Maria Belen Shapur: The photo of Mark Sanford's Argentine lover

Maria Belen (for it is she)
click to enlarge

By way of stooping low and indulging in a bit of shameless, superficial weekend tittle-tattle, here's a shot of Maria Belen Shapur, the Argentine lover of South Carolina dude Mark Stanford, as taken from a TV report she did from NYC in 2001 when reporting on the aftermath of Twin Towers/911. Her fledging career as a Teevee talkinghead never took off, apparently. Anyway, you can see the whole video with her head and her lips moving and all that jazz by clicking through here and scrolling to the bottom.

At the time her last name was reported as 'Chapur', not Shapur. Now is it just me, or is it a bit suspect to have an Argentine resident in the USA with an accidentally mis-spelled last name?


UPDATE: It's all so obvious now! Thanks to the insight offered by Cheryl Williams, the Love & Marriage expert at The Charlotte Examiner, we finally understand the reason why Mark Stanford was cheating on his wife and lying to everyone else. The dude was in fact nailing his piece of Latina floozey BECAUSE HE IS A CHRISTIAN. Here's Cheryl with the enlightenment:

"Governor Stanford has discovered ...... being a Christian does not mean that you will never fall from grace. On the contrary, people of faith are just as vulnerable as anyone else when it comes to affairs of the heart. In a way, they may be even more vulnerable…due to their level of compassion, understanding and desire to help others."

UPDATE 2: Oh how boring....turns out that photo might not be her after all. So much for my weekend gossip sleaze...

UPDATE 3: Forget update 2...that's her

Mark Sanford, Maria Belen Shapur and Bunge (BG)

It turns out that this South Carolina dude Sanford was doing things with a certain Maria Belen Shapur, who works for soybean people Bunge (BG) in their Buenos Aires office. The good news for Argentina is that right now its GDP is clicking up a notch or two thanks to the number of gringo journalists suddenly swarming round the Palermo barrio of town. A friend lives a couple of doors away from the alleged lair of Shapur and says the road is currently blocked due to linguistically challenged hacks and their photographers.

Meanwhile, sombrero tip to RG over at mexfiles for this screenshot photo of Sanford on Fox News yesterday....subliminal advertising, anyone?

God Bless the moral leadership you guys up there offer....an example to us all.