Regardless of what one may think of Sanford's behavior, to this reader of non-fiction and biographies I find it disheartening that more and more people are losing the fine art of letter writing. If I had read Sanford's "letters" many years from now, I may have thought him to be quite the romantic, in spite of his bad judgement or some might say juvinile ramblings.

Old letters convey an intangible something that can never be gotten from a phone call or e-mail. And whether they be damning or praiseworthy , letters provide tangible evidence of the truth. So much history has been preserved in letters that without them how could we ever be trustful of our past.

Thankfully, the telephone and the internet were not around several hundred years ago.

I completely agree about the value of letters, though I have to question the idea that "letters provide tangible evidence of the truth." I think that much of any of our communication is driven by telling our audience what they want to hear, and honestly, as a male and a father of daughters made fairly suspicious by my own memories, I have to wonder how much of Sanford's writing was unedited romance pouring from his heart and how much of it was an effort, literally and literarily, to charm the pants off this particular woman.

I really fucking hate (yes, FUCKING HATE) when sleazeball guys who lied to women try to typecast the rest of the male race with their own sleaze. Having genuinely felt (and written of feeling) similar sentiments, I gotta say naw. No man, if you wrote shit like that to "charm the pants off" a woman, sorry, you're a sleaze.

Sanford was in SC, she was in Argentina. The longing was that of someone who didn't have a chance in hell of getting back together soon.

Sorry, Eastheimer. I'm having a little trouble understanding where you're hurling hate here. I can't tell if you're pointing that middle finger at me or Sanford. Are you saying Sanford only wrote from his longing heart ('cause he found his soulmate and this is the truest love and that's why he's resigning his office and leaving his wife to be with Ms. Argentina, except he's not)? And that he's not a sleaze (though he had an affair and went missing completely for 5 days)? And that you're feeling typecast (um..why exactly)? And are you presuming that *I* have written lies intending to charm my way into someone's pants? (Nope. Didn't.)

Help me understand your expletives and all-caps, please.