Public forgiveness, puh-lease

This is delicious. Mark Sandford, Governor of South Carolina, gives a rambling, groveling discourse rich with flattery, self-adoration, requests for forgiveness, flamboyant adverbs, and, at times, it's-just-hard-to-make-out-exactly-what. (Maureen Dowd gets her claws into this one with gusto.) Two women can be seen smiling and, it seems, giggling at times in the background. I was totally with them. It's not out of Schadenfreude, it's just that the performance is brilliant in a self-pitying but steadfastly delusional way. It's impressive, however you cut it. My favorite line of all:

"The biggest self of self is, indeed, self."

I am tempted to turn the best parts of this into a 7-minute Dylanesque ballad, a comic tribute to that distinctly American art wherein politicians fess up to their extramarital affairs. Can't you just hear Dylan croon?: "The biggaaaast... self of se-huh-elfuh... is-a selfuh."

Uh, no, I can't either.