The Real Patti Blagojevich

Character may not be made under fire, but it is the best place to prove it.

It is easy to be a great guy when a person is untempted by corruptions and it is relatively easy to be a wonderful person when there is no stress or pressure. Though some people fail even in those easy situations, we cannot measure a person's character by the way they act when things are just hunky-dory.

Therefore, it rings hollow when people defend the first lady of Illinois after her profanity-laced tirade against those who dared stand in the way of her family's ill-conceived plans for political and financial advancement. This, by claiming stress.

From Yahoo/AP:

"That is absolutely not my sister," Deborah Mell told the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 in an exclusive interview Wednesday. "Patti is a mother, a sister and a devoted wife. She is particularly protective of her family."

Prosecutors say the governor plotted to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat and he was arrested Tuesday. In the criminal complaint, his wife emerges in recorded phone conversations as scheming to punish those who got in her way.

According to the complaint, it was Patti Blagojevich's voice in the background spewing a suggestion to "just fire" some newspaper editors if the Tribune Co. hoped for state assistance to sell Wrigley Field, the storied home of the Chicago Cubs.

"Hold up that (expletive) Cubs (expletive)," she says as her husband is talking on the telephone. "(Expletive) them."

Patti Blagojevich's family acknowledged the salty language contained on the recordings but said those words were uttered at a stressful time as both she and her husband were under federal scrutiny.

"I can understand it. This a pressure cooker she's living in," said Deborah Mell, who will be sworn in as a state representative next month.

So, which Patti Blagojevich is the real one? Is it the understandably salty one that bristles when the Tribune company refuses to bow to her husband's extortions, or is it the one that, under less stressful times and with genteel language, became an accomplice in her husband's scheme to use his golden opportunity to enrich the couple when The Obama was elected to higher office?

I'm certain there is a big difference between the two.

h/t Michelle Malkin