Enough, Deval. YOU are the reason she's having a MENTAL BREAKDOWN, beeyatch. She doesn't NEED you HANGING AROUND the house making it WORSE. She's got a $70,000 a year PERSONAL ASSISTANT to look after her. Stop HOVERING around. You'll only make her MORE NERVOUS. LET HER BE, for Pete's sake!

You know, I don't think it's old-fashioned of me to say that this is a deeply private matter, and that the media and the governor himself should treat it with discretion and delicacy. The governor should be very, very careful trying to score sympathy points with his wife's nervous condition—and he is definitely treading, however lightly, into those treacherous waters. 

And just when he was getting some legitimate loving, finally, for his empathetic reaction to the immigration raid. 

What this all reminds me of—and I hate to say it—is Samuel Alito's wife's very public outburst at his confirmation hearing, which played a pivotal part in a very public political process. It was viewed with cynicism, and rightly.  On a lesser note it also echoes Bush Senior's public breakdown in front of the Florida legislature, although this episode, genuinely pathetic as it was, had no political resonance.

Like Madam Patrick's nervous condition, both of these other incidents seemed to stem from how harsh and unforgiving a game politics is on a loved one—in Madam Alito's case, she was said to be reacting to the Democrats' cruelty in questioning her husband on his resume, while Bush père's breakdown had to do with his son Jeb's defeat in a long-ago and long-forgotten gubernatorial race.

There is a tinge of gentility in the tender nerves of our new ruling class that I have to admit sets my teeth on edge.  It's all very Fin de siècle Charlotte Perkins Gilman—I can't help but picture fainting spells, doctors whispering about "neurasthenia" and "rest cures" in Switzerland—but depression is very real and should be taken seriously. And I certainly don't think the Patrick's have anything to be ashamed of. 

But the governor needs to stop talking about it and get back to work, lest he give the impression his wife's condition is his crutch.  There's no shame in any of it, and that may be the problem—even the perception of the governor's exploiting the situation risks coming off as utterly shameless.