Justice Alito’s Blame-the-Wife Defense Never Goes Out of Style

By now, you’ve surely seen the latest round of high-end wife-blaming in Washington. In seeking to shift their own controversies onto their marital partners, Justice Samuel Alito and Senator Robert Menendez joined a tradition that extends across party lines and stretches back through the centuries.

We might have hoped we’d be past such things by now, but the news is not all bad. These old tropes should give us cause for fresh hope. Stick with me, as we briefly review the evidence.

First up: Justice Alito, who was presented with photographs of an upside-down flag flying in front of his house. The flag is a symbol of the “stop the steal” movement, whose adherents say the 2020 Presidential election was stolen; the photograph was taken three days before President Biden’s inauguration and just over a week after the invasion of the Capitol. Justice Alito bravely, manfully, clearly announced to the world that his wife did it.

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito told The Times, in an emailed statement. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Then there’s Senator Menendez, charged with 16 felony counts related to accepting cash and gold bars in exchange for furthering the interests of Egypt and Qatar, among others.

During opening statements in his trial last week, Mr. Menendez’s lawyers said he was innocent of wrongdoing. The blame, they said, instead lies with his wife, Nadine — currently being treated for grade 3 breast cancer — who allegedly “kept him in the dark” about her money woes and the creative but not necessarily legal steps she took to address them.