.
Ready. The first example is just illogically anti-conservative:
Before Jenny Sanford came along, the options for wronged political wives were pretty poor. You could suffer silently (see Silda Wall Spitzer), deny everything (hello, Hillary), or make catty asides about the harlot who caused your husband to stray (Elizabeth Edwards). Then came Jenny Sanford.
Early this past summer, just as the world was savoring the news that yet another conservative Republican politician had tumbled from grace in a manner worthy of the best French farce—“hiking the Appalachian Trail” will never have the same meaning—there emerged an unlikely hero in the mess down in South Carolina.
Yet another? All the scandals Vogue mentioned were disgraced Democrats. They then say “yet another” conservative Republican?
It’s not that there aren’t examples out there of conservative calamities. It’s just Vogue didn’t show its work.
And does the world really savor the destruction of conservatives or is just the world surrounding Vogue?
But then Vogue shows how uncomfortable they are with the idea of God. They write of her brief statement after news of the affair became public:
Her one-page statement saying as much was written without the help of spin doctors or media consultants. It came from her heart and her head. It mentioned God without making you squirm.
The very mention of God makes Vogue reporters squirm? Gee, I wonder what they think of Sarah Palin?
It gets better from there. Vogue writes:
It’s a house for boys to knock around in and friends to gather in. The Sanfords are conservative Christians, but they’re not the teetotaling, proselytizing sort. There are bottles of wine on the kitchen counter. Ayn Rand is on the bookshelf, but so is Gabriel García Márquez. The Bible sits front and center on the coffee table, alongside Forbes magazine. “You could be friends with her for 20 years, and she would never bring up the religious stuff,” says her friend Marjory Wentworth, poet laureate of South Carolina and a self-described liberal who once worked for The Nation.
You notice that every time they mention her Christianity they feel the need to offset it. It’s like they have to tell you that yeah she’s one of them Christians but she’s not like all crazy with it.
Offering no evidence Vogue concludes of her career before motherhood:
One of the few females in the office, she blazed a trail upward by putting in long hours and learning to set aside some of her innate moral squeamishness.
But they never back up how she set aside her “innate moral squeamishness.”
All in all shoddy journalism with an extreme distaste for at least half the country. But it’s Vogue Magazine, what did we expect?
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