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May. 20th, 2019 11:51 amThe entire house is currently sitting at 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than Austin is, because of the fans, and I'd had to sit home and look after them much of the week. Having just gotten a text from the drying folks asking us to turn up our AC (!!) because the fans can't work at that temperature (!!!!), I called and left a very snappish voice mail, because it's been 95 degrees in the house all day yesterday and there are four humans, four cats and a dog still living in it. They've asked us to turn off some of the equipment and see if that helps, anyway, and hopefully the tech will be out today to tell us it's all dry and can be put away. Here's hoping, anyway, because the whole experience has left me so drained I haven't really been capable of anything but dozing, playing endless rounds of Zoo Tycoon 2, and watching Bob's Burgers or mindless true crime. It's only now after several hours of work AC that I'm able to sit up and think enough to have something interesting to say.
I'd been listening to the Dirty John podcast today, more or less because there was a Real Crime Profile piece about it I happened to give a shot, and the titular John Meehan's first ex-wife had some very clear-headed things to say about her abusive ex. (Meehan, by all accounts, was what I usually call a piece of work: abusive, threatening, prone to lying, and so forth.) Meehan himself isn't particularly unusual, but the woman the podcast is really centered around is his second ex-wife, a woman called Debra Newell, and she had something of a history of abuse in her family herself: her sister Cindi had previously been shot by Cindi's own husband while she had been in the process of divorcing him.
This is where I get horrified enough to relay the story, because Debra and Cindi's mother Arlene is... well, she's earned something of the title piece of work herself. I just listened to this woman casually describe a pattern of viciously controlling behavior out of Cindi's ex-husband Billy, describe the things Cindi had told her, downplay the things Cindi told her were a problem, and sigh and say she'd been on a number of talk circuits because "well, everyone wants to hear a little more about forgiveness, right?" The husband had asked to meet with Cindi over the impending sale of their house, walked up behind her, and shot her in the back of the head. The police came to tell the mother what had happened, and Arlene paused and asked if they would pray with her, and declared that it would be all right because Jesus had told her so.
Then she explained that, well, she still loved Billy, and of course he'd shot himself too, after, but he hadn't died, and he wasn't in his right mind anyway what with all the stress of the divorce. And she was a Christian woman, and love could fix anything, and, well... she knew Billy before, and she knew him after, and she knew what was and wasn't him, and she knew she had to forgive him.
So she testified at his trial about all the things Billy was going through as a result of her daughter divorcing him, argued at length on his behalf, and successfully got his plea reduced to voluntary manslaughter. And she was proud of this!
My god, but Christianity has a lot to answer for, and so does this woman. The prosecutor in Cindi's case later said that her family had "thrown her away," and having listened to her mother lay out just how much she loved her ex-son-in-law and how he was really sorry and she believed in forgiveness above all, I can't find it in me to much disagree with him.
I'd been listening to the Dirty John podcast today, more or less because there was a Real Crime Profile piece about it I happened to give a shot, and the titular John Meehan's first ex-wife had some very clear-headed things to say about her abusive ex. (Meehan, by all accounts, was what I usually call a piece of work: abusive, threatening, prone to lying, and so forth.) Meehan himself isn't particularly unusual, but the woman the podcast is really centered around is his second ex-wife, a woman called Debra Newell, and she had something of a history of abuse in her family herself: her sister Cindi had previously been shot by Cindi's own husband while she had been in the process of divorcing him.
This is where I get horrified enough to relay the story, because Debra and Cindi's mother Arlene is... well, she's earned something of the title piece of work herself. I just listened to this woman casually describe a pattern of viciously controlling behavior out of Cindi's ex-husband Billy, describe the things Cindi had told her, downplay the things Cindi told her were a problem, and sigh and say she'd been on a number of talk circuits because "well, everyone wants to hear a little more about forgiveness, right?" The husband had asked to meet with Cindi over the impending sale of their house, walked up behind her, and shot her in the back of the head. The police came to tell the mother what had happened, and Arlene paused and asked if they would pray with her, and declared that it would be all right because Jesus had told her so.
Then she explained that, well, she still loved Billy, and of course he'd shot himself too, after, but he hadn't died, and he wasn't in his right mind anyway what with all the stress of the divorce. And she was a Christian woman, and love could fix anything, and, well... she knew Billy before, and she knew him after, and she knew what was and wasn't him, and she knew she had to forgive him.
So she testified at his trial about all the things Billy was going through as a result of her daughter divorcing him, argued at length on his behalf, and successfully got his plea reduced to voluntary manslaughter. And she was proud of this!
My god, but Christianity has a lot to answer for, and so does this woman. The prosecutor in Cindi's case later said that her family had "thrown her away," and having listened to her mother lay out just how much she loved her ex-son-in-law and how he was really sorry and she believed in forgiveness above all, I can't find it in me to much disagree with him.
