I’ve pretty much been ignoring the Steven’s trial, because I don’t live in Alaska, and really just don’t care that much. Sure it’ll affect my friends, but that’s the extent to which I care.

However.

I heard a quote this morning that boggled my mind.

We have many things in our house that don’t belong to us.

Really? I mean seriously?

Now, I have to admit that most of the furniture in our house when we first got married had been given to us by family members. But these were pieces that had seen years of use and had value in possibly the ones or even tens of dollars.

And these items were always seen as gifts, and when we have replaced our furniture with newer pieces we’ve made sure to give our older pieces to friends and family who needed them, or to donate them to charity. (We did them same thing with our cars actually. One Michael bought used, the other was given me by my dad. When we got a new to us or even an honest-to-God new car, we donated the other car to The Mountaineer Good News Garage. [I highly recommend finding a similar charity in your area the next time you buy a new–or new to you–car.]) Because what comes around, goes around.

But I somehow doubt that was the case with Ted Stevens. I find it very unlikely that he has ever had a brown and orange sofa from the early 70s in his house–unless it was actually in the 70s and matched his decor. Or that he was delighted by the gift of an eight-year old Toyota Camry with a slightly rusting body, because it was more reliable than his current vehicle.

It seems to me that Stevens was either being coy, or was trying to play to people like me who have been given things by their family and friends when they couldn’t afford new items themselves.

But I don’t think those situations are in the slightest comparable, never mind the fact that such items were always seen as gifts.

If he’s just being coy… Well, that’s just obnoxious. And to be honest, offensive. As the prosecuting attorney said, “So, if you say it’s not a gift, it’s not a gift?“