Skip to main content

Fall Wife

I am not sure what kind of vows the this man exchanged with his wife at the time of their marriage but blaming her for his troubles seems like a move he borrowed from another political guy in a bit of trouble. Seems to a popular playbook these days frame the wife and claim the man had nothing to with it. For one thing that is a very public declaration of a dubious if not sham marriage - if the parties are that far apart and oblivious to each other's activities, then they are not even friendly room-mates never mind spouses. Why are we calling this a marriage?

 If they want to benefit from the state of matrimony the union should somewhat resemble the standard of marriage established by their officiating institution - both church and state in this case. Maybe there comes a point when the marriage gets so dysfunctional that it should be invalidated for legal and religious purposes even if the parties want to continue the social charades and play house. 

The tax-payer sponsored benefits must most definitely cease. In family court judges ask if you washed your spouses laundry or made them dinner - if  you did, you are still married and can't claim separation. I wonder where the activities of these two wives who have made so much news recently fall on that scale. Are their "alleged" solo activities commensurate with the state of being married at all?

On the other hand if this kind of excuse is accepted for blatantly bad behavior, then it sets the stage for lesser mortals to emulate the example. Wouldn't it be interesting if the NJ politician was able to get away with his don't blame me, it was my wife line, then it becomes acceptable for couples at least in that state to get away with all manner of malfeasance - one of the two will pretend to be unaware of the mischief their spouse was up to even though said mischief was making them richer by the minute. 

They can always say the other party was taking care of finances and they did not pay attention to the fact that they had acquired five new homes in the last five years or spent ten times as much on vacations this year than they did last year. It also calls into question the mental health of the person and their ability to hold any responsible office. If they can't stay on top of what is going on at home, maybe they should be relieved of the burdens of state and nation. Another guy in bit of legal trouble was not able to blame it all on his wife - almost have to respect him for taking the fall. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...