{"id":1935,"date":"2024-05-21T22:26:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T03:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/progressivepersuasionandpassion\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2024-05-21T22:26:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T03:26:05","slug":"the-eve-excuse-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/progressivepersuasionandpassion\/2024\/05\/the-eve-excuse-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Eve” Excuse Is Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
The \u201cEve\u201d Excuse Is Back<\/p>\n
Forbidden Fruit and Eve
Photo by Jill Burrow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The biblical story of Adam and Eve never loses its allure. When Adam takes the forbidden fruit from Eve and eats it, God calls Adam to account. The man said, \u201cThe woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.\u201d\u00a0Then the\u00a0Lord\u00a0God said to the woman, \u201cWhat is this that you have done?\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cEve Excuse\u201d has been in our politics at least twice recently. Senator Robert Menendez and Justice Samuel Alito have reached into the rhetorical bag of \u201cancient excuses to avoid accountability\u201d to each blame his wife for his misdeeds.<\/p>\n
Senator Bob Menendez
Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A lawyer for Senator Robert Menendez laid blame for the bribery charges the senator faces squarely on his wife \u2014 a woman he found \u201cdazzling\u201d but who, his lawyer said, hid her past dire finances and the source of her newfound income from her powerful husband.<\/p>\n
She had kept him in the dark about \u201cwhat she was asking others to give her,\u201d the lawyer, Avi Weitzman, told a jury in opening statements at the start of the senator\u2019s federal corruption trial in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The gold and some of the cash that the F.B.I. found in a search of the senator\u2019s New Jersey home \u2014 items that prosecutors say were bribes \u2014 were kept in a locked closet where his wife, Nadine Menendez, stored her clothing, Mr. Weitzman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did not know of the gold bars that existed in that closet,\u201d Mr. Weitzman added, describing Mr. Menendez as an American patriot and \u201clifelong public servant\u201d who \u201ctook no bribes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have charged Mr. Menendez, 70, and his wife with accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, including cash, gold, home furnishings and a $60,000 Mercedes, in exchange for political favors for friends at home and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.<\/p>\n
It is the second bribery trial of Mr. Menendez, a Democrat who has long been dogged by allegations of corruption. He walked away largely unscathed from the first, which ended in a hung jury in 2017 in New Jersey. But the new charges, leveled in September by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, are likely to end the senator\u2019s three-decade career in Congress.<\/p>\n
The senator\u2019s defense: \u201cMy wife hid the gold from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the second example, Supreme Court Justice Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito<\/a>\u00a0blamed the upside-down American flag seen flying outside his home in the days following the Jan. 6 Capitol protests, on his wife. According to the justice, his wife displayed it in response to insults directed at her from a neighbor.<\/p>\n
Alito weighed in after The New York Times<\/em> reported on the story, that an upside-down flag \u2014 a symbol adopted by some\u00a0Trump supporters<\/a>\u00a0disputing the results of the 2020 presidential election \u2014 appeared outside Alito\u2019s home in Alexandria, Virginia, on\u00a0Jan. 17, 2021.<\/p>\n
Alito said the saga in his neighborhood began in the days around Jan. 6, 2021, when a neighbor living down the street put up a sign that read \u201cF\u2014 Trump\u201d about 50 feet away from a children\u2019s bus stop.<\/p>\n
He said his wife, Martha-Ann, then spoke with those neighbors about the sign and the conversation was not well received.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t about truth or reason at all \u2013 it\u2019s about not being held accountable for actions deserving of accountability. Alito claiming, \u201cOur neighbor started it,\u201d is an interestingly irrational argument. When Alito was confronted for posting the symbol of the January 6 insurrection \u2013 an upside-down flag, he pointed to the neighbor and said, \u201cHe did it first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alito\u2019s point is factually true, but his point is completely irrelevant to whether he did something wrong. It does not matter if the neighbor plastered his property with signs demeaning Trump or attacking Alito, but that\u2019s irrelevant to whether Justice Alito did something wrong.<\/p>\n
Both the neighbor and Alito can be wrong. The neighbor is vulgar and disrespectful, but in our current malaise, such words are common garden variety bags of nothing. Alito makes a political statement supporting the actions of January 6. As a member of the Supreme Court, he has cast votes concerning the treatment of the people already convicted of federal crimes for their actions of January 6.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy neighbor started it,\u201d \u201cMy neighbor did it first,\u201d or \u201cMy neighbor did it, too\u201d doesn\u2019t have anything at all to do with Alito\u2019s action or inaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe woman you gave me made me eat.\u201d \u201cMy wife took the gold.\u201d \u201cMy wife placed the upside-down flag because our neighbor posted an anti-Trump sign.\u201d These excuses all come from the same barrel of rotten excuses.<\/p>\n
A political system living off excuses, lies, and misinformation can\u2019t long survive.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The \u201cEve\u201d Excuse Is Back The biblical story of Adam and Eve never loses its allure. When Adam takes the forbidden fruit from Eve and eats it, God calls Adam to account. The man said, \u201cThe woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.\u201d\u00a0Then the\u00a0Lord\u00a0God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5186,"featured_media":1938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe "Eve" Excuse Is Back<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The \u201cEve\u201d Excuse Is Back The biblical story of Adam and Eve never loses its allure. 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