Patti Blagojevich Painted as Lady Macbeth
All right, Chicago Tribune. I was going to write about your Patti Blagojevich/Lady Macbeth article anyway, but her appearance on your homepage has hurried it up a few hours.
Look, I know that people are suddenly visiting chicagotribune.com, so you want to keep those pageviews up. But don’t let the twin shocks of bankruptcy and unexpected relevance go to your head.
Because this is inappropriate:
Lady Macbeth, as you will no doubt recall from Mr Johnson’s English Lit class, is the devil woman who convinces her husband to murder the king, paving the way for his own ascension.
Lady Macbeth doesn’t merely profit from her husband’s rise, she actively corrupts him.
Which is not to say that Patti Blagojevich’s hands are clean. It appears that she was in on the criminal conspiracy, and charges should follow if they are merited. I don’t believe she should get a free ride because her husband is (likely) going to jail and they’ve got kids. Do the crime, do the time.
However! Let’s take a quick look at how we’re covering Mrs Blago’s not-even-alleged-at-this-point crimes.
An unflattering portrait depicting Illinois First Lady Patricia Blagojevich as a modern-day Lady Macbeth who plotted against her husband’s perceived enemies and backed his corrupt schemes emerged in court documents connected to the governor’s arrest Tuesday.
It appears that Patti’s ‘crimes’ so far consist of conduct unbecoming a lady. The Tribune article describes her ‘alleged ambitions and brashness‘ and the ‘obscenity-filled tirade‘ she ‘unleashed’ in support of firing Tribune employees.
That ‘obscenity-filled tirade’ consists of saying ‘fuck’ twice and ’shit’ once. Perhaps not language fit for high society, but certainly language I use in my home when I assume the feds aren’t listening. (And, from the transcript, language that appears par for the course in the Blagojevich household.)
But what really stirs my cauldron is the negative depictions of Patti herself.
For Rod, ambition has not been described as the problem, but rather as a motivator for the corruption he (allegedly) perpetrated. For Patti, the mere act of having ambition is modified with ‘alleged’ - as though that were her crime.
And, of course, we have the word ‘brash’, which has been used time and time again to describe the grating brassiness of women who step out of line.
Should the good governor’s wife should have knitted merrily whilst her husband cooked up the schemes?
From a legal standpoint, it appears so! But for the daughter of Chicago political boss, Dick Mell, not [bleeping] likely.
If she deserves it - and it looks as though she does - let’s try Patti Blagojevich in the courts. But let’s not use insulting literary metaphors to punish a woman for her unladylike ambition and language choice.
[Ed. note- I took the wrong spelling of Patricia Blagojevich's nickname. I've fixed it, and regret the (all-too-common) errors in my spelling.]
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December 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I think apologies to Lady Macbeth are in order. Being compared to Patti B and all