COMMENTARY: Patricia, Please Stop

Patricia Driscoll published an opinion piece in USA Today Thursday, in which she repeated her now-familiar assertion that she was a victim of domestic assault at the hands of NASCAR driver Kurt Busch last September at Dover International Speedway.

Today’s column broke no new ground, instead rehashing allegations and details that long ago became familiar to NASCAR fans and followers of the case. Instead, she chastised “uninformed observers” for disparaging her honesty, integrity and motivations. She criticized the tabloid media for “playing up the most sensationalist aspects” of the case, conveniently ignoring the fact that the sensationalist information –every bit of it -- has come from Driscoll, Busch or their respective attorneys.

In Driscoll’s latest media missive, she poses a number of questions that readers of USA Today are ill-equipped to answer.

“Will Busch and his legal team drag me through court so that I can leave the relationship with what I brought into it?” she asks. “Will Busch honor the commitments he made while we were together? Will he try to take my house, or fight me on something as basic as reclaiming my belongings?”

Those questions are best addressed to Driscoll’s attorneys, using a forum other than USA Today. In fact, an insistence on continuing to dismantle her personal relationship in public seems disingenuous from a person who insists she is “fully resolved to put this chapter of my life behind me.”

Driscoll continues to air her dirty laundry in public, all while pointedly referring to both Busch and NASCAR by name as often as possible. If she indeed has no interest in destroying Busch’s driving career -- and she steadfastly insists that she does not – the best way to demonstrate that fact would be to move on, settle their differences behind closed doors and put an immediate stop to the public posturing.

Whether you like Patricia Driscoll or not – and there are plenty of folks on either side of that question – her intelligence is beyond debate. She serves as CEO of a multi-million dollar, Washington DC-based surveillance systems corporation that supplies the United States military, and also heads the considerable fundraising efforts of the Armed Forces Foundation.

Ms. Driscoll is justifiably proud of her accomplishments as a businesswoman, philanthropist and advocate for our men and women in uniform. She also takes great pride in raising a son who is – by all indications – an intelligent, compassionate young man.

A woman of her intelligence must surely understand that while continuing to bang the drum against Busch tarnishes his already battered image, it also does the same to hers. She has every right to state her case – over and over again – for as long as she chooses to do so, regurgitating the same allegations and making the same points.

The legal system, however, has said its piece, and no amount of editorializing is going to change its decision.

“Above everything else,” wrote Driscoll today, “I'm a mom who simply will not let my son grow up thinking that it's ever OK to hit a woman.”

The importance of that lesson is clear to all of us. Unfortunately, that lesson is not best taught in the pages of USA Today.