No, this isn’t a spoof of the “leave Britney alone” meme. I’m quite serious.
I don’t know Mark Sanford. I know he’s a hardline conservative asshole who is perfectly willing to sacrifice the well-being of his constituents to further his presidential ambitions. But beyond that, I wouldn’t recognize him if I was in line with him in the supermarket, as if guys like him do their own shopping. It’s also possible that he’s up to no good, maybe meeting in the Prague cemetery at midnight to plot world domination or something.
That said, there may be another, much more innocent explanation: he’s an introvert. After all, depending on the study, about a third of us are. I am. On the fairly extreme end of the spectrum, too.
I’m not going to go into what being an introvert means in great detail, though I might get around to that sooner or later. It’s not being a thwarted loner — most of those people are extraverts with poor social skills. It’s not being shy, either, though many introverts (and extraverts) are. The vital difference between introverts and extraverts is this: extraverts mentally recharge through social contact, while introverts recharge through isolation. Nor is either set of needs in any way optional. Put an extravert in solitary confinement and they will go quite mad and, in many cases, sicken and die. Deprive an introvert of his or her periods of isolation, and you’ll get exactly the same result. It’s a fundamental and unchangeable personality trait, despite the efforts of many extravert parents to push their introvert children into “normal” levels of social contact.
Let me tell the other two-thirds of you what it’s like. As I noted, I’m at the far end of the spectrum, so the same things will apply to other introverts, but to lesser degrees.
I enjoy the company of friends, though only in small groups — no more than four — and I prefer dealing with people one on one. Even so, social contact exhausts me, and I need time alone to recharge. I am quite comfortable with long periods alone, as I seldom ever feel lonely. I’m not agoraphobic; I can be “alone” in a mall as long as I’m around strangers with whom I’m not having any actual social contact, though I like being out in the woods by myself, too. You know that feeling that you get when someone is standing too close, talking too loudly, right in your face? Most social contact feels like that to me. One reason I enjoy the Internet so much is that I can exchange ideas with people on my own schedule and without the incredible weight of face-to-face contact. Weirdly — or perhaps not so weirdly — I am completely at ease with public speaking. And I have perfectly adequate social skills: most of my coworkers, for example, regard me as being quite friendly, and I occasionally strike up conversations with total strangers in public.
I have one trait, however, that caused the Mark Sanford story to ring a major bell with me. The only time I feel completely comfortable is when no one I know knows where I am. It drives my (mostly extravert) relatives nuts, and I have limited opportunity to do it, being the father of a teenager, but if I couldn’t get away every now and then for an afternoon or an evening, I’d burst a blood vessel. Or at least live life without ever experiencing a profound sense of safety and well-being. And of course, leaving the cell phone at home is part of that.
While it may turn out that Gov. Sanford is on a secret mission to smuggle millions from Goldman Sachs to sweatshops on the Northern Marianas Islands, given that his wife is entirely unconcerned (and has stated that this is not unusual behavior), I’d guess that after a season of dealing with a bloody state legislature and constant press attention, he just needed to get the fuck away for awhile. I wish I was affluent enough and had a job that let me do that.
Now, it could be argued that he could have explicitly delegated his authority to the lieutenant governor, the social opprobrium and suspicion that the loud, insensitive, inconsiderate, pushy extraverted two-thirds of you place on “dangerous loners” might have motivated him to just slip away quietly to avoid being hounded by the press, especially if, as his wife suggests, he’s done so successfully before. And really, he’s the governor of South fucking Carolina, not an air traffic controller. There is seldom anything a state governor has to do that can’t wait a week. Hell, the last president spent half of his presidency on vacation, and was arguably less dangerous then. C’mon, the poor, women, and minorities of South Carolina can go a few days without having the governor present to personally oversee their oppression.
What’s really annoying — or disappointing — about all this is the way the left has latched onto such a trivial non-event for political gain. His Republican rivals and the news media are no surprise, but we’re supposed to be above this. Believe me, there is no fucking end of relevant things about Mark Sanford that are worthy of criticism, starting with his narcissistic grandstanding over the stimulus package at the expense of his state. But that he needed a break and some privacy? Whatever.
