The XX Factor

Perhaps South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was moved by the remarks of Sonia Sotomayor ("I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life"), and decided to study deeply the wisdom of a Latina woman. We now know from Sanford's press conference, at which he confessed to an affair with a woman in Argentina, that sometimes the only conclusion to reach about a white man is that he's nuts. Another lesson is that an affair that starts as an innocent exchange of e-mails-as Sanford says his did-should end with an e-mail exchange, and not a secret trip to Buenos Aires that is described as "hiking the Appalachian Trail," which will join "taking a wide stance" in the naughty politician's lexicon.