You're a Peach

South Carolina, you magnificent asshats*, you've done it again. Just when we were convinced we'd seen the limits of your bugfuck crazy political culture, you push beyond any rational barriers into whole new levels of inappropriate buffoonery.

* - The asshats in question do not include my mother, a resident South Carolinian. She just sired birthed** an asshat.

** - EDITOR'S NOTE: As an eagle-eyed and grammatically inclined G:TB reader pointed out, my Mom didn't sire me. That was my Dad. He had asshat tendencies, too.

He looks like a...Harpootlian, doesn't he?

Earlier this week, former state Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian (oh, come ON) made news when he suggested that voters should send GOP Governor Nikki Haley, "...back to wherever the hell she came from". Haley, the child of Indian immigrants, is no stranger to Harpootlian's 19th Century grasp of societal norms. Last year, he drew condemnation when he compared Haley with Eva Braun before backing away with grace and subtlety, saying he, "...wasn't trying to insinuate that Nikki was a Nazi. I was saying that she was hanging out in an insular bunker in Charlotte when she won't give access to the press here in South Carolina. So she has some hurt feelings? I didn't know she had feelings."

As you might imagine, Harpootlian's class shone through in his apology for his most recent mouthfootery.

"I'm the grandson of immigrants. She's not from India," Harpootlian said in an interview. "She's from Bamberg, South Carolina, where she was an accountant in her parents' clothing store called Exotica. All I'm suggesting is she needs to go back to being an accountant in a dress store rather than being this fraud of a governor that we have."

It's a measure of South Carolina's colorful politics that the Harpootlian story wasn't even the week's most unlikely. That honor goes to the good folks of South Carolina's 1st congressional district, who returned Haley's predecessor and noted Appalachian Trail aficionado Mark Sanford to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sanford, who left the Governor's mansion in disgrace after lying to citizens and staff members about his whereabouts while flying to Argentina to visit his mistress, defeated businesswoman Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a special election. (Yes, she's related to that Colbert.)

While we're generally supporters of a more European view of prominent citizens' personal lives (live and let live, none of our business, and all that), we find it ironic that a party so very interested in telling people who they should sleep with would conveniently turn amnesiac at a moment of convenience. Without question Sanford is a talented politician who worked his ass off to erase Ms. Busch's large, late lead. I'm sure he'll represent his constituents well in Congress, a place where he served three terms before ascending to the Governorship in 2002, and I don't begrudge the highly conservative citizens of SC01 their choice of a legislator who best fits their political worldview.

Just spare us the 'family values' bullshit going forward, mmmkay?