Bob and Maureen. A Love Story.

I have refrained from comment on the Bob and Maureen McDonnell trial largely for two reasons. First, I wanted to wait until a verdict was reached, and second, it was just too depressing. Here we had for the first time in history the very real possibility that a Virginia governor would be convicted of a felony and sent to jail. For a state who boasts of having had the likes of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler in its governor’s mansion, this was a severe blow to our reputation for good governance. But now that a rather emphatic guilty verdict has been reached, a few observations are in order.

Let me here confess that I have not followed the trial very closely. I basically relied upon summaries of testimony in the online version of the paper every two or three days. So I’m sure someone will feel the need to enlighten me about some aspect of the whole ordeal of which I am unaware that may help me to understand the proceedings in a new light. Having said that, as a husband and father I find it inconceivable that the governor chose a legal strategy that involved kicking his wife of 38 years to the curb and baring every sad detail of their twisted relationship for all the world to hear, including his five children.

Mr. McDonnell could have pled guilty to one felony corruption charge, which would have spared his family and us the spectacle of this trial. He would have been sentenced to a perfunctory prison term of two or three years in a minimum security prison and probably have served six months. Upon leaving jail he would have still had some measure of dignity left.

But something happens to men and women whom we exalt to positions of power in our system of government. They begin a slow withdrawal from the very people they are elected to serve. Before long they are surrounded by a coterie of yes men and career government people. They begin to live an estranged life where their day to day existence starts to reflect their “specialness.”  Suddenly, men and women of better than average ethics and values have their judgment clouded by privilege. In the case of the McDonnells, they became convinced that having a “family friend” who provides them with lavish gifts to the tune of $150,000 is perfectly acceptable. The appearance of evil becomes invisible to them. Amazingly, behavior which would be pounced upon if discovered in a political rival becomes routine, to the point where Bob McDonnell, once the scourge of big-government malfeasance, can convince himself that accepting large financial favors from a hustling businessman was perfectly fine for a sitting governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Such is the debilitating seductiveness of power.

Poor judgment aside, Bob McDonnell’s legal strategy makes his financial misconduct seem like child’s play. Apparently, he thought it appropriate to sacrifice his family’s privacy and reputation upon the altar of his own vindication. Anything to avoid a day in prison, we are told. The idea was to convince the jury that the governor’s marriage was so irretrievably broken and dysfunctional that conspiracy was impossible. By revealing Maureen’s volatility and nastiness, perhaps jurors would feel sympathy for the heart broken governor. The jury was having none of it.

I watched his children marching into the courthouse, a beautiful legacy for any father, and I can’t even imagine what this has done to them. Their lives have been laid bare, and their wounds will never heal. Their father will serve his time. He will no doubt be a model inmate. After a few years he will get out. He will write a book, finally getting that big payday he has always coveted. Some high powered law firm on K Street will eventually hire him. He will survive this. His children will not.

When my wife and I brought two children into this world, we inherited a lifelong obligation to protect them from harm in so far as it was in our power to do so. Obviously there are many things we can’t protect them from. Skinned knees and broken hearts are unavoidable consequences of life, over which parents are powerless. But we can protect them from the big stuff, from having their family’s dirty laundry paraded in front of the world. That much we can do, even if it means doing time, even if it means our own humiliation.

For a man who made a political career on family values, who advertised his beautiful family like so many trophies in his commercials, and for a man who, if he is to be believed, still views Maureen as the “love of his life,” didn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus to save his own skin.

Like I said, depressing.

STEP ONE: Borrow the fingers of a five year old!!

I actually did some work on Labor Day. My job was to replace the burner elements of my gas grill. My grill is probably 6 or 7 years old, and I’m one of those guys who is grilling something all year long. I’ve worn the thing out.
 

So, there I was wearing yellow dish washing gloves, no shirt and plaid shorts, with sweat pouring off the end of my nose, peering under the hood of my Commercial Series 2000. There was a half of an inch of black sludge lining the walls. In the catch pan underneath was a two inch glob of meat drippings that had to be scraped off with a hard metal spatula. The actual cooking grate had its own greasy lining, mostly on the underside, the residue of a thousand chicken breasts, jumbo shrimp, New York strips, hamburgers, hotdogs, pork chops and the occasional pork tenderloin. I had bought some sort of environmentally agreeable citrus-based natural cleaner to spray on all of this mess and was skeptical of its value. There’s a reason that old fashioned oven cleaners were “environmentally disagreeable.” Because they could strip the chrome off of a trailer hitch in two seconds! You either wore gloves when you used that stuff or you lost fingers.

I was pleasantly surprised. I sprayed the stuff all over everything and waited two minutes like the directions suggested. The smell was an unholy mixture of rotten oranges and ammonia. But after two minutes and a little elbow grease, the black sludge started melting away like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz.

After all of this cleaning it was time to install the “universal elements” which were advertised as “easy to install.” Like most advertising, this claim proved to be bogus. Actually they would have been easy to install if my hands were the size of a five year old child’s. There was a crucially important step in the process that required you to line up the tiny holes on the two telescoping tubes. These tiny holes must be aligned because if not there would be no holes through which the gas flames could travel, turning your gas grill into a giant metal eunuch. To accomplish this vitally important step in the installation, I was provided with a single screw so ridiculously small, so agonizingly tiny that to merely pick it up required the fine motor skills of a concert pianist. I’m not kidding. Here are some pictures as proof:

Needless to say, this procedure took half of the morning. Luckily, I have some of those tiny screwdrivers, the ones you use to repair eye-glasses. I felt like I was diffusing a bomb. There I was, hands shaking, reading glasses trying not to slip off the end of my sweating nose, struggling mightily to thread a quarter of an inch screw into a sixteenth of an inch hole without completely losing my religion. The first one took twenty minutes. Each of the next two took only slightly less time.

Finally it was all done and working like a charm. Time to take it for a test drive.

I grilled up some brats, tomatoes and fried bread and it was a magnificent triumph.

Totally worth it! 

Autumn Possibilities

Partly cloudy, 94/72. That’s our forecast here in Short Pump for the next few days. Not that we can really complain since this has been the best summer ever. Still, mid-nineties and humid is unpleasant whenever it shows up, especially over a holiday weekend.

This Labor Day has been a bit of a bust in the Dunnevant house, which is my fault. It snuck up on me and I made no plans. As a result, Pam and I have been knocking around the house resting and eating and whatnot. Whenever we thought about going somewhere, we would walk outside, get blanketed by the warm embrace of humidity and think better of it. You know it’s bad when it only takes ten seconds for your sunglasses to fog up and you’re only in the garage!

We are ready for Autumn in the worst way. When the leaves start to change and the temperature drops 25 degrees, I intend to make up for my lack of a Labor Day plan, by taking some weekend trips. There’s apple picking and the Shenandoah Valley. There’s Patrick in Nashville, Kaitlin and Jon in Columbia. There’s even the beach, an underrated October destination. There’s also the Smokey Mountains, a sort of mid-point between us and our scattered adult children. A cabin rental over a long weekend might be very nice. Then there’s also that most elusive of trips…the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York. It’s quite a drive because it’s essentially in the middle of nowhere, but I’m told that the best time to go is in October. The leaves are stunning.

So, I have my work cut out for me. So many destinations, so little money.

Better fix that.

Something You Can Count On

On this last day of August, it’s reassuring to be confronted with a few unchangeable truths of life. In a world filled to the brim with doubts and shifting narratives, it is quite comforting to be reminded that some things actually never change.

1.     The SEC remains dominant.

2.     Al Gore remains a bloviating idiot.

In the four marque match ups between SEC teams and top out of conference opponents, the conference once again proved its medal, Alabama beating West Virginia by 10, Georgia annihilating Clemson by 24, Ole Miss whipping Boise State by 22, and LSU spotting Wisconsin a 24-7 lead before storming back in the second half to win by 4. Just like death and taxes…

On the seventh anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize(?) acceptance speech in which he famously declared, “The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff.” The former Vice-President, doing his best imitation of a scientist continued, “It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven ears…seven years from now.” For those of you doing the math at home, that would be the summer of 2014. Fortunately for the planet, Al was spectacularly wrong. Satellite photographs just released by the University of Illinois’ Cryosphere project, show that the North Polar ice cap sits at a whopping 5.2 million square kilometers, its largest mass since 2006 and an increase of 43%, or an area the size of the state of Alaska, in just the last two years. An actual scientist, Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology deadpanned, “It would appear that the Arctic sea ice death spiral seems to have been reversed.”

I’m not expecting any comment coming from the 10,000 square foot, 9 million dollar, Gore family compound. I’m sure that Al is flying somewhere in his private Gulfstream to make a $250,000 speech decrying the defilement of the planet by other people’s 10,000 square foot homes and private Gulfstreams. The only thing that has consistently been greened by Al Gore over the past ten years is his bank account. But God bless him, now that he is safely removed from the levers of power, he has finally discovered the wonders of capitalism.

Better late than never.

Offended? Move to Vermont.

I’m sure that by now, most of you have heard about the great bacon kerfuffle up in Vermont. It’s been all over the Internet, but just in case you missed it, I’ll recap:

The proprietors of Sneakers Bistro posted a sign outside their establishment that read, “Yield for Sneakers Bacon!”  

Soon, an Internet chat room called the “Winnoski Front Porch Forum” was visited by one single solitary complainer who stated her case that as a vegan who lived in a Muslim household, the sign personally offended her. Almost immediately, the owners of the Sneakers Bistro removed the sign. The City Manager of Winnoski practically broke her arm  patting herself on the back over this beautiful display of “inclusiveness” thusly,  “Winnoski is a diverse community and that’s the way we like it. It’s uncomfortable, but discomfort can be a source of growth, not just a source of anger and frustration.”

Ahh yes, growth. The fine folks in Vermont have now defined for the rest of us what it means to be a part of a “diverse community.” Apparently it means assuring the God-given right of every citizen to never be offended.

I’m not exactly sure what matrix the City Manager uses to measure Winnoski’s diversity since the town’s population is 87% white, but I will take her word for it. Regardless, it sounds like a great place to live since if you don’t like something, all you have to do is complain about it once and it will go away. Imagine the possibilities…

1.     As a well dressed Christian man, I find the sight of teenage boys with their pants hanging down below their asses personally offensive.

2.     As someone who is lactose-intolerant I find the presence of the ice cream truck in my neighborhood every day during the summer highly provocative and personally offensive.

3.     As a devotee of classical music I find the ear-blasting sound of rap music coming from the car next to me at the stop light personally offensive.

4.     As a faithful Catholic I find the Ruth's Chris Steakhouse particularly offensive on Fridays

5.     As a proud Arab I find the smell of bagels wafting out of Eintein’s every morning personally offensive.

6.     As a man who struggles with his weight I find the ripped abs on the bathing suit mannequins at Macy’s personally offensive.

7.     As an Irish-American I find the mascot of the Notre Dame football team personally offensive with it’s suggestion of drunken brawling and it’s stereotypical term, Fighting Irish, an affront against my ethnicity.

See how easy that was? Let’s all move to Vermont!

ISIS

I don’t know about you but I long for the days when the only thing called ISIS was the dog on Downton Abbey.

Practically every day for weeks now mornings have brought fresh images of some ghastly beheading or indiscriminate slaughter perpetrated by this band of black-garbed Muslim fighters. We are told that it is their intention to establish a worldwide caliphate and to one day raise their black flag over the White House. This is a group who executes Christians and anyone else they encounter who doesn’t prescribe to their brand of Islam, including fellow Muslims. They have no use for gays, and like their women barefoot, pregnant and young. In just a few short months they have stormed onto the scene and cut a swath of land from Syria to Iraq which they now “control” in much the same way as prison guards “control” a prison. Religion of peace, indeed.

We are reminded by tenured professors, secure in their ivory towers 5000 miles from the slaughter, that ISIS represents a small minority of Islamic thought. We are assured that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful folks just like us who just want to live in peace. Perhaps they are right. However, whenever I see these professors on television I am reminded that it was these same men and women who assured us three years ago that the “Arab Spring” was about to bloom all over the Middle East, ushering in a new era of democracy and pluralism.

I have no doubt that ISIS and other violent permutations of Islam do indeed represent a minority of thought in a religion as vast as Islam. However, they are the ones with the guns and they are the ones that always seem to grab the initiative. It is also true that the Nazi’s in Germany never won a majority of the German vote in their rise to power. But the majority of German thought had neither the energy nor the will to stand up to Hitler, so in the end it didn’t matter.

From the PLO, through Hamas, and Al Qaeda, now to ISIS, the only strain of thought that has ever mattered in the Muslim world has been the guys with the AK-47’s.
 

I eagerly await the day when the world is talking about the groundbreaking medical research being done in the great Islamic universities. I can’t wait to discover the Islamic Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Dante and Bach. I’m counting the days until some Islamic businessman dies and endows a peace prize to rival the Nobel.

But until that happy day, I’ll have to be reassured by all the smart people that Islam is in fact a religion of peace, and what I have witnessed for the past fifty years is all a big misunderstanding. 

Marital Communication via Texts

I got a text from my wife yesterday morning at 9:45 which began as follows:

 

         “I’m toying with an idea…”

 

Perhaps never in the history of texts has there been typed a phrase more pregnant with possibilities than this one. These are five words that could mean anything, they hang there producing fear, dread, excitement, expectation. What on earth is she up to? Has she been overcome with a vision of how to redecorate our bedroom? Has she been surfing the internet and discovered some exotic locale for our next vacation? Has she decided to quit teaching and become a celebrity chef?

 

        “…what would YOU think of…”

 

Uh-oh, now she has placed the decision in my hands. Great! If I say, no, I’ll be the one responsible for crushing her dream. On the other hand, maybe she is just employing a figure of speech…what would YOU think…as in this is what we’re going to do, I hope you like it. Or maybe she really is seeking my permission. Calm down man, it’s just a text!!

 

        “…of having a fire this evening…”

 

Hmmmm. Very interesting.

 

        “...and inviting Mom and Dad and Sharon’s family to come have hot dogs and s’mores for dinner?”

 

So, last night there we all were sitting around the fire-pit and roasting hot dogs on a delightfully cool night in August. It’s probably the first time in my life any such thing had been done in Richmond, Virginia in August. I associate many things with this particular month, but sitting around a campfire isn’t one of them. It was a wonderful idea that sprang from the mind of my wife, perhaps the most hospitable person on the face of the Earth.

 

I think when or if I retire, we should buy some gorgeous house somewhere in Maine and run a Bed and Breakfast. That way Pam could get paid for doing what comes natural to her…having people over for snacks!