Suck-Uppery

While Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) was off "hiking the Appalachian Trail" last month, conservative news media outlets were going overboard trying to protect him from the questions as to his whereabouts.

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!

Somehow I have a feeling that all these obsequious calls and e-mails came to an abrupt end once we found out what was really going on, but with these guys, you're never quite sure.