Humanity, Where Art Thou?

I just finished reading John Dickerson's Heartless in Slate about Gov. Sanford.

Please read the following without a hint of irony: poor guy.

I'm pretty liberal. I don't like a lot of this guy's ideas but I tell ya, I feel pretty bad for him. Of course, I know it's hard on his family, and I wish them the best through this hard time as well, but the vitriol that is being slammed onto this guy with such ardor seems a bit much.

Sure, I've made a few watercooler jokes (He wasn't hiking the Appalachian trail, he was hiked up on some Argentinian tail), but that was just me trying to be clever. Obviously, I'm not very clever, but I digress.

When did imperfect people become fair game for attack? This guy needs our symapthy, not our anger. I defended Clinton when he was having his fun and I think the same standard needs to be applied to Gov. Sanford.

As humans, we should be able to remove the actions from the person. Is he a bad guy because of this? Nope. He should be feeling horrible and we should acknowledge his feeling horrible by saying 'Yeah, you really screwed the pooch on this one' but we don't need to drill him into the ground by calling him names or portraying all Republicans or right-wingers this way. If anything, imperfection is the one thing that all politicians seem to have, and in fact, all humans.

Sure he's a hypocrit. He attacked Clinton and voted for his impeachment. BUT! The man will learn. I don't pity a man for mistakes, I pity him if he doesn't LEARN from them. I hope that Sanford keeps his marriage together and manages to get his life back together.

I hope more people can feel generous with their empathy. I know I need to work on it myself, but you don't have to kick me in the arse about it...

Good luck to the Sanford family. I hope that things work out for you. It's going to be harder than ever.