Currying Favor

Conservative media fell all over themselves trying to defend and curry favor with Gov. Mark Sanford's office when he had been missing for a few days and people were starting to ask questions:

In an email to Sanford press secretary Joel Sawyer, Brendan Miniter, an editor of the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, called out his own paper's first-day coverage (sub. req.) of the story, writing: "Someone at WSJ should be fired for today's story. Ridiculous."

On June 23rd -- by which time Sanford had been missing for five days and his staff had offered unconvincing explanations about his whereabouts -- a Fox News Channel correspondent wrote to Sawyer:

Having known the Governor for years and even worked with him when he would host radio shows for me -- I find this story and the media frenzy surrounding it to be absolutely ridiculous! Please give him my best.

And a Washington Times staffer at one point wrote in an email to the governor's office:

If you all want to speak on this publicly, you're welcome to Washington Times Radio. You know that you will be on friendly ground here!

In fact, it may have been a "conservative," rather than a conservative, who went furthest in dismissing the story to Sanford's office. Stephen Colbert, himself a native South Carolinian, wrote a friendly email to Sawyer on the 24th, in an effort to get Sanford to come on his show:

As you may know, I declared myself Governor of South Carolina last night. I went power mad for abut 40 seconds before learning that Gov. Sanford was returning today.

If the governor is looking for a friendly place to make light of what I think is a small story that got blown out of scale I would be happy to have him on. In person here, on the phone, or in South Carolina.

Stay strong, Stephen