There is no single path to Male Greatness. Ryan Lizza, the sniveling journalist, and Mark Sanford, the politician everyone forgot about, took divergent routes to end up in the same place—literally and figuratively.
In 2025 we learned that Sanford slipped one in with Lizza's nominal girlfriend and fellow journalist, Olivia Nuzzi, after she reported on the former South Carolina governor's short-lived presidential campaign in 2020. The cuckold and the conqueror—a bond, once forged, that can never be broken.
The case for Sanford is self-evident. He got laid, then showed good judgment by ending things immediately. He must have realized Nuzzi was off-the-charts insane—well beyond the level men can tolerate even when the sex is that good. Like a true Southern gentleman, he hasn't said a word to the press since Lizza exposed his triumph in an angsty Substack post. Sanford's pedigree is rock solid. His 2009 sex scandal—when he went missing for a week, told his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but was actually banging his hot mistress in Argentina—remains one of the all-time greats.
Lizza's case is more complex, for obvious reasons. His Substack posts reveal the alarming degree to which he willingly debased himself to appease the cheating harlot who kept chasing after loose skin and old balls. Lizza recalls spending an entire afternoon on his knees "carefully arranging scores of her boots, high heels, sneakers, and slippers on an enormous shoe rack." But he never relinquished his manhood entirely, as evidenced by the time he drove to New York to end the relationship but ended up spending five nights in a hotel having crazy make-up sex.
We've all been there, brother.
Just because Lizza was cucked doesn't mean we can't applaud his courage in making the best out of a bad situation. A wise man once said: If you can't secure the hag, secure the bag. So that's what Lizza did. He slapped a paywall on his Substack after dropping the Sanford bombshell and parlayed his public humiliation into a thick wad of cash. Meanwhile, Nuzzi's awful memoir was a flop, thanks in no small part to Lizza's unrelenting pursuit of male vengeance.
Mark Sanford and Ryan Lizza deserve recognition as the highest-profile Eskimo brothers in recent memory. For showing us that all (male) parties to a cuckold scandal can come out ahead, they are Washington Free Beacon Men of the Year. High-fives all around!