Oldgamer
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There is “blaming the woman,” which is wrong. And then there is blaming the woman, which may well be warranted.
Maureen McDonnell, wife of former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, is getting hammered by prosecutors and witnesses at the couple’s corruption trial in Richmond. The pair has been accused of accepting more than $150,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, seller of sketchy-sounding nutritional supplements, in return for using the governor’s office to promote said supplements. It’s a somewhat harder case to make against Maureen McDonnell, since she was not the one with actual political power; prosecutors have to show that the McDonnells colluded with each other.
The early testimony against Maureen McDonnell is damning and unflattering, to say the least. Witnesses talk about her angling for Williams to buy her an expensive new dress, and for seating one of her daughters next to Williams at a dinner in hopes that the younger woman, too, might get a dress out of it. She is accused of getting Williams to buy a very expensive Rolex watch so she could give it to her husband as a gift. The actual transactions are so incriminating that the defense has resorted to the most humiliating exculpatory explanation: that Maureen McDonnell was being ignored by her husband and had a “crush” on Williams – meaning the married couple was having such troubles, the two couldn’t possibly have colluded on anything.
The whole sordid tale has Maureen McDonnell looking like a cross between Lady MacBeth and Tracy Flick, the obsessively competitive candidate for high school class president in the movie “Election.” But Maureen McDonnell isn’t being blamed because she’s the woman, and therefore assumed to be at fault for not controlling the man in her life. She’s being accused because there is a great deal of evidence that she was involved in a quid pro quo.
It’s true that women are blamed for all sorts of things for which men are not held accountable. Women are sexually assaulted on campus, and the dialogue turns to whether the women were drunk, as though the decision to over-imbibe excuses criminal violent behavior by a man. A married man has an affair with an unmarried woman, and she is the one accused of being the homewrecker, as though the man could not possibly be expected to resist the temptresses of the world and keep a commitment he made to a marriage. A nine-year-old kid is playing alone in the park, and it is the mother, not the father, who is damned as an unfit parent.
But Maureen McDonnell appears to have had just as much involvement in the alleged scheme as her husband did. This is not an either-or situation; if Maureen McDonnell is found guilty, it won’t be to serve as a sacrificial lamb for the governor. The photos of him proudly wearing the Rolex – and driving a Ferrari Williams lent him – are pretty damning, as well.
Maureen McDonnell isn’t a victim, here – at least, she’s not the victim of a criminal justice system out to blame the woman. If she’s convicted, it will have nothing to do with her gender. And the same may well be true for Bob McDonnell .
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife have been found guilty of multiple counts in their corruption trial, with Maureen McDonnell being found not guilty in at least two counts.
The verdicts on all counts are currently being read.
Ten of the 14 counts against the couple have been read thus far. Bob McDonnell has been found guilty of counts 1-10. Maureen McDonnell has been found guilty on eight counts, and not guilty on two counts, 4 and 9.
US News link here
There is “blaming the woman,” which is wrong. And then there is blaming the woman, which may well be warranted.
Maureen McDonnell, wife of former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, is getting hammered by prosecutors and witnesses at the couple’s corruption trial in Richmond. The pair has been accused of accepting more than $150,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, seller of sketchy-sounding nutritional supplements, in return for using the governor’s office to promote said supplements. It’s a somewhat harder case to make against Maureen McDonnell, since she was not the one with actual political power; prosecutors have to show that the McDonnells colluded with each other.
The early testimony against Maureen McDonnell is damning and unflattering, to say the least. Witnesses talk about her angling for Williams to buy her an expensive new dress, and for seating one of her daughters next to Williams at a dinner in hopes that the younger woman, too, might get a dress out of it. She is accused of getting Williams to buy a very expensive Rolex watch so she could give it to her husband as a gift. The actual transactions are so incriminating that the defense has resorted to the most humiliating exculpatory explanation: that Maureen McDonnell was being ignored by her husband and had a “crush” on Williams – meaning the married couple was having such troubles, the two couldn’t possibly have colluded on anything.
The whole sordid tale has Maureen McDonnell looking like a cross between Lady MacBeth and Tracy Flick, the obsessively competitive candidate for high school class president in the movie “Election.” But Maureen McDonnell isn’t being blamed because she’s the woman, and therefore assumed to be at fault for not controlling the man in her life. She’s being accused because there is a great deal of evidence that she was involved in a quid pro quo.
It’s true that women are blamed for all sorts of things for which men are not held accountable. Women are sexually assaulted on campus, and the dialogue turns to whether the women were drunk, as though the decision to over-imbibe excuses criminal violent behavior by a man. A married man has an affair with an unmarried woman, and she is the one accused of being the homewrecker, as though the man could not possibly be expected to resist the temptresses of the world and keep a commitment he made to a marriage. A nine-year-old kid is playing alone in the park, and it is the mother, not the father, who is damned as an unfit parent.
But Maureen McDonnell appears to have had just as much involvement in the alleged scheme as her husband did. This is not an either-or situation; if Maureen McDonnell is found guilty, it won’t be to serve as a sacrificial lamb for the governor. The photos of him proudly wearing the Rolex – and driving a Ferrari Williams lent him – are pretty damning, as well.
Maureen McDonnell isn’t a victim, here – at least, she’s not the victim of a criminal justice system out to blame the woman. If she’s convicted, it will have nothing to do with her gender. And the same may well be true for Bob McDonnell .
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife have been found guilty of multiple counts in their corruption trial, with Maureen McDonnell being found not guilty in at least two counts.
The verdicts on all counts are currently being read.
Ten of the 14 counts against the couple have been read thus far. Bob McDonnell has been found guilty of counts 1-10. Maureen McDonnell has been found guilty on eight counts, and not guilty on two counts, 4 and 9.
