Christian Right Hypocritically Ruins Reputation Of Oldest English Governorship In North America

That would be the governorship of the Commonwealth of Virginia, a position continuously dating from about four centuries, which has had such individuals as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry holding it, but now facing for the first time having one of its own on trial for a felony corruption charge, Robert McDonnell.  McDonnell is trying to get out of this charge by blaming his troubled wife, even though he and his sons accepted numerous extravagant golfing outings on the bill of a donor without reporting any of this to the appropriate authorities.  It is bad enough that this reprehensible cad could have saved his wife and family from the massive humiliation they are currently undergoing if  he had accepted a relatively minor plea bargain offered him (yeah, it involved him confessing a felony, but with minor consequences).

 However, the really bad part of this that has not been reported on as this degrading and embarrassing spectacle has proceeded is the hypocrisy involved here.  It is fine for someone like WaPo's Petula Dvorak to point out how much support his wife, Maureen, provided him in many ways in his many campaigns, before he dumped her under the bus.  But the part that nobody talks about, and basically has not since he was elected governor, is his past  as a Christian Right fanatic, not really a past given that he carried out a major reduction of womens' rights by sharply reducing abortion providing facilities in the state, even if his more fanatical AG, the now-defeated Cuccinelli, was pushing this more than him.  McDonnell is a pure creature and creation of the hypocritical Christian Right in Virginia.

His Masters degree came from a place that does not deserve to be called a "university," Pat Robertson's Regents University. Robertson is the son of former  VA Sen. Willis Robertson (D-VA), which gives him more VA roots than the late Jerry Falwell who founded the equally disreputable and academically embarrassing Liberty "University," which has shown what a joke it is by hiring McDonnell to lecture there since he ended his governorship.  Anyway, his Masters thesis at Regents was all about how women should obey their husbands or any other nearby male authority. I can imagine that his wife, Maureen, is laughing over this, although she is most certainly nothing to write home about as a decent human being, much less a wife of anybody.

So, there we have it, ultimate Christian Right hypocrisy.  This man oversaw massive shutdowns of abortion clinics in VA and many other egregious reductions of womens' rights as first AG and then as governor.  He played blowdry moderate image, but when in office he took a hard line and followed up on what his thesis said: put women in their place.  His violation and betrayal of his wife in the court of law, when he could have taken a low key plea bargain, is not only a disgusting display of a lack of husbandly and manly behavior, but a massive manifestation of Christian Right hypocrisy.

Barkley Rosser