PLAYING THE WIFE CARD
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and President George W. Bush are reported to
be great friends. Not only did Lay support W’s quest for the presidency (to
the tune of more than half a million dollars), but both men and their wives
frequently socialized together. Apparently both President Bush and Mr. Lay
use the same playbook to wiggle out of tight spots. Both don’t mind giving
their wives the spotlight when they think it will matter.
Back in November, First Lady Laura Bush gave the weekly radio address
that the President usually gives. In it, she talked about freedom for women
in Afghanistan. But White House concern for Women in Afghanistan doesn’t
extend to women back at home. One of the first things Mr. Bush did when he
hit the White House was dismantle the White House Office for Women. And, the
2003 budget that he submitted to Congress would eliminate the regional
offices of the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau. Still, Mr. Bush can
hide behind the First Lady’s skirts. He believes in rights for women. After
all, Laura said so.
Kenneth Lay is getting battered in the press over the Enron bankruptcy.
Four thousand people have been laid off, as many as 20,000 have pensions that
are utterly worthless, and the twin tower preachers of African American
politics – the Reverend Jesse Jackson and knockoff Rev. Al Sharpton – have
flown to Houston to pray on Enron. Under circumstances like these, what’s a
man to do? Mr. Lay played the wife card, pushing his wife Linda Lay into the
public eye with her passionate defense of her husband.
Mrs. Lay says that her family has “lost everything” but the house they
live in, because everything they owned was in Enron stock. And she said her
husband “didn’t know” that the company was as bad off as it was because
“things were kept from him”. She granted the interview in her opulent home,
wearing what looked like a designer suit, but she broke into tears a couple
of times in a move that was perhaps orchestrated to elicit sympathy. Don’t
get me wrong. I’m not “player hating” a woman whose husband sold more than
$110 million of Enron stock in the past year. I’m just wondering if she is
equating her family’s bankruptcy to the dire straights in which Enron left
the thousands who participated in its pension program. Bankruptcy law will
protect the Lay house, allowing them to sell it and move into a smaller
mansion. There is no protection for the people who lost their pensions with
Enron.
If anybody speaks on the Enron debacle, it ought to be Kenneth Lay.
Perhaps the law, and regulation, prevents him from speaking out candidly
before he addresses an investigatory committee. Still, in the rush to
portray the human side of the Lay family, I think they’ve also revealed what
lengths they will go to in order to shape public opinion. Did they go to
these same lengths to influence opinion about the stability of Enron stock?
Was the e-mail that Kenneth Lay sent Enron employees on September 26 the same
kind of spin that his wife’s interview was? You have to wonder.
Why would NBC News broadcast an interview with Mrs. Lay, the lay
children, and Kenneth Lay’s pastor? Why are the details of his personal
life and his faith relevant in the context of the Enron debacle? Will NBC
now also broadcast interviews with the spouses of everyone who lost jobs and
pensions? Will we hear how these good people, many of whom are also
churchgoers, have suffered because someone “kept something from them”?
The most disturbing thing, for me, was the way Mr. Lay (like Mr. Bush) played
the wife card. I’d have appreciated Laura Bush’s radio address if she’d made
others. Similarly, if there was evidence that Linda Lay was making corporate
decisions at Enron, then her comments about her husband may have been more
relevant. Instead, Mrs. Lay was interviewed to soften and humanize Kenneth
Lay’s image. She reminded me how frequently women are used as props in our
society.
Advertisers use attractive women to sell everything from automobiles to
hardware, displaying the women on billboards beside their merchandise as if
the attention women attract will automatically spill over to their property.
Similarly, Mr. Bush and Mr. Lay guessed that some messages are better
swallowed when delivered by their wives. But playing the wife card isn’t
always playing a trump card. Mr. Bush’s marks with women won’t rise because
Laura Bush spoke for him. And Mr. Lay gets no more sympathy because his
company’s failure has pushed his wife (and how many thousands more) to tears.