C Street to Jenny Sanford: Keep Fucking Mark, Even While He's Cheating on You
I really had no interest in reading Jenny Sanford’s book. But I might have to read it only to get clarity on this tidbit that Ruth Marcus writes about. (h/t Rayne)
After one of the all-too-rare pre-affair moments in which Jenny gets angry, Mark enlists leaders of a congressional Christian fellowship to talk her down. They told her she was right to be angry, Jenny recounts, but that “staying angry with Mark was not an option. If I wanted to heal the relationship, I had to open my heart and be kind, even if Mark was in the wrong. They would work on Mark. We even went so far as to talk about sex and [one of the leaders] told me not to withhold it as punishment as that would make everything worse.” [my emphasis]
So those beacons of Christianity told this woman that she should keep having sex with her husband even though he was cheating on her. It was awfully nice of them, wasn’t it, to eliminate one source of pressure Jenny Sanford had over her husband. Because we can’t have women have any source of power in a traditional Christian family, don’t you know? [ed.–see Frank Probst’s comment; on re-reading I agree the implication is this advice came pre-affair.]
The clarification I want, though, is whether OB/GYN Tom Coburn–who we know was actively counseling Mark Sanford on this affair–was involved in the advice to Jenny Sanford that she should just keep having sex with her husband, even as he was fucking another woman. I’d really like to know what the fine doctor would say in such a situation.
I don’t recall.
Boxturtle (Stick with what works)
Told EW that anybody who tried to tell me that I should be sexually submissive and compliant after my spouse got caught cheating so flagrantly would be running away from a shotgun barrel full of rock salt.
[Edit: Oh, too funny…there’s an ad for a website offering assistance after being betrayed by one’s spouse. “Affair” and “cheating” must be the trigger words. Wonder if “Sanford” is, too?]
Still laughing — same ad, and yes indeed I’d have the same response you mention: you’re telling me to what?!!! Then a rock salt bit of mayhem to drive home the point, so to speak.
Ahem.
You sure Coburn didn’t tell her “blowjob”?
Did Sanford have to present his Green clean card to his wife. Not carrying any STD’s.
Amazing the different standards of scandal and disgust that our MSM feels towards the cheaters.
Although quite honestly I really do not care who they fuck (well children are clearly another issue. Between them and their partners.
What I do care about is whether they are fucking over American citizens through their dealings with lobbyist.
Isn’t this when you usually say “blowjob”?
Oh, I asked Rayne if I should be a little more discrete in my title. She’s the mom, she’s a good read of these things. So far, she hasn’t told me to. And I’m not sure I know the Bible well enough to know how the C Streeters put this in biblical speak so they could pretend she’d be sainted if she did so.
LMAO. I’m absolutely certain my kids would think something was amiss if this particular story title did not include “fucking.” This is the kind of situation which wholly merits deployment of the F-bomb.
They could have taken several different angles with Jenny, with “wives be submissive to your husbands” coming at the top of the list. Toss in a little guilt with a misunderstanding of forgiveness — and mis-equating forgiveness with “. . . so you have to put out whenever hubby demands it” — and you’ve got a classic lesson right out of Spiritual Abuse 101.
I hate the twisting of scripture like this.
C Streeters call it “horizontal worship.”
It might add some “zip” to your headline.
Naww. They call it the Horizontal Bop [just listen, the visuals are pretty lame].
Did they tell him to stop his affair, at the same time, or did they go with the ‘boys will be boys’ crap that they seem to think is an excuse for bad behavior?
Surely no one wonders why Viagra approval was fast-tracked.
Someday the C Street brothel is not going to be close enough.
Oh my, and they will have to pick speakers carefully if there is a filabuster.
I haven’t read the book either, but that’s not how I read this paragraph from Marcus. My read on this is that these conversations with the Family were all pre-affair and therefore (presumably) caused by fights that Mark and Jenny were having about other things. Meaning that when Mark and Jenny would have arguments, his friends would tell her, “Well, no matter how much you two may disagree about something, it’s really important for you to keep fucking him.” So not only was Mark Sanford a total douchebag, but all of his friends were, too.
Fair enough.
Still problematic, but not so problematic for a OB/GYN-Senator-Roomie,I suppose.
Just for the record, he’s not really an OB/GYN–he’s a family practice doc.
In spite of that woman he sterilized?
Which woman?
My impression of him is that he’s a family practice doc who specializes in deliveries, so he’s sort of like a nurse midwife, only uglier and with worse political views. As far as I know, he isn’t trained to do ob/gyn surgeries, nor is he board-certified for ob/gyn. I think he’s quite happy to be confused with a real obstetrician, but as far as I know, he isn’t one.
Here:
Don’t forget, Sanford took the part about staying faithful out of the marriage vows. At least Mark’s vows to Jenny. Then again, Mark is an Ayn Rand fanboy, right?
Except that Mark had several affairs, not just to the Argentine firecracker…so the question is did he confide in these to his C Street buddies. Why would they think it would “make things worse” unless they knew that Mark Sanford had a propensity to seek sex outside the relationship and her actions would send him seeking the comforting thighs of another.
Sex should be given in love, and as an expression of that love…and even “make up sex” is that way. It’s a reward for resolving (or trying to resolve) the conflicts…and shouldn’t be forced. Why do I think these guys knew something was going on by this advice???
Ah Marcy, you know what Coburn would say, “Whatever you do, don’t have an abortion.”
That pretty much seems to sum up his view on most any topic or situation.
Marcy,
You beat me to it. In this story from the Tulsa World, he’s referred to as an obstetrician.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?no=subj&articleid=040915_Br_bnCOB&archive=yes
Sometimes I get a woman in counseling who has been betrayed. Sometimes she doesn’t want to leave. In that case, I tell her how important it is to work on “acceptance” of the situation and her anger…and I encourage her to express her anger in therapy instead of “at” the spouse. (if she wants to stay). Her rage is not going to transform him out of being an adulterer…what it does is takes the focus off him and makes her behavior the center focus. It actually helps him to avoid accountability. If she rages he can say “look how crazy she is”. So if you are leaving him…rage away…but if you want to stay…you might want to think twice about raging him into good behavior. It generally won’t work.
One more thing I always encourage. I encourage a woman to refuse to sleep with the man, unless BOTH of them test negative for sexually transmitted diseases. I tell her that it is not safe for her to engage in sex with him unless they both get tested. This usually hits home pretty hard.
Nothing like demanding a test for STDs to drive home the reality of what cheating means.
Your comment based in experience is why I don’t think I agree with FrankProbst’s interpretation of the highlighted passage. You’re counseling women to be open while expressing anger safely AFTER the affair has been found out.
It may say “pre-affair,” but why was Jenny sooo angry BEFORE the Argentinian affair that C Streeters had to intervene? Why would they do something so potentially dangerous to their organization?
Sorry, this has my radar up; I think she caught him at something before the affair was acknowledged publicly, and that’s all “pre-affair” really means in this case.
Mark obviously had boundary issues from the day they met. Whether it was this or something else, she was pissed at him for stepping over one line or another.
How Mark got the president of Georgetown — a Jesuit priest — to preside at their wedding while allowing them to OMIT fidelity from their vows is beyond me.
He was dicking around somewhere since that is what C Streeters do. Then they all say they are sorry until the next blowjob.
I suspect the screwing around among C Streeters is probably more complicated than “I’m God’s Chosen, now fuck me.”
There’s a broader strategy across the Republican Party which they don’t discuss but repeatedly employ; they find conservatives who are compromised or easily compromised, and they exploit that weakness to keep them in the fold.
C Streeters don’t just screw around, in other words; they use a form of blackmail to keep their ranks closed.
In Jenny Sanford’s case, my gut tells me they tried to use the guilt trip on her — good wives are submissive, good wives don’t have husbands who run around unless the wife is not such a good godly spouse. I’ve had a young Baptist friend whose family emotionally battered her into submission over her choice of life partner, calling her an unChristian woman for caring about someone who wasn’t of their mold (read: Asian Baptist man, not a white Baptist man). Perhaps it worked for a while with Jenny Sanford, until she realized she’d really been had and the only person being ungodly wasn’t the rightful Mrs. Sanford.
Don’t disagree with you but these bastards are very use to controling people below them. Being Republicans bastards they just know they are better than a woman. If Jenny was brought up Baptist then she knows she is supposed to be the submissive one. Samething in Latin cultures, woman stays at home with the kids and the guy screws around in the catinas and the Catholic Church promises the women they can expect a better life in heaven after their suffering in this life.
@15 and 16
I still wouldn’t call him an ob/gyn–he’s a family medicine doc. Frankly, I’m more than a little surprised that someone with his training was allowed anywhere near an operating room. I’m also surprised this woman didn’t press her case. Sterilizing someone without her written consent–which Coburn appears to have admitted to–is about as close to a slam-dunk malpractice case as you can get.
True, but being wingnut-land with elected judges, Oklahoma is an unfriendly place to bring a medical malpractice suit. There was a case a few years ago where a plaintiff whose face had been disfigured (I forget how, but it was seriously gross) sued and the defendant’s insurance company made a motion to have the plaintiff barred from his own trial, arguing the ground that his (face’s) mere presence would be unduly inflammatory and prejudice the jury against the defendants. Not only did their Supreme Court take the case when the issue came up on appeal, but they came down only 5-4 in favor of the plaintiff being allowed to be present for the trial. The dissent was one of the most bilious pieces of invective I’ve ever read, lightened only by the fact that it contained no citations to legal authority.
That, and I’m sure the good patient knew that suing a sitting (or soon to be sitting) senator was a good way to all sorts of bad things happening.
Looks like the patient did file a lawsuit, and (according to Coburn) it was thrown out.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=12&articleid=040916_Ne_A1_Cobur24809&archive=yes
I agree that it should have been a slam dunk case….but Coburn was powerful and she was on Medicaid….that likely stacked the deck against her in Muskogee County.
and don’t miss the Medicaid fraud:
When you are a Republican there is no such thing as cheating.
Just ask Palin about cheating on her property taxes!
Lysistrata.
The folks at C Street would have a cow, if they ever read that one. (Unsubmissive wives, for one thing.)
Ms. Sanford, of all people, would be aware that her errant husband’s C Street “friends” were doing political damage control that had nothing whatever to do with god (she’d be just as displeased with Mark as Jenny), country, love or a sustainable relationship.
They wanted her to enable her husband’s infidelities – and to deny herself, her feelings, her needs and her self-respect (never the most healthy of therapies) – in order to further her husband’s political career. Why they thought he could be a success at that either is hard to fathom.
I hope the C Street reality gets out to those who claim to be whole, religious personalities, who imagine C Streeters to be their friends, and their religious and political allies. C Streeters are about golden idols and power. God and whatnot are the tools they use to get it. They will discard them, like Ms. Sanford’s legitimate needs, whenever such things get in the way.
As if satisfying Mark Sanford’s lust were the key to keeping him straight. Harrumph. Does this make Ms. Sanford, in the eyes of C Street, anything more useful than a political whore? Would the NYT’s resident sociologist, David Brooks, call that projection?
I wonder what the WaPoo’s resident concern troll [Richard Cohen] or what-the-fuck [David Broder] would have to say about this?
Mr. Sanford is no neophyte. Are we to believe that his Clinton-Woods Syndrome first manifested itself only last year?
Ye gads, what a shit heel this guy was if half of what she writes is true.
Jeebus, I thought she was smarter and more glued together than this; she should have kicked his ass to the curb before having a kid with this jerk.
Where would C Street have stepped in? Still doesn’t make sense…
OT–
I just spent an hour watching CNN’s special on the speeches of Martin Luther King, followed by an hour of Sarah Palin at the Tea Party convention. The cognitive dissonance is rather jarring.
Bob in AZ
Remember – that hour you spent on Sister Sarah is an hour of your life you’ll never get back.
Yeah, at least I could have played a drinking game ;-)
also = skoal!
Could have take a shot every time she said “Also.”
On the other hand, having skipped the drinking game, you’ve avoided a certain case of alcohol poisoning and will be here with us tomorrow. Phew.
I have to think that Sanford was told that he was the embodiment of King David by someone at C Street (or that this tale related to him). King David was, of course, allowed to have 7 wives (the eighth Bethsheba – wife of Uriah- was the abomination). It would be interesting which of these wives represented Jenny. Perhaps she was Mikal…the prudish and legalistic first wife (but only one that actually loved him) and daughter of Saul? She tried to rein in David’s sex-drive and desire to please the ladies. So David rebelled.
I’ve heard similar, about the use of that particular myth to counsel wayward C Street cult members. That’s what I’m saying.
WTF are they thinking? I’ll hazard a guess: that the world was made by a male war god to favor males in the “rightful” conquest of all things feminine, especially Mother Nature herself. Dicking Mother Nature is the epitome of the Good Life, in their hearts and minds.
And so, the funniest thing to do with guys like that, is ask them to explain their nipples. If they’re so damn masculine in everything they do, how do they explain having nipples? Or, for that matter, a belly button?
I was taught that there are two genders, but only one body human. Embryologically speaking, we all start out female. Our sexual development depends on the ratios of certain hormones and their sensitizing agents.
The mythos of the C Street cult of patriarchal power reminds me of that of nomads, of war-loving phallocentric peoples who conquer but think governing beneath them. It’s about the thrill of the hunt and the orgasmic kill, the self-aggrandizement of raping, pillaging, plundering.
Rape, of persons or peoples, isn’t about the jollies, it’s about the dominance. These guys are playing wannabe war god. They have only contempt for fair play. Their unspoken motto could be, We’re gods among men, don’t fuck with us. If there’s any fucking to be done, it will be done on our terms and to our benefit. They couldn’t care less for laws, rights, and other such limits on their lust for power.
These atavistic cultists are so mad with power, they think it’s their god-given right to screw us royally, just like Jenny Sanford, in the name of “good governance.” They’d be comical if they weren’t at the heart of our political economy.
Maybe some such is what’s going on. It’d fit with the “only make it worse,” which was the only thing that caught my eye in this little tale as it suggested some kind of script or mechanism was assumed to be operating, and Ms. Jenny was about to make a very bad entrance.
It would also fit with the feeling of disconnect a lot of those C Street guys display, and that Sanford was the poster boy for in the days after his discovery, as if he’d lost his place in a recitation.
They use explicit myths to structure themselves.
(Btw, I have an ancestor with the unusual name of Mikal. Wonder if she thought that her path was thereby laid.)
Let’s wish this blow job for Sanford and all the C Streeters, who no doubt got very hot listening to Sanford tell of his affairs.
Yeah extra marital blowjobs get the justice juices flowing amongst our Reps.
Add cigars and they go ape shit with their investigations
I still want to know why Sanford called out C Street.
Interesting conversation here. Sex should not be used as a reward or a punishment. I usually suggest that if this is going on we as women (or men) are engaged in our own form of power and control…trying to “train” the one we love. I’ve shared about my relationship with my husband who is sober today…I used to use sex to try to get him sober. I doing that…and have a great story about the “reason” he decided to get sober when he finally did. Let’s just say…it was related.
The C street stuff bothers me a lot more than a man who has affairs…and feels regret. And there is something really disgusting to me about the religious aspects of this type of power and control, where the bible is subverted to validate the power and control of women and the notion that women are “objects”.
That said, I have worked with pastors, and also have worked with their abused wives. I wish I could just wash it all away in regard to bad guys and good guys but my brain and inside knowledge won’t let me. What i have found is that these men are often horribly wounded (not meant to garner sympathy) but to support my point…often folks seek religion as more of an addiction, an escape from reality, than a way to better themselves. They look to religion for power OVER bad circumstances.
It’s my humble opinion, having also worked with some very wealthy evangelicals that the belief system is that being “religious” validates them in their acquisition of money and power. So the more they are “validated” by “God” in the form of success, the more they feel they have “power”. This means that people having hardship have “earned” it. And that any one who has money has “earned it”. “God sanctions with money and power”.
Oh…I have so many interesting stories here about the twisted beliefs. My point is that the whole belief system is narcissistic and similar to addiction. It’s not a surprise to me, that underneath this facade of religion we find deeply wounded souls who end up in sex addiction, child porn, drugs and greed. The “higher power” concept lost without a strong tie to principles and traditions that actually support human behaviors that work instead of destroy.
Rayne…there is no doubt…her anger was valid…so tired of the women looking crazy…but that is part of the cycle. Same thing happens in DV. How many cops show up to a hysterical woman…she’s been threatened that he’s planted drugs in the house so she’ll lose her kids, he’s hit her, slept with someone else, brought the woman home, and threatened to kill her if she says anything…she’s beyond rage and sadness and often hysterical. The cops think she’s crazy. And many times, he has the ability to calm himself down for the ultimate revenge and invalidation. “I am fine you my dear, are the crazy one”.
So the rich evangelicals don’t give to charity…they prefer to hand people money directly, so that they are validating for God and making sure that their money is going to “good” people. They don’t like taxes because they fear their money will go to “bad” people. Seriously…have had these conversations. They believe the money, power and success means that they are on God’s path..and being rewarded. They believe that believing is the only real “need” to a righteous life. We are a very sick society and getting sicker by the minute.
As other commentators have noted, it’s C Street’s orders and self-delusion that I find jaw-dropping. Obviously, straight men who have sex with multiple partners are free from ever, ever, ever, contracting HIV.
Talk about delusional. All of these randy boys need to have serious blood work done. They’re putting themselves and their spouses at risk.
Wow. Marry an heiress whose familial religion and upbringing guarantee her total submissiveness to you even as you spend her money. And Marky Mark still managed to cock up that deal.
yeah, if she hadn’t had all that money behind her, he wouldn’t have given her the time of day.
I hope you would only do this “research” by going in to the local Barnes & Noble, taking the book off the shelf & settling down in a comfy chair to read — then returning it to the shelf.
I wouldn’t want to contribute to Ms. Sanford’s $$$$.
BTW, I’m trying to click the link below the headline to e-mail this to someone, but the “Tell Patrick Murphy ad” covers up the place to hit “e-mail.”
?????