Press Release from Governor Mark Sanford - June 24, 2009:

My fellow South Carolinians, it is with a humble heart that I come to you this morning seeking your forgiveness. In these dangerous and unsettled times it is the duty of your elected leaders to be available at any hour of the day, for any crisis that may arise. Obviously I have failed you this weekend, and now I must earn back your trust and confidence with constant vigilance.

I hope you will believe that this instance of personal unavailability was purely accidental and I only intended to be out of contact for a few meager hours. Events unfolded differently than I expected, but I realize now that  even a few hours, are a few hours too many, when the fate of South Carolina is on the line.

While no excuse is acceptable, I can only say that, I was as surprised by the duration of my disappearance, as many of you were. I swear, that no time lapse this long has ever occurred on any of my other magical adventures into the far away lands, that lay beyond the old coats,  stored inside my mysterious uncle’s enchanted wardrobe.

Since I was a boy I have spent parts of my summers with my uncle, an Englishmen by birth, who traveled to America in order to hone his craft and make a living. He is an alchemist by trade, who uses his little understood skills to create the Jesus Fish that so many of us affix to automobiles. How he achieves this amazing feat of sticking metal on metal remains a riddle to this day; the most learned sciencetitions in all of South Carolina are confounded by his amazing devices.

My uncle’s constant metal bending and pink eye made him a reclusive and somewhat intimidating figure in my youth. As a boy I would roam the halls of the old plantation manor house he had bought. On one of my expeditions I discovered a old wardrobe he had brought with him from England. I used it to hide from my imaginary friend Loyd. I crept farther into the cavernous depths of its interior, in an effort to avoid Loyd’s rashy sore encrusted grasp, and as I moved back I discovered that I was no longer in a wardrobe in South Carolina, but I was in a snowy world of midgets and talking beavers.

That world was known among its residents as Alaska, and it was ruled by a tyrannical beauty queen and her snow machine driving helper dwarf, Dude.

Long story short I challenged the beauty queen and totally won. I defeated her in both a primary challenge and in a general election when she ran as an independent. Dude was unmanned by my chief of staff and most trusted ally, Reep A Cheap; a talking mouse and devoted Birther.

I’ve been Governor of the magical world of Alaska since I was a teen, and I go to there to visit all my amazing friends, like Mr. Tumnus and Jared from Subway, whenever I have the chance.

This weekend was a little different since I had not been expecting to go. I got an urgent message from Tumnus, that the Beauty Queen was claiming that she had pictures of me at a party with Mr. Tumnus, Brickabrack (another dwarf and Dude‘s most hated enemy and cousin/uncle), Jared from Subway, and some underage beavers with a mountain of" snow".

So after my meeting with the South Carolina State legislature I had to rush off to my uncle's wardrobe to put out the media fire in the enchanted realm of Alaska.

Now normally, a week in Alaska is like 20 seconds here on earth, but for some weird reason, this time 5 days there, turned out to be five days here. I don’t know what’s going on, maybe I’m finally growing up and Alaska won’t be real to me anymore, and I won’t be able to go back; just like when cousin Susan got her period, and the wardrobe wouldn’t let her return to our snowy adventure-land (between you and me, thank god for smart wardrobes, wink wink).

So while I certainly hope that this wasn’t my last time in the other worldly realm of Alaska, I think it's totally clear why I was out of contact with everyone here on earth for 5 days. I mean it’s not like cell-phones work in Alaska.

I know many of you have shared the experience of getting lost in your weird uncle’s magical dressers, refrigerators, air ducts, and toilets. Let’s make this a teachable moment for our kids, and make sure they understand that they can’t rely on the time/space shift between our world and the worlds those toilets, air ducts and refrigerators take them too. But it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t wedge themselves into those fridges and such  and give them a whirl;  just as long as they know they need to be home for dinner.