Excerpt: Eleanor stayed married for the kids but later regretted her choice

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, June 2021).

The marriage between Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt has served as a template for political couples who search for a way stay together through the husband’s serial infidelity. As the story has come down to us, the Roosevelts suffered a rift over his affair and then went on to live separate, successful and very public lives under the same roof. But a closer look shows that their reality was very painful, messy and human.

By staying in the marriage, Eleanor believed she was doing right for their five children and for her husband. Just as she was experiencing her own deep sense of betrayal, she was called on to rally behind Franklin as he stepped onto the national stage as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in 1920. She traveled on his whistle-stop tour, monitored his press coverage and gave him advice on his speeches. Her patriotic devotion to the public ideals the couple stood for revealed itself in her own design for a fulfilling life outside of her empty marriage. Using her position first as the wife of New York’s governor and then as first lady, she advocated for safe housing, laws against child labor, wider voter registration, birth control and civil rights. Her determination to rise above personal pain gave the world one of its great leaders.

“Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote.

Yet the manner in which Franklin dealt with his marriage and his own needs for intimacy reverberates throughout the lives of his children. They chose spouses with the right pedigree. Infidelities abounded. A partner who didn’t fulfill one’s needs was shortly substituted for another. And worldly success often took precedence over happiness at home. It’s almost as if the children of Eleanor and Franklin were trying to work out in their own lives the issues that their parents left unresolved in their marriage.

“At first, each of us married into moneyed families. Not because we needed money, but because we were exposed to moneyed people,” James wrote. “Eventually, we made other marriages. Some of us married outside the social register…. Hopeless romantics, we Roosevelt children married again and again.”

The eldest, Anna, briefly attended college at Cornell University but quit to marry Curtis Dall, a successful stockbroker, in 1926. She said that she married to “get out of the life I was leading,” a reference to the Roosevelt’s difficult family situation in the aftermath of Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer.

Anna and Curtis separated as Franklin was entering the White House in 1932, and Anna moved there with her two children. She met and married a reporter, John Boettiger; it was a second marriage for both. Eleanor felt Anna and John entered this marriage having learned from their sufferings and mistakes, and she commented to a friend in a letter that marriages shouldn’t be preserved for the sake of the children. “Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote, adding that it was very sad when a couple was unable to make a success of marriage, “but I feel it is equally unwise for people to bring up children in homes where love no longer exists.”

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, June 2021).

How Jackie Kennedy dealt with her husband's compulsive affairs

Jackie, the film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, hit American screens this winter, accompanied by scores of stories resurrecting speculation about the experiences of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy. One question writers and film reviewers ask is, what did she know about her husband’s infidelities?

I was interested to find that the filmmakers agreed with my research for “Why They Stay”: that Jacqueline Kennedy was by turns pragmatic and bereft about her husband’s seemingly compulsive sex outside of their marriage.

When Jack Kennedy took office in 1961, the couple had been married for seven years. As president, he became consumed with almost daily sexual liaisons, according to the many accounts of their White House days. Both Jack Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier had been raised to regard philandering outside of marriage as a natural male privilege.

Even so, there’s evidence that JFK’s philandering hurt Jackie deeply.

Jackie’s father, “Black Jack” Bouvier, confided in his daughter about his seductions. According to Kennedy biographer Edward Klein, Bouvier told Jackie that on his honeymoon, on his way over to England with her mother on the Aquitania, he slipped away and slept with tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Years later, when her father visited Jackie at boarding school in Farmington, Conn., the two would play a game where she would point to the mother of one of her classmates, and Black Jack would respond “yes” or “not yet” – to indicate whether he had bedded the woman in question. He was said to be capable of sleeping with two or three women in an evening.

Little wonder then that Jackie, who saw her dad as a man of great style and sophistication, would respond this way when warned about her future husband’s playboy ways: “All men are like that. Just look at my father,” according to historian Sally Bedell Smith. Jackie echoed this in later years when trying to reassure her sister-in-law, Joan Bennett Kennedy, who was upset by her husband Teddy Kennedy’s affairs. “All Kennedy men are like that,” Jackie said. “You can’t let it get to you because you shouldn’t take it personally.”

Similarly, Jackie’s husband had grown up with the idea that powerful men weren’t required to be faithful to their wives. His father Joe Kennedy’s many affairs – especially with glamour girl Gloria Swanson – were publicized in newspaper gossip columns. And yet Joe’s wife Rose Kennedy ignored it all, choosing family togetherness, social status, great houses and money over confrontation.

Possibly Jackie saw JFK’s appeal to other women as tantalizing. She may have thought, they could want him, but she had him. She had won. However, it’s also likely that she underestimated her husband’s near-constant pursuit of sexual reassurance and release. Author Klein reports this observation by Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings, Jack’s prep school roommate and lifelong friend. “While on one level Jackie must have known what she was getting into by marrying a thirty-six-year-old playboy, she never suspected the depth of Jack’s need for other women,” Billing said. “Nor was she prepared for the humiliation she would suffer when she found herself stranded at parties while Jack would suddenly disappear with some pretty young girl.”

The First Lady also tried dealing with her husband’s needs directly. She met a cardiologist, Dr. Frank Finnerty, through her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy, according to a story retold by Bedell Smith. Finnerty was a friend and neighbor. Jackie and he struck up a telephone friendship, where she began calling him twice a week for consolation and advice. She told him she knew what was going on with Jack, and that the Secret Service covered for him. “She was also sure that Jack felt no love or any kind of affection” for these women, Finnerty has said. “He was just getting rid of some hormonal surge,” Jackie rationalized, that he had “undoubtedly inherited from his father.”

With the doctor, Jackie learned about foreplay and other ways that she and Jack could discover more pleasure with each other in bed. The phone consultations included a script Jackie could present to her husband to raise the issue of changing their bedroom routine without offending his masculine ego. Jack’s philandering didn’t stop, but as least his wife could reassure herself that it wasn’t because they lacked intimacy in the bedroom.

This version of Jackie -- vulnerable, nurturing a closer marriage -- is so at odds with her public persona, where she always seemed cool and in charge of her emotions. This window into her world as a wife causes me to admire her even more.

If you liked this post, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives, published in June 2021.

Jackie Kennedy was a determined White House mom

As the celebrity press eagerly reports on actor Natalie Portman’s second pregnancy, the buzz around her Oscar-worthy portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie is mounting. This intersection of life and art has me musing about the passionate and rule-defying mothering Jackie Kennedy brought to her own two children.

Shortly after John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inauguration as president in 1960, he asked his chief of protocol, Angier Biddle Duke, to speak with Jackie about her new duties. To follow the model of her predecessors, Jackie would be expected to attend lunches, deliver speeches, host teas and accept honorary degrees.

What she told the protocol chief was that she would do as little of that as possible. “My family, they come first,” Jackie responded to Duke’s advising, according to an account in All Too Human by Jackie’s friend Edward Klein. “The children come first in my life. I’ve got a problem: the kids are young and I just want to do as much as I can within the bounds of my responsibility to my children. And however you want to phrase it, that means I want to do as little as I have to do.”

The White House staff was incensed and embarrassed. Jackie refused one invitation after another. However, after the first couple of months, it became clear that her absence was distributed evenhandedly, and Jackie had set a precedent that would-be hosts could accept without feeling too slighted.

Instead, Jackie and the children spent their weekdays at Glen Ora, a 400-acre estate the Kennedys rented in Middleburg, Virginia. There, Caroline rode her pony, Macaroni, and Mom took the kids on picnics, gave them baths and read to them in bed before they fell asleep. In one journal entry, Jackie noted, these were the “things I have no chance to do in the W. House.”

Jackie’s determination to focus on her role as a mother was apparent even during the campaign. Shortly before the election, when Caroline was three and Jackie was pregnant with JFK Jr., she remarked in a TV interview that she needed to be with her children in the White House. “If you bungle raising your children,” she said, “I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

When her husband was brutally assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Jackie could have been forgiven for withdrawing into her own grief. Instead, raising Caroline and John Jr. kept Jackie moving forward. She invited friends who had worked closely with her late husband Jack to come and speak to her children about their father. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., presidential adviser Theodore Sorensen and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were among them. These private seminars These private conversations – seminars, really – continued for years.

Jackie also had her children meet regularly with developmental psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. He served as their therapist in an era when Americans didn’t usually acknowledge children’s emotional pain, much less offer them help.  Jackie stepped outside the norm to make sure her kids were well cared for.

In my time, Jacqueline Kennedy’s reputation has come to me as a fabulous figure of fashion and as a material girl whose subsequent marriage to Greek shipping mogul Aristotle Onassis solidified her presence among the cosmopolitan jet set.

Yet this view of her commitment to a normal life for her children makes me feel as though she and I had at least one thing in common. We both cared, all else aside, to be good mothers.

If you liked this post, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives, published in June 2021.

Fiction: A Rainbow in Koussountou

First published in A Courtship of Winds, Winter 2022

The red soil of West Africa by Andrea Davoust/Flickr

Dressing for the day, Jennifer bent to pull a clean pair of underwear from a basket on her bedroom floor. Woven from the grasses of Sub-Saharan Africa, the basket gave off scents of earth and savanna. Jennifer luxuriated in the aroma … but, then, something was off.

The folds and creases she had lovingly tucked into place were disturbed. The disorder was subtle but apparent to her sensitive eye. Back home in Tenafly, she had packed these satiny underthings, which were a small, private luxury she could indulge while doing the serious world-changing she was engaged in as a Peace Corps volunteer. The underwear disturbance was slight, but she did not think she was imagining the disarray. And where was the lacy red pair?

She made a mental note to ask Adija, a girl—really, a young woman—whom she had engaged to help her settle into this strange place. Or, more precisely, Adija had attached herself to Jennifer and insisted she needed her help. They met in training— stâge in French, a language they both spoke to communicate but which was native to neither. Adija had been hired as kitchen help for the training, to pat cornmeal and pound yams into patties, and serve them with a spicy blend of spinach, tomatoes and okra. The 43 stâgaires, or newly arrived American volunteers, were training together in Benin for three months before they dispersed to their assigned villages as volunteer teachers, social workers, construction bosses and agricultural advisers.

Wherever Jennifer was, people seemed to gather. With a navy-blue kerchief holding her tawny hair, she mingled with village women, listening and repeating words in their dialect. She adopted the simple pagne wrapped skirt of the local people well before the other volunteers, many of whom continued to dress in jeans they had brought from home. She studied practical skills she hoped to bring to her assigned village: firing clay pots, digging composting toilets, vaccinating livestock and planting tree saplings.

The male volunteers, almost to a man, hesitated to approach such an unassailable creature. But later, after she was gone, some eight men confessed they had been in love with her. The women who loved her didn’t say so out loud. This was an earlier time, before people were open about such things. But their love, too, was understood.

Adija watched Jennifer closely. Among the volunteers, Adija was searching for a soft heart. She had lived her 15 years in the mud brick shacks of West Africa, but she had also seen airplanes fly overhead. In two years, the volunteers would be returning to their homes in America. Adija dreamed of joining them.

One morning during stâge, Adija approached two of her fellow kitchen helpers with a plan. They had just finished cleaning up after breakfast, and Bonna and Yoon were resting on the steps.

“Akpounando,” Adija greeted them in Bariba, a language of northern Benin. “Do you not think the yovos should style their hair?”

Bonna and Yoon agreed. Most of the yovo women—white women—allowed their hair to hang straight. The girls of Benin, the Béninoise, fashioned their hair in a maze of braids, cornrows, Bantu knots and twists. With a comb and a handful of tiny rubber bands, the girls approached two volunteers digesting their breakfast in a shady spot.

“Bonjour, Mesdemoiselles,” Adija began. “May we comb your hair?”

The volunteers were eager to form bonds with the people of Benin. They were delighted by the girls’ friendly approach. Soon, Bonna, Yoon and Adija were sectioning the white women’s hair, tying it up, and braiding it.

“Ça glisse!” the Béninoise girls giggled. They were amazed by the smooth texture. Styling this hair was going to be more difficult than they had imagined. However, they persisted. Soon, the activity and merriment attracted more of the women stâgaires to the steps. Jennifer was among them, and Adija immediately appeared at her side.

“May I work on your hair?” she inquired. Jennifer graciously agreed.

The two fell into a kind of dance as they chatted back and forth. Adija asked about Jennifer’s home in New Jersey, what her family was like, where she hoped to be assigned in Benin after stâge. Adija painted a picture of her own home, the village of Koussountou: a pretty, hilly spot upcountry where they grew subsistence crops like peanuts, corn, yams and manioc.

Jennifer was intrigued. As Adija gently stroked and braided Jennifer’s hair, she asked about the conditions in Koussountou. Was there a school? Did they get enough water to drink and to wash?

“It’s not very grand. Koussountou is quite poor,” Adija explained. “There are two men who own vehicles, but very many must walk a long way to the fields and a long way home again.”

Jennifer imagined her fuel-efficient cookstoves improving life in Koussountou.

Toward the end of stâge, the Peace Corps directors asked the volunteers to state their preferences regarding where they would live and work for the next two years of service. Jennifer named the village as her first choice. She received the assignment, and before long, Jennifer and Adija found themselves together in Koussountou.

Back home, Adija’s life was more circumscribed. Among the 300 or so villagers, there were only a handful to whom Adija could not draw a straight line of kinship: her mother and her siblings; their spouses and their babies; her father’s junior wives and their families – on and on in a widening circle. In this place, there were many more watchful eyes than she’d found in service in the stâgaires’ kitchen. Adija had foreseen this adjustment, and she composed herself. She began studying to place out of Troisième, the grade she was repeating after failing the previous year’s exam. She took pains to drop the weight she’d put on during her rich summer life at stâge. Pagnes were forgiving garments, but the local population not so much.

Jennifer arrived in a Peace Corps van that paused just long enough to drop her at her new home, before ferrying other volunteers to their respective villages. Her house was a large, one-story concrete structure with metal bars on the windows. Arriving in the afternoon, she had just enough daylight to drape some sheets over the straw-filled mattress, hang a mosquito net and fashion a rudimentary water filtration system: two large plastic buckets stacked on top of one another, with a porous chalk plug connecting them to filter out invisible parasites. Jennifer fell into bed that first night en brusse – in the bush – exhausted. If she felt a surge of loneliness, of utter terror at finding herself the only Westerner for miles, she brushed those feelings aside. She blew out the flame of her kerosene lamp and tucked a flashlight beside her in bed, in case she needed to get up during the night. The noble work she’d dreamed of doing would begin when she woke.

Even as she felt alone, Jennifer did not long for home. Her mind was lit by an idea, and this post was her opportunity to put it into practice. Her family was not religious, but they possessed holy books, propped on shelves. Jennifer had pored over these, curled up in the bottom of her closet to read by the light of the bare overhead bulb, and she had encountered the philosophy of tikkun olam. The rabbinic teaching obligates good people to work for the protection of the poor or those who are otherwise at a disadvantage. Tikkun olam had inspired a restlessness in Jennifer. During an orientation program in college, she learned about the Peace Corps and its mission to uplift poor communities abroad. She was sold.

Shortly after dawn, Jennifer woke to the scent of wood fires and the sound of children’s voices. A dozen African faces were crammed against the bars of her bedroom windows, jostling for a glimpse of the yovo.

“Bonjour,” she managed, to the glee of the giggling youngsters. She stepped out of her net-tented bed and ducked into the bathroom, which had a blessedly high window out of human reach. What to do about her audience?

She heard a voice shooing them from the yard. Then a clapping at the entrance – what served for a door knock in this village, where most homes were doorless mud huts. Adija appeared on the doorstep. A familiar face.

“Oh, I’m so happy to see you,” Jennifer said. “Did you tell the children to leave?”

“They are rude,” Adija said. “I said they must not bother you.”

Adija surveyed the interior of Jennifer’s home. Two rooms to the right were empty.

“You need someone to help you,” Adija said. “I can buy food and cook. I can wash your clothes.”

Jennifer didn’t know how to respond. Her family had never had “help.” The difference in their races made her uneasy, recalling the history of Black African enslavement in America and the marches for civil rights. On the other hand, Jennifer knew from stâge that Peace Corps volunteers employed local people in various roles. They reasoned they were giving people jobs. Jennifer thought perhaps she could get used to the idea of having a helper, and it might benefit the girl as well. She asked Adija about money.

“No, no, I could not take your money,” Adija said. “I could sleep here, and study. My home is noisy. Perhaps here?” She gestured toward an empty room.

Jennifer thought, What could be the harm? And so, it was arranged. Adija laid a straw mat, two blankets and a pillow on the bare floor. She brought her own kerosene lamp and composition notebooks. Adija shopped at the open-air market and cooked over a wood fire, while Jennifer went to work.

On paper, her assignment was as an agricultural volunteer in charge of managing reforestation projects. Jennifer intended to approach school officials, women’s groups and leaders of community organizations to speak to them about the need to plant fast-growing Moringa saplings to replace the trees they were chopping down. Most of the population cooked with wood “stoves,” which were often nothing more than a metal pot atop a few bricks. The fires would burn all day, and women and girls were forced to trek further and further to gather wood as the forests became depleted. Jennifer planned to attack the problem from another end, as well: teaching a few volunteers from each village how to make fuel-efficient stoves from scrap metal, clay pots, bricks and sand.

Her first weeks in Koussountou consisted of driving out to remote villages on a small motor scooter the Peace Corps had provided and meeting the chefs du villages. Each locale, no matter how tiny, had a chief – a practice Jennifer found slightly comical. She honored the stilted tradition and introduced herself to each group of village denizens as they came out to greet her.

At the end of one long day’s excursions, Jennifer was in her house, relaxing and writing a letter. She had showered off the orange clay dust that her tires had stirred up and that had coated her skin and clothing. From a cushioned chair in her bedroom, she heard a crash in the great room at the center of the house. She and Adija emerged from their bedrooms simultaneously.

“It’s a bat! Un chauve souris!” Adija shrieked. “I will get it!”

As Jennifer cowered and covered her head, Adija ran to the kitchen and grabbed a length of nylon rope. She doubled it to fashion a make-shift whip and began swinging at the bat as it flew near the ceiling.

“Ah!” Adija shouted, laughing, as she whipped the rope at the bat. Jennifer could not decide whether Adija was trying to kill the creature or shoo it out the door.

“Ahh! Ahh!” Adija again shouted, wielding her rope whip. The whip connected, the bat stalled, then it flew higher. Adija yelped with laughter.

Finally, the creature happened on the front doorway and flew to freedom.

Adija bent over, out of breath and still laughing about the chase.

“Were you trying to kill it or chase it away?” Jennifer stammered, still in shock.

Adija didn’t answer. She continued laughing and breathing hard.

The days passed companionably. Jennifer pursued Béninois partners in several area villages to plant saplings and build cookstoves. Adija attended class, cooked dinner and scrubbed their laundry by hand in enormous metal tubs. Jennifer noted that, after a few rounds of laundering, her clothes were tending toward a pink-orange, washed-out hue.

She was pondering this when she noticed the missing underwear. That evening in the yard, as Adija squatted on a small wood stool by the cookstove, Jennifer approached her. The scent of cornmeal and okra sauce rose from the pot. Jennifer had spent the day with some local women, building stoves like this one: mud bricks at the base to contain the wood fire and its heat. She was dirty and spent.

“Adija, hello. Have you seen the red underwear that was in my room? It’s missing. Perhaps it’s with the laundry?”

Adjia turned sharply and looked Jennifer in the eye. “You have so many beautiful things,” she said. “Surely, you won’t miss that.”

Jennifer was taken aback. She hadn’t expected Adija to say she had taken them. But here she was admitting as much.

“Those are mine. You shouldn’t take my things without permission.”

Adija stood to her full height; she was a head shorter than Jennifer. Her muscular body stiffened with defiance.

“I told you that I liked those,” she said. It was a custom in Benin that when a person complimented another’s clothing, jewelry or other belongings, the wearer would hand it over. Make a gift of it. It was a custom that had its origins in inoculating envy.

Jennifer knew about the custom, but she also knew there was no strict obligation to honor it. Certainly, the custom didn’t say the admirer was entitled to come and take the object. Jennifer was outraged.

“You can-not go into my room and take my things! This is wrong. Do you understand right from wrong?”

Adija grew furious. Who was this ungrateful white woman to begrudge her a simple underthing? Jennifer had so many—a rainbow of satin and lace.

Rashly, Adija smacked the bowl of okra stew with the back of her hand. It toppled and splashed into the dirt. Adija ran toward her mother’s hut, tears staining her smoke-covered face. Jennifer watched her go. She settled for peanut butter and jelly for supper. In spite of her exhaustion, she could not sleep. She ran through the arguments again in her mind, and each time came to the same conclusion: Adija was more than wrong. She was in danger of learning all the wrong lessons for a girl of 15.

The next day, returning home, Jennifer saw that Adija’s belongings were gone from the home. This dramatic departure reinforced Jennifer’s concern about Adija’s character. She decided to share the incident with the girl’s parents.

In the morning, Jennifer skipped her usual round of check-ins with village projects and sought out Adija’s mother. She lived in a family compound—a walled enclosure of huts and brick homes. At the center of the compound was a stone-floor gazebo, where men would carve meat from occasional slaughtered animals. Adija’s mother, Izegbe, was propped on a stool at her home’s entrance, nursing an infant.

“Madame,” Jennifer began. She proceeded with the extended series of courtesies she had learned in Bariba. How had her day been? How was her family? How were the people of her village?

Jennifer launched into her story about Adija’s theft. The woman stopped her with a dismissive wave. “I am not concerned with that. That is a matter for Adija’s father.”

Izegbe did not know where to find him. Jennifer decided to try the local “bar”—a one-room concrete structure near the town’s center that served warm bottled soft drinks. Men often gathered on the shaded benches outside. They told Jennifer that Ehioze, Adija’s father, would be in town the following day for market day, the one day a week when traveling merchants set out beans, rice and other goods for sale.

On market day, Jennifer saw him among the men at the bar. He was smartly dressed in a loose, embroidered tunic shirt and matching pants. Jennifer strode toward the group, and several sat up straighter.

“May I speak with you?” she said to Ehioze. He motioned that she should continue. Jennifer had wanted a private word, but she could see by his lolling posture that he was not getting up.

She related the story of the theft. Ehioze remained motionless. When she had finished, he looked into her eyes and nodded his dismissal. Then he turned back to his orange Fanta.

Days later, Jennifer was in bed, under the mosquito netting, when she heard clapping at her entryway. Alone now in the home, she scurried to throw on a pagne to greet the visitor. A young man stood in the doorway. When she asked what he wanted, he said she was invited to a gathering in the village center.

“My chef requests that you come, Mademoiselle. It is very important.”

In a few minutes, hurriedly dressed, Jennifer was striding along the sloping incline to the village center. The center consisted of an expanse of dusty ground surrounded by several small buildings—the bar, a school—partially shaded by an enormous baobab tree. A crowd was gathered, and heads turned as she approached. She moved toward the center of the circle and saw several dignitaries lined up along one side, sitting in folding chairs. The dignitaries, six men, were all dressed in white. Ehioze was among them.

Seeing Jennifer, one of the men spoke a command to someone behind him. Adija emerged, her hands tied in front of her, a sturdy man holding her arm on either side. The men—village elders, the chief, or chef—made up a judicial council. They had ordained that Adjia be beaten for her theft. A third sturdy man followed behind Adija and her guards, rawhide strap in hand.

Grasping what was about to happen, Jennifer moved toward Ehioze to plead with him to stop it.

“Sir, Monsieur, s’il vous plaît …” she began, her throat tightening. “I did not mean …”

He did not look her in the eye. He held up a pitiless hand. Council assistants blocked Jennifer’s path.

Jennifer stood rigid, eyes cast to the hardpan ground, and the beating commenced. Her face and body burned with outrage and shame. She was the cause of this – but it had never been her intention. She had meant to inform the parents, to allow them to counsel their child, to teach her. What cruel lesson was this? What barbarism? This exotic culture, with its courtly greeting rituals and reverence for its ancestors, hid a danger that Jennifer had not even guessed at.

The man with the rawhide strap lashed it across Adija’s back as two other men held her arms. She flinched but didn’t cry out. She was stiff with rage. Her shoulder muscles clenched, and her face was a stony mask.

Another lash—thwap!

Adija was fully clothed, and her punisher did not use a stick. These were mercies decreed by the dignitaries. The intent was less to wound than to humiliate.

In a few minutes, the beating had ended. The crowd began to disperse, anticipating their midday meal. Jennifer slumped toward home, weary and defeated. Tomorrow, she had plans to build cookstoves again with people who had suddenly become strange to her. She was beginning to doubt all she thought she knew about this country.

In bed that night, under her mosquito netting, Jennifer listened to the soothing night sounds. Crickets and cicadas hummed. An occasional baboon squabbled. Amidst this night song, she heard what sounded like the scuffing of a sandal. Then another footfall. Jennifer sat straight up in bed. “Who’s there?” she called out. “Qui est là?”

In another moment, a hand reached in and jerked her from her tented mattress. Two teenage boys began to push her around. She ducked and covered her head, crying out for them to stop. For a moment, Jennifer mentally detached; she seemed to be looking down on the scene from a distance. These could have been teenagers from the Black neighborhoods back home, she observed, but for the sinewy muscles that Africa had sculpted into their physiques. Jennifer had begun to discern African from American by those mesomorphic frames.

As Jennifer cowered in a corner of the kitchen, protected on one side by the small refrigerator, the boys decided that their intimidation work was accomplished and turned to go. Jennifer saw this and hoisted herself up. She stepped forward and grabbed one by the arm. She wanted to ask, “Who are you? Why?” The boy swung widely to shake her off, and she fell back, hitting the floor. This time, she stayed down, shaken and sobbing.

The next day, the village crier moved through Koussountou, calling out to report that the yovo woman had been roughed up in her home. Authorities were searching for her assailants. Adija already knew this. Her friends had told her they’d left Jennifer in a heap in her kitchen. They were long gone, across the border into Nigeria.

Nursing her bruises as she rested in her mother’s hut, Adija thought of an airplane tracing its thin contrail across the sky. She thought of America. She was astonished that Jennifer had alerted her father to the underwear theft, bringing the full force of Beninois patriarchy down on Adija’s head. Her public beating had not been a surprise after that. She had returned beating for beating through her friends … and now? Adija wondered if the Peace Corps would take her again for another summer as a kitchen assistant. She would meet a new American, perhaps. Begin again. Contain her desires to acquire the yovos’ things.

Jennifer lay on the kitchen floor for hours. Her sweat cooled and her tears dried. In the morning, she hired a workman to install wooden shutters on her windows that locked from the inside. He added a second lock to her door. Jennifer stashed the keys in the pack she kept with her.

On her next trip into town, she shopped at the outdoor market and selected a package of plain cotton briefs, like the local women. Handing over her coins, she pulled a package from her pack and asked the vendor to take these and sell them if he wished. Her rainbow colors and lace. She mounted her scooter, thought about a cookstove construction group that was making little progress, and motored off.

What America won’t do

91 other nations have elected a woman to the highest office. What about the U.S.?

First published in Ms., April 27, 2021

“Each time the United States has a new first,” writes Michaud, “I wonder how many more countries have pulled ahead of us with a female chief executive. Seven were elected last year.” (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

The election of Kamala Harris to the vice presidency has been greeted by a welcome, if predictable, flood of accolades. I’ve come to think of them as a chorus of firsts. First woman, first Black woman, first South Asian American and first mom … to hold this lofty post.

People say that their daughters can now picture themselves in Vice President Harris’s place, achieving similar heights.

Forgive me if the chorus of firsts leaves me a bit glass-half-empty. Wikipedia lists 91 countries where women have been elected as heads of state, heads of government, or both. Little girls growing up in Panama have been able to picture themselves leading that nation since 1999. That’s when Mireya Moscoso took office as president.

If Vice President Harris, who was born in 1964, had lived in Sri Lanka, she would have been governed by a female prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She led what was then known as Ceylon from 1960 to 1965.

I think about this list of women leaders from time to time. Each time the United States has a new first—first woman running on a major party ticket (Hillary Clinton), six women vying for their party’s nomination (2020)—I wonder how many more countries have pulled ahead of us with a female chief executive. Seven were elected last year.

I nurse a suspicion that there is something different about American politics, or our society, that makes it so hard for a woman to break through. Is there some cowboy-ness that haunts our national psyche? Some macho bootstraps rugged individualism threading through our fabric that suppresses women?

Harris’s “Chorus of Firsts”

As soon as President Joe Biden announced his choice of Harris, crude remarks about her began showing up on internet chats. People coined the term “heels up Harris,” in reference to her years-ago relationship with then-California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. They made snide remarks about her sleeping her way to the top.

Brown did appoint Harris to two commissions: the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission. However, she went on to win election and then re-elections as San Francisco District Attorney; election and then re-election as California Attorney General; and election as a U.S. senator from California in 2016. Willie Brown did not personally twist the arms of 7.5 million California voters.

The chorus of firsts has risen to Harris’s defense, but in a way that undermines her at the same time. In my opinion, they are focused on the wrong things.

Take the February print cover of Vogue, for example. Harris is depicted in street clothes: a dark blazer, black ankle-length pants and Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers. Vogue chose this photo over another of Harris in a pale blue power suit, which the magazine published with its online story.

Kamala Harris is Vogue’s February 2020 cover star 💗💚 pic.twitter.com/49avubOInF

— Blk Girl Culture (@blkgirlculture) January 10, 2021

Writer Karen Attiah argued in The Washington Post that the photo choice revealed a white patriarchal power elite uncomfortable with Black accomplishment.

Granted, politicians of color face special hurdles in the United States. I covered the New York City mayoral race as a reporter in 2005, and I heard this story from candidate Fernando Ferrer’s advisers about his photo shoot at the New York Times. He arrived wearing a Guayabera, a traditional style for men in Puerto Rico, and posed for a couple of pictures. Then he changed into a business suit for the bulk of the shoot. The Times ran the Guayabera shot.

That said, I find the focus on women’s clothing distasteful. Quick, what’s the first thing you know about White House coronavirus honcho Deborah Birx? The scarves, right? Commentaries on Hillary Clinton’s hairstyles and pantsuits have emptied barrels of ink.

Much less attention goes to the recently passed Senate bill Harris co-sponsored, to help border regions identify the remains of missing migrants—a matter of far more weight. I admire the symbolism of women wearing white to commemorate suffrage or black in support of #MeToo. But let’s maintain a sense of proportion.

Fred Rogers: A model of gentility for coarse times

It was gym class in junior high school, and Jennifer and I were sitting on the bleachers waiting our turn. She began humming a tune, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which opened “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” every day on our TV sets.

Suddenly, she caught herself and turned to me in embarrassment. “Please don’t tell anyone I was singing that,” she begged.

Fred “Mister” Rogers was uncool — along with his sincere messages of self-acceptance, compassion and dealing with complicated feelings like anger.

Still, as kids we watched him. As an adult, I sought him out and interviewed him in September 2000 and April 2001 at his modest public television studio in Pittsburgh. This gentle, authentic soul has something to remind us about today.

We’re at an unprecedented moment in our unwillingness to listen to each other or to recognize our shared humanity. Express a wrong political thought, and you’re unfriended on Facebook. Cocktail party chatter is kept consciously anodyne. We jump the line at the deli counter because we can. Where is the bottom of this spiral of coarsening culture?

Fred Rogers died in 2003, but his ethos is needed now. The Postal Service honored the host of the 33-year TV series with a stamp last week. In this 50th anniversary year of the show’s launch, the service said Rogers “inspired and educated young viewers with warmth, sensitivity, and honesty.”

Earlier this month, WNYC radio named Rogers the first inductee to its Masculinity Vision Board, which is anticipated to contain “portrayals of masculinity, real or fictional, that you find commendable or challenges what’s seen as the status quo.”

Rogers is an antidote in so many ways. For one, he was always curious. He would take his TV audiences on field trips to see how things were made — paper, for example, or crayons. Contrast that with the Trump administration banning words such as “science-based” or “endangered” in government documents.

Rogers thought the entertainment industry should be self-regulating. “We should be thinking, whatever we produce, would we want our families to see it?” he said during one of our interviews.

On the air, Rogers wanted to give kids “the gift of [my] honest self.” He told a story about an invitation he accepted to try out for commercial TV in Manhattan. The producer asked what sort of costume he would wear. He wanted Rogers to come as a clown or something snazzier than a regular guy in a cardigan, so that kids would pay attention. Rogers replied, “Well, it seems to me as if our interview’s over.”

Generations of children paid attention anyway.

The recent focus on a man who stood for honesty and decency is heartening. It might be too idealistic to hope that a commemorative stamp and a film or two could release his spirit to soothe and uplift us.

But, we must have hope. As Mister Rogers liked to remind us, stay in touch with “that deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.”

This is one delivery the Postal Service has executed with perfect timing.

Image: Fred Rogers' widow, Joanne Rogers, with a giant Mister Rogers stamp in Pittsburgh on March 23, 2018. Credit: AP / Gene J. Puskar

his column first appeared in Newsday.

Opinion: Trump immigration policy is irrational

‘J” is a 42-year-old husband, the father of four teenagers and a project manager for a disaster restoration company where he supervises 50 employees. He came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 18.

One mistake in his past, trying to sell drugs in his early 20s, has prevented him from obtaining U.S. citizenship.

“M” emigrated from Somalia at age 13. Now 37, he supports a wife with cancer and three young children, one with severe autism. M has been steadily employed for almost two decades, having put behind him a drug-possession conviction at age 20.

These are two of the 18 people who have turned their lives around and whom Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pardoned at the end of the year in an effort to push back against the increasingly harsh immigration policies coming from the White House. The 18 committed low-level offenses and have built solid lives in the years, and sometimes decades, since their convictions.

A youthful crime, a punishment paid, and now a life that supports others — they could be our neighbors. They could be us. Everything we know about human nature tells us that people who make the most of a second chance deserve to hold on to it.

The governor’s December pardons might remove barriers to jobs, volunteer opportunities and the pursuit of citizenship.

This is the second time that Cuomo has used his powers of clemency partly as a rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s immigration initiatives. Before last month, Cuomo had pardoned seven immigrants. However, the pardons are an uncertain guarantee. The governor’s office did not release the new 18 names, so as not to identify them to federal immigration officials who could still target them.

Trump began pressing on this emotion-laden issue during his second week in office with the order to temporarily ban entry by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. And on Thursday, he used a vile expletive to describe immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and African countries.

In between, he tried to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting 800,000 Dreamers, though a federal judge has challenged whether he can, and Trump has canceled one after another temporary protected status designation, the most recent for Salvadorans, the largest immigrant community on Long Island. He wants to beef up Southern border security and restrict family migration policy.

What good does it do to deport responsible fathers, husbands and employees in our communities? What will happen to J’s four teenagers or M’s wife? Can we afford to ignore that they will fall into our social safety net and ring up costs to taxpayers?

Some argue that people here illegally should go back to their home countries and get in line for legal immigration. Come back the right way. However, that process can take many years, and meanwhile, what happens to their families here? People live day by day; we don’t subsist on ideologues’ would-be purity. What’s more, Trump seems to abhor even legal immigration, mischaracterizing the diversity visa lottery program as countries sending us “the worst of the worst.”

Back on Cuomo’s list, “F,” a 45-year-old émigré from the Dominican Republic, is caring for his ill wife and has a daughter serving in the U.S. Navy. “N,” 44, came from Trinidad and Tobago, and his elderly mother relies on him for her care.

These individuals are living the ideal of caring for family and community in a way that exemplifies American values. Deporting these neighbors would be irresponsible, irrational and costly. It’s time to rethink Trump’s direction on immigration.

Image: President Donald Trump holds a meeting on immigration issues on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, at the White House. On Thursday, he reportedly used a slur to refer to immigrants from certain countries. Credit: Bloomberg / Andrew Harrer

This column first appeared in Newsday.

An affair, a lie, and a Conservative government came tumbling down

Christine Keeler, the woman at the heart of a 1963 scandal that helped oust the dominant Conservative Party, died on Dec. 4 at age 75.

She was just 19 when, working as a model and night club dancer, she took lovers from opposite sides of the Cold War: British War Minister John Profumo and Soviet Embassy attaché Yevgeny Ivanov.

Questioned about the affair by a Parliamentary foe who suspected there were Russian spies around every corner, Profumo lied and said nothing inappropriate had taken place between them. Later in life, he claimed he lied to protect his wife, stage and screen actress Valerie Hobson.

But that didn't buy him a pass. He was forced to resign, and his mentor Prime Minister Harold Macmillan barely survived a vote of no confidence. He announced his resignation months later, and the following election ended a 13-year run for Britain's Conservatives.

The Hobson-Profumo marriage is one of the nine I wrote about in Why They Stay. Here's an excerpt from my book, along with my wish that Ms. Keeler will rest in peace.

First, though, a word of explanation about the first line, which references the White Queen. In Why They Stay, I proposed that today's political marriages are not so different from centuries-old sovereign unions, such as that of medieval queen Elizabeth Woodville, grandmother to King Henry VIII. She's known today as the White Queen, and her loyalty to the Tudor dynasty surmounted her desire for a faithful marriage. In Why They Stay, I argued that contemporary political couples make the same sorts of compromises because of the unique set of standards and pressures they face.

Valerie and Jack are the first of our modern White Queen couples to face live press scrutiny. Unlike the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, whose infidelities were revealed many years after their time in office, the Profumos suffered their downfall and humiliation in real time. They struggled with the glare of publicity on political couples. First, Valerie and Jack retreated into the bunker of the private space they had constructed together. The day after Jack’s resignation, hundreds of reporters around the world were looking for him. In an attempt to stay ahead of and away from the press, he moved around the English countryside to the homes of various relatives and friends, with Valerie and their sons David, 7, and Mark, 12. They stayed at the Suffolk home of Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, who referred to the Profumos’ visit as “operation sanctuary.” Back in London, Jack’s secretary Pam Plumb fended off the media. Journalists posed as private detectives hired by the Profumos to get her to reveal their whereabouts. The editor of the Daily Telegraph invited Plumb to lunch.

During this time, one imagines that Valerie and Jack were in urgent discussion about how to choose their moment and method for a public resurfacing. Future couples would call press conferences to declare their positions, but the Profumos didn’t have role models to steer by. Instead, true to Valerie’s training on stage, they planned an elaborate pantomime of marital support. Nearly two weeks after Jack’s resignation, the couple returned home to their high-ceilinged town house in the tony neighborhood of Chester Terrace, overlooking the tranquil grandeur of London’s Regent’s Park. A police escort led Valerie and Jack through the cluster of news reporters. Looking composed, Valerie wore a headscarf and white gloves. They made their way through the silent crowd. Soon the mob jostled and called out. Valerie turned, looked at her husband, and clasped his hand in hers as they made their way to their front door. It was an image of solidarity inspiring both sympathy and admiration.

Looking back from our era of regular public revelations of adultery by political leaders, it’s hard to understand how incendiary the Profumo scandal was to the western world. Just a month earlier, in May 1963, sexy starlet Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” at Madison Square Garden to President John Kennedy, marking what we now know was a yearslong series of liaisons between the two—but that relationship was relegated to whispers among press reporters, not scolding editorials published in the country’s leading newspapers.

The Profumo Affair profoundly altered British society, emboldening the press and rocking people’s faith in their leaders. It gave lie to the belief that those born into the ruling class were inherently superior and destined to lead, making room for lower-born folks to rise through the political ranks on merit. Sixteen years later, a grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister. David Profumo, the only biological son of John and Valerie, wrote that it has become an article of faith that “my father’s behaviour was instrumental in changing the heartbeat of our society.”

Opinion: Women in politics are upending Washington culture

It’s very tough to break a glass ceiling when you’re busy protecting your backside against groping hands.

Allegations of sexual harassment are swirling like autumn leaves around Congress, statehouses and, really, any place you find politicians in power. The culture has been unmasked — and Congress looks more like a bacchanal than a sober domain for public policy.

There seems to be a connection between the frat house culture and the lopsided lack of representation of women in American political life. We need more women in politics, not fewer, and these sexist escapades are one more way those in power build barriers to entry.

Because sexual harassment isn’t about attraction, it’s about power, and power is the currency of politics. According to the Congressional Office of Compliance, U.S. taxpayers spent $900,000 in fiscal 2017 to settle harassment and other workplace complaints.

The numbers are still paltry: Just 19.6 percent of Congress is female. Only six of 50 governors are women, and just 25 percent of state legislators.

We know how the efforts to elect a woman president, to date, have turned out. But there’s hope. Women, gathering strength in numbers from the #MeToo social media reckoning, are outing male politicians’ bad behavior.

On Thursday, the Senate Ethics Committee opened an inquiry into Sen. Al Franken, who has apologized for sexual misconduct allegations, including at least one case after his election.

And accusations against Rep. John Conyers — as well as stinging criticism by Rep. Kathleen Rice of Garden City, among a generation of female members of Congress pushing against the sexist culture in Washington — persuaded House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday to call for his resignation.

Women in Washington are pressuring Congress to finally and seriously deal with sexual harassment in that workplace. What’s more, women outside of Washington are also more interested in running for political office — perhaps exponentially growing their ranks in positions of power.

Some 22,000 women have reached out to Emily’s List about running for office next year, including in local and state races, the group told The Hill. A typical year’s traffic for the organization is about 900 women.

If these women run and win, will they change the culture of politics? That’s possible, but it will be difficult. It can be counterproductive to speak up about a colleague or a potential mentor. Gayle Goldin, a Rhode Island state senator, penned an op-ed for Glamour last week saying, “Politics is all about relationships. We aren’t just making friends at work; we’re building rapport to advance our legislative agenda.”

Political chumminess has routinely worked to dismiss women’s stories. Deanna Maher, who was an aide for Conyers in the 1990s and has accused him of harassment, told CNN she thought about reporting his alleged behavior for years, but she didn’t think she would be believed until the #MeToo wave. “These members protect each other,” she said.

Female politicians face hostility from online trolls, too, which seems intended to silence them and send them out of the public sphere. In a short video by the Women’s Media Center, a non-profit group that raises women’s visibility, several women politicians told about gender-based insults and threats of death or rape.

Such tirades are meant not only to intimidate women, but also to keep us silent. This isn’t something we can tolerate in our politics. Not in the past, and especially not now, just as more and more women are finding their political voices. It’s not enough just to find our voices, but to raise them, even when someone else doesn’t like it.

This column first appeared in Newsday.

Opinion: Alabama Senate candidacy may redefine decency

Nov. 16, 2017

Pity the politician, enmeshed in a sex scandal, who can't decide, should I stay, or should I go?

For the moment, GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama is defiantly holding on. Even as party leaders abandon him after accusations that he molested a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old girl when he was a single man in his 30s, Moore apparently hopes voters will feel otherwise come the Dec. 12 special election.

And why should he not? Voters send confusing signals about how much character matters in a politician. History tells us that men can get away with many forms of sexual transgression and still get elected. Moore may be gambling that he'll ride out the initial scandal storm and be one of the fortunate ones.

Of course, not all political sex scandals are made equal. The accusations about Moore are repulsive: hanging around the Gadsden Mall in Alabama or a local restaurant, meeting teenage girls, and admittedly dating women so young he had to ask their moms' permission. If he stays in the race and is elected, his candidacy would significantly redraw the line of what's acceptable behavior for public figures.

Also, and this is important, Moore has denied abusing the women. In the absence of a criminal or Senate ethics committee investigation, all we have to go on are the women's words against his.

One politician who remained electable, to the surprise of many, was Rep. Mark Sanford, South Carolina's 1st District representative in the U.S. House. Sanford is the former governor of that state who disappeared for a week in 2009, out of contact with his family or security detail, saying he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. In fact, he had been visiting his Argentine lover. He called her his "soul mate" in the immediate aftermath, divorced his wife of 20 years, was elected to serve in Washington in 2013 and ran unopposed in 2014.

Also there's David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who spoke to teenagers about abstinence before marriage, until it was disclosed that he had been a client of "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Like Vitter, Moore burnishes "conservative Christian" credentials. Vitter was re-elected, post-scandal, to the U.S. Senate.

Disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner had a brief shot at a second political life when he ran for New York City mayor in 2013, until a new accuser began speaking about his sexting to the media. Voters elected Bill Clinton president in 1992, after Gennifer Flowers claimed they had had a long-time affair; Clinton denied it. And, of course, voters awarded the highest prize in politics last year to Donald Trump, an admitted playboy, adulterer and accused assaulter.

Following his video about grabbing women's genitals and allegations of sexual harassment, which Trump denies, many in the GOP distanced themselves from him, thinking his chances of winning were hopeless.

Now, many senior Republicans say Moore should drop out of his Senate race. If he stays in, his fate will lie not with them but with Alabama voters. Will they stretch their character requirements to embrace an alleged predator?

Not that long ago, American politicians didn't have a prayer if they were even divorced. In 1980, Ted Kennedy dragged his wife Joan on the presidential campaign trail, even though it meant she would have to respond to embarrassing questions about her battles with alcoholism. Her presence helped tamp down criticism partly stemming from the Chappaquiddick controversy.

Given time, divorce, adultery, hypocrisy and even suspected assault are flaws voters have overlooked. It will be a sad day when and if we enlarge that circle to include molesting adolescents.

Opinion: My story of sexual harassment at work: All-too-typical #MeToo

First published in Newsday, Oct. 26, 2017

The news is awash with stories of powerful men preying on women at work. After settling a woman's lawsuit in January for $32 million - an astounding figure - Bill O'Reilly inked a new four-year employment contract with Fox News.

It seems Fox and others have a profound desire not to heed a victim's story when it might mean losing a revenue-generator like O'Reilly.

Since the recent revelations about film mogul Harvey Weinstein, Amazon Studios' Roy Price and New Orleans chef John Besh, more than 1.7 million women have tweeted #MeToo to say they also have been victims of sexual harassment or assault, many in the workplace. Is this a moment of enlightenment? A final end to harassment? I'm skeptical, but I believe there are ways we can each help to reduce it.

First, a story.

When I was in grad school in Manhattan, I was having trouble with my desktop computer, and the manufacturer sent a technician to my apartment to help. My four roommates were out. When the tech finished, he asked me to kiss him. I refused. I called his office to report him, but the woman on the phone didn't believe me.

Months later, as I was graduating and looking for a job, an editor from my former newspaper called unexpectedly. He said he could get me an internship at a prestigious New York newspaper if I would share a bottle of wine with him. I said I would get back to him about that. Later, getting together with some of my colleagues, male and female, who knew him, I told them what he had said. My story was met with uncomfortable silence.

I accepted an internship, instead, at a large West Coast newspaper, and drove my Mitsubishi Colt across the country, where I rented a room in a home where the owner was looking for a couple of tenants. Within a few days, I woke to the sound of my landlord masturbating outside my bedroom door. I froze, and later called police to report him. As I sat in the cruiser giving my report, it became clear that the police officer was mocking me. I left as soon as was politely possible.

I mentioned this incident to an editor at my paper, and he offered to let me stay at his place. I did, for about two weeks. There were just the two of us in the house, and I was wary. But he didn't try anything, and I was grateful. His kindness allowed me to get on my feet and spend another five years working for that newspaper.

Later, when I mentioned my story to another intern, she said I had been stupid to rent that first room. Perhaps.

It would be nice if that editor's kindness were the happy ending to my story.

However, I encountered another editor after a while who made comments about women's breasts and men's genitals. I told him the comments made me uncomfortable, but they didn't stop. I discussed his talk with human resources. The woman there said she would counsel my editor, and she advised me to find another job. I did.

Years later, now as a married woman with two children, I reported to another editor who would stop by my desk and make suggestive remarks about my underwear and the state of my marriage. Two colleagues who could overhear said to me, how can you stand that? I just shrugged. The years had taught me that speaking to HR or even to friends wouldn't elicit justice or even sympathy. I put my energy into finding another job.

Last week, in an op-ed in The New York Times, actress Lupita Nyong'o wrote about her harassment at the hands of Weinstein. "I wish I had known that there were ears to hear me," she wrote. "That justice could be served. There is clearly power in numbers."

I wish so, too. When a friend or an employee speaks about this, don't ignore it. And maybe, offer to put her up, or at least back her up, until she regains her pride and sense of safety.

This column first appeared in Newsday.

Opinion: Climate whistleblower Joel Clement deserves public support

First published in Newsday, Oct. 13, 2017

Joel Clement was a senior scientist who had been working to relocate Alaskan villages doomed by rising seas. That is, until he resigned last week from the Interior Department with a noisy takedown of the Trump administration.

In a memo to his boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Clement wrote, "I believe you retaliated against me for disclosing the perilous impacts of climate change upon Alaskan Native communities and for working to help get them out of harm's way."

In June, Clement was removed as director of policy analysis, his memo says, and reassigned to auditing "when I have no background in that field." He filed for whistleblower protection under federal law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, he's one of about 50 people shuffled at the Interior Department, which is responsible for the management and conservation of federal land. This apparent sidelining of senior voices is troubling and just the most recent example among federal employees.

A leader with a vital obligation of stewardship of the nation's lands must have an open ear to the career people who've dedicated their lives to the mission. It's one thing to disagree, but to silence knowledge is foolhardy.

Last month before the National Petroleum Council, Zinke said some of his new staff were problematic. "I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag," he remarked, according to The Associated Press.

As a former U.S. Navy commander, Zinke perhaps has a more rigid sense of what it means to follow a leader. Science asks questions.

These clashes are to be expected in the disruptive age promised by President Donald Trump. He's named Cabinet secretaries who don't seem to believe in the missions of the agencies they run. Zinke, a one-term congressman from Montana, has seesawed on human contribution to climate change. He recently recommended shrinking the boundaries of protected national monuments and, according to Clement's memo, has "played fast and loose with government regulations to score points with your political base."

However, even in the transparent age pledged by President Barack Obama, whistleblowers weren't welcomed. His Justice Department prosecuted Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, who at one point faced 35 years in prison for allegedly violating the Espionage Act.

Think of the privacy we might have forfeited if Drake hadn't exposed the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of individuals inside the United States. He lost his job and years of his career to fighting the charges, eventually pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor involving misuse of NSA computers.

Dissenters have played a crucial role in our history. Publication of the Pentagon Papers showed the government deliberately misled Americans about the Vietnam War. Mark Felt revealed the Nixon administration's involvement in campaign crimes. Biochemist Jeffrey Wigand disclosed that tobacco companies manipulated cigarette blends to make them more addictive. As a result of speaking out, he received death threats.

Clement is promising to travel the same road. "You have not silenced me," he wrote to Zinke in his resignation memo. "I will continue to be an outspoken advocate for action."

However, as many whistleblowers have discovered, that vocation can be rocky. In his 2001 book, "Whistleblowers," political scientist C. Fred Alford wrote of his interviewees, "almost all say they wouldn't do it again." They had been "broken" by job loss and what they learned about the world after blowing the whistle.

That's a sad commentary on the cost and value of truth-telling. People in Alaska might pay with their towns, and possibly with their lives.

Essay: Writing while parenting

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton was so kind as to feature my essay "Caution: Writing While Parenting" today on her '1st Books" blog. In the essay, I wrote that completing a book while raising two daughters through their teenage years was a piece of performance art -- a demonstration of persistence and grit that I hope they will emulate.

Check out the blog post and add your comments by clicking here. Or click here to purchase a copy of Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, a nonfiction account featuring Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy and more, available in print, ebook and audiobook.

Meg Waite Clayton's most recent novel, The Race for Paris, is a highly enjoyable and rigorously researched tale of WWII women journalists pursuing the big story. For more information and to purchase a copy, check it out by clicking here.

Meanwhile, here's my essay:

Caution: Writing While Parenting

Forty-five minutes before I was scheduled to discuss my book in front of a crowd at a local library, the program director and I were chatting. Adorned in chunky azure jewelry, she asked, what did my family think of my success?

“This book has been a piece of performance art,” I began, “conducted for a very small audience: my two daughters.” She laughed, getting my joke.

Many will tell you that becoming a parent hinders one’s art. I remember reading an interview with the talented author Pam Houston, in which she said her mother advised her not to have children or her life would become ordinary.

Rarely do we hear that having children watching can drive an artist forward.

After my second daughter was born, I stayed home with my girls for about three years. I tried many rhythms for our days but found it usually worked best to get out of the house in the morning for a walk, a shop or a play date.

Soon, I went back to work full time as a journalist. Weekend mornings, I would observe my husband and daughters enjoying “CatDog” or “The Fairly OddParents” on TV and wonder, do I have the energy to motivate all four of us out the door? Is a morning on the couch really so bad after a full week of work and school and gymnastics class and music lessons?

I felt anxious at times during these days, the kind of anxiety that psychologists call free-floating. Yes, kids in front of the television made me feel like a bad mother, but there was more. I felt as though there was something, undefined, that I should be doing. I signed up for a class on how to write a non-fiction book proposal. This meant that I was out late one night a week, getting home long after the girls had gone to bed, and I spent more time when I was home sequestered with my assignments. This caused me added guilt about my mothering, but the strange anxiety diminished.

Over the course of about five years, I would write and quit, start again and quit. After one long hiatus, I engaged a writing coach who, via Skype, helped me find pockets of time. I spoke into a digital recorder while commuting. I sent myself snippets in emails from home to work, and vice versa. I woke up early. I walked my daughters to the school bus stop and then put in an hour of writing before heading to my newspaper office.

My daughters never said they would be disappointed in me if I quit for good, but I felt it. Each time they witnessed me packing off to the library for a couple of hours, making notes on a draft or otherwise giving time to this dream of mine, it solidified my commitment to keep going. I couldn’t break off and admit that it had been wasted time or, worse, that I had given up on myself.

Eventually I secured an agent and a book contract.

My daughters are a junior and a freshman in college now. They’ve witnessed the physical book arrive from the printer, and their mother with index card notes in hand, rehearsing for book talks. They’ve offered useful suggestions on blog posts before I hit “publish.”

This year, while my older daughter was home for summer break, she took a class online that required group participation. Some in the group were slackers. When she complained, the professor said, “Figure it out.” She did.

This isn’t unusual, for either daughter. They have grit, they persist and they pursue their passions. Each time I see this, I take a little internal bow.

-- Anne Michaud

Opinion: New York should pass aid-in-dying legislation

Sept. 28, 2017

When New York's highest court ruled earlier this month that terminally ill people do not have a state constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide, you might have expected advocates to be dejected.

However, advocates pushing the State Legislature to pass a law are snatching hope from defeat. Corinne Carey, New York campaign director for Compassion & Choices, said in an interview, "In some ways, this wasn't a surprise at all to us that the court said this is the legislature's job."

Three years of lobbying state lawmakers often ended with a noncommittal, "Let's see what the court says," Carey recalled. Now, the question is in the hands of legislators, and Compassion & Choices plans a strong push for becoming the seventh state to pass a law, in 2018. They've met with or are seeking meetings with all lawmakers and will lobby Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. They plan rallies at the Capitol.

Terminally ill people should have the option to request pills from their physician to end their suffering, provided there are adequate safeguards. The Medical Aid in Dying Act proposed in New York would require two doctors to agree that a patient 18 or older has an incurable illness with no more than six months to live, and that he or she has the mental capacity to make such a decision.

Nobody but the patient could raise this option - not a family member, not a doctor. This is self-determination at a time when fears are profound: of suffering, of prolonged existence hooked up to hospital machines.

Many never take the prescription, but request it for peace of mind and a trace of control over their destinies. In Oregon, the state with the longest experience with assisted suicide, at nearly two decades, some 35 percent who had the life-ending pills didn't take them. They died from their illnesses. Oregon seems to exist on a separate planet in the view of many New Yorkers, but California is a closer cousin. Last year, the Golden State began allowing aid in dying. In the first six months California's law was in effect, 111 people ended their lives that way.

California doctors were caught off guard by the new law, said Dr. Jessica Zitter, a specialist in critical and palliative care in Oakland and author of "Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life."

However, she and other California physicians report that the law has led to frank and vital conversations about patients' fears and needs, and what defines quality of life. "It has led to access to a lot more support for patients," Zitter said in an interview.

Sometimes physicians adjust patients' medicines or treatments. Before these conversations, patients might not have expressed how much pain they were in. Some opt to go to hospice earlier than they otherwise would have.

Carey of Compassion & Choices is taking heart from the West Coast experience. People often viewed assisted suicide or palliative care as either-or - either a lethal dose or more effort to ease symptoms. Now, Carey said, it's becoming clear that "we're better working together on end-of-life care."

Sponsored by Assemb. Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale) and Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island), New York's bill has 31 co-sponsors - and public support: 77 percent of New Yorkers told EaglePoint Strategies in September 2015 that they agree with access to assisted suicide.

Large health care groups are also shifting on this issue. The New York State Public Health Association and New York State Academy of Family Physicians favor the proposed law. The Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State has dialed back its opposition. One holdout is the largest New York physicians group, the Medical Society of the State of New York.

For this important option, 2018 may be the year.

Opinion: Sears declines as a middle-class icon

Sept. 14, 2017

My husband and I went to Sears in East Northport recently to pick over the remains. Sears Holdings Corp. announced 265 store closings this year, and this is one of them.

Sears, the grandparent of retail, has shuttered 1 in 3 stores since 2010 under the leadership of a former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund manager, Edward S. Lampert. He is telling the business media that the chain, which also includes some Kmart stores that are closing, can be smaller and make money. Meanwhile, Lampert has protected his investment through real estate-finance acrobatics, according to BusinessInsider.com, and more than 200,000 Sears jobs have disappeared.

As we wandered past the $5 discount T-shirts on the first floor at the East Northport store, I was reminded of the role of Sears in the American middle class and the evolving U.S. economy: It was long a source of decently compensated jobs, quality tools and reliable appliances, but is now high on some retail analysts' list of retailers likely to file for bankruptcy protection.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. held an iconic place in America. Founded in 1886, it served people by mail-order in remote parts of the growing country. They could order rifles, stoves and entire pre-fab houses. Sears sold more than 70,000 pre-fab homes in North America between 1908 and 1940.

My husband's aunt lives in one, put together in the early 1920s for the original owner, a schoolteacher, in the tiny coal-mining town of Princeton, West Virginia. It's a fine two-story house that has worn well.

Other Sears brands have stood for sturdiness that buyers could count on: DieHard car batteries, Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools with their lifetime warranties. Sears management has been spinning off these brands to raise cash and stanch Sears' debt. In 2014, the company sold Lands' End, and at the start of 2017, Stanley Black & Decker bought Craftsman.

The durable, finely engineered tools were what drew us to the East Northport store. We rode the escalator to the second floor, where tools were selling for as much as 75 percent off. My husband had been eyeing socket sets and adaptable wrenches. When I told him that Stanley now owned the line, he said, "Oh, good. That's a good company."

We lose a little something of ourselves when the things we've grown up with disappear. He was glad Craftsman had found a good home.

To me, Sears was the publisher of the Wish Book, a catalog of hundreds of pages that signaled the start of the Christmas season when it arrived each year at our home. My brothers and sisters and I would leaf through, making long lists of what we hoped Santa would bring. From toy trucks to G.I. Joe, from Barbie Dream Houses to bicycles. Had we been inclined, we could have ordered matching pajamas for the entire family, tree ornaments or even fruitcakes.

As America grew after the Second World War, Sears broadened its business to include appliance showrooms featuring refrigerators, dishwashers, stoves and washers and dryers. My parents' generation thought of these as durable investments. Now, with the rise of online shopping - expected to reach more than $500 billion a year in the United States by 2020 - Sears conceded to new shopping habits and made a deal with Amazon in July to sell its Kenmore appliances online.

Back at the store in East Northport, I wondered about the "1-year warranty" on the flashlight we bought, as well as the "$45 in surprise points" we received at the register toward a subsequent appliance purchase. These seemed to be promises of stability in the future. Are they worth the paper they're printed on?

Opinion: Business leaders abandon Trump after Charlottesvile remarks

White nationalists were courting publicity when they organized their Unite the Right gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend. Perhaps predictably, the attention is now cutting both ways.

Groups that had mostly existed on the fringes of society moved fully into the foreground, emboldened by a president they perceive as sympathetic. After President Donald Trump reacted to the violence on Saturday, neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer analyzed his remarks this way: "He didn't attack us . . . He implied the antifa are haters . . . He said he loves us all."

Late Tuesday, Trump reaffirmed this false equivalency by blaming "both sides" for the violent death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

As Trump two-steps his way around his unleaderlike remarks, tech companies are decoupling themselves from association with the alt-right, and the chief executives of some of country's largest companies are distancing themselves from the president.

Wouldn't it be ironic, and heartening, if the people Unite the Right managed to bring together are the rest of us in this country who stand against racism and ethnic hatred?

GoDaddy, a domain registrar, and then Google stopped hosting The Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi website and a vital platform for promoting the Charlottesville rally. GoDaddy acted after the site published a sexist and derogatory rant about Heyer. A spokeswoman said The Daily Stormer had crossed the line into promoting violence, violating GoDaddy's policy.

Several other websites frequented by the far right, such as Vanguard America, also were forced into silence. The crowdfunding website GoFundMe removed campaigns to raise money for the driver charged with speeding into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heyer. And Airbnb banned Unite the Right participants from renting properties in Charlottesville.

Yesterday, faced with a slew of defections from his major business advisory councils over his comments on the Charlottesville violence, Trump disbanded his Manufacturing Council and Strategy & Policy Forum.

But pushing these fringe white nationalist groups back to the margins is not without risk, of course. Eric Stern, a professor specializing in crisis and emergency management at the University at Albany, cautions that cutting off such groups can run afoul of other important values like freedom of expression, freedom of association and the ability to monitor their online activities. "We're dealing with a lot of value complexity here," he said yesterday.

My concern is less noble: that these groups will use their outsider status to reinforce their sense of victimization, to crow about their free speech rights, and to recruit members to the cause that is never very far from their minds - inciting a race war in America. Dylann Roof, who embraced the symbols of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, hoped to ignite such a war when he killed nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.

But social media companies aren't elected officials or public agencies, and the First Amendment exists to restrict government's power, not that of corporations. The companies are gingerly citing carefully written policies, such as GoDaddy's against promoting violence, or Airbnb's requirement that members of its community accept people regardless of race, age and other personal attributes.

These are difficult lines to draw. But the country must if it's to marginalize white supremacists and their racist vitriol.

Opinion: NY should further limit solitary confinement

Before he turned his life around, Victor Pate spent 15 years, on and off, in New York State prisons on convictions of robbery and weapons possession. Roughly 2 years were spent in solitary confinement; his longest single stretch was 90 days.

In solitary, Pate said, he "began to transform" within the first week, lose touch with reality and hallucinate. He was deprived of conversation, alone for 23 hours a day. The nonviolent breach that got him isolated in the first place, he said, was a rule infraction: having too many bed sheets in his cell.

Solitary "is torture," Pate said in an interview. "It doesn't do anything to encourage a person to be better. I don't see how it can be considered rehabilitation."

Today, 22 years out of prison, Pate, 65, lives in Harlem and is an organizer for the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. CAIC's parent group, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, has targeted New York as one of about 15 states where it has a chance to minimize the use of solitary confinement.

Isolating violent prisoners is necessary, of course. But the punishment is overused, receives almost no oversight apart from the prison staff, and, according to CAIC, is disproportionately imposed on young people, African-Americans and people with mental illness. Isolation can exacerbate mental illness, and even stable people can deteriorate psychologically.

At a time when segments of society are questioning mass incarceration and moving toward rehabilitation and smoother re-entry of ex-prisoners into civilian life, New Yorkers need to take a hard look at how solitary is being used in our state.

State prisons here isolate about 4,500 people on any given day, which is more than 9 percent of the population and double the 4.4 percent national average. Many people spend months or years in solitary. Each year, hundreds are released directly from solitary to the streets.

New York agreed to some reforms in 2015, but activists say they don't go far enough.

Claire Deroche, a member of CAIC, said the group has tried for four years to pass a state law, the Humane Alternatives to Long Term Solitary Confinement Act, or HALT. In the last legislative session, it had 70 sponsors in the Assembly and 19 in the Senate. Even so, the bill didn't so much as move out of committee in the Assembly.

The bill would limit isolation to 15 days and move people after that to residential rehabilitation units, with therapy, support to address underlying causes of behavior, and seven hours a day out of a cell in programs or recreation. No one younger than 21 or who has a mental disability would be placed in isolation, and people headed for solitary would receive legal representation.

Deroche says she got involved with CAIC in 2012, when she learned that people with mental illness were "cruelly" being isolated. Federal prisons prohibit the use of solitary for mentally ill people, but a Bureau of Prisons report issued last month said the ban is often violated.

Deroche's commitment deepened when she realized that a correction officer, not a judge, is the official making the call to confine someone alone. There's a hearing, but according to CAIC, 95 percent of correction officer recommendations stand.

Something as minor as asking for a towel can get an inmate labeled a troublemaker, Pate says, and isolation becomes more frequent.

Activists were encouraged two years ago when the Obama administration banned solitary in federal prisons for juveniles. But the current administration in Washington is sending opposite signals around criminal justice, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions perceived as harsh on such issues.

So, activists will focus their efforts on state legislatures.

Opinion: In a nod to helicopter parenting, colleges embrace parents at freshman orientation

Jennifer Neill returned from college orientation with her firstborn, astonished by the vanity, lack of common sense and immaturity - and it wasn't the freshmen that made her cringe. It was their parents.

At home in suburban Pittsburgh, she shared her thoughts on Facebook in a group for parents of teens and young adults.

"I'm seriously worried about this generation's ability to survive, let alone thrive with parents like some of these!" Neill posted above a photo of a dazed-looking Lucy Ricardo.

Other parents responded with horror stories about ridiculous questions put to college administrators at freshman orientation. Who keeps track of when they come home at night? Who makes sure they go to class? You'll call us if they don't, right?

One mom wanted to know whether the cafeteria staff would remind her son not to eat foods he's allergic to.

"I was thinking, when can I get out of here?" Neill said in an interview. "The questions were killing me and not something we should be worrying about at this stage with our kids!"

Helicopter parents are good for plenty of eye-rolling, but what surprised me most was that parents were attending freshman summer orientation with their kids. Isn't this a time for letting go?

What I came to learn is that while colleges and universities once held parents at arm's length, the majority now embrace them by scheduling parallel orientation sessions for each generation. They show up at the same time, and administrators present the information each set of newbies needs to know.

Just a decade ago, a Vermont campus I know of used "bouncers" to keep parents away from their kids' class selection sessions. Today, the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, at the University of South Carolina, says 88 percent of four-year institutions include orientation activities for family members.

It would appear that colleges have bowed to the desires of over-involved parents to be enmeshed just a while longer in their offspring's adulthood.

"Over my career in higher education, since 2003, I've seen an increased attention to this on campuses," said Dallin Young, assistant director for research at the National Resource Center. "Early on, the attitude was, let them be adults already. There's been a shift in the mentality."

Partly that's a result of parents pushing to make it so. They're going to show up anyway, administrators figured, so why not turn them into partners? Parents might notice students struggling before staff do. The Wall Street Journal noted this week a doubling of university mental health counselors in residence in the past two years.

Another factor is the soaring cost of college, which makes parents more custodial about their investments. And more students who might have skipped college in the past because of learning disabilities or because their parents didn't earn college degrees, now believe a degree is essential to making a good living.

But including parents at orientation begs the question: When does the letting go begin? I confess, I sent my rising freshman to orientation by herself. She drove more than three hours to get there. I was nervous, but September will be the real deal, and I thought it would be better for her to take a small step now.

Or perhaps I just didn't want to be the parent asking the clueless question in front of the others. Will the university staff make sure she cleans her room?

I can see the bouncer walking my way now.

Opinion: All colleges should remove this barrier to people who've served time

Applying to college requires providing a colossal amount of information. There's one question that, more than most, causes many would-be students to give up: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Checking "yes" on the box while applying to one of the State University of New York's 64 campuses has meant receiving another slew of paperwork and inquiries - some of which cross the lines of privacy or are impossible to answer, according to a study by the Center for Community Alternatives, a prisoners rights organization. The group counted 38 additional documents the schools have required felons to provide.

At that point, two out of three felons give up. An admissions committee never has a chance to learn the details of the crime, or whether the person has put that chapter in his or her past. It's like saying a person's future can rise only as high as the worst mistake he or she has made.

As a society that wants to help people to reintegrate after serving time, with a fair chance of success, that's not good enough.

As a society that wants to help people to reintegrate after serving time, with a fair chance of success, that's not good enough.

Starting July 1, the beginning of the fall 2018 admissions cycle, SUNY will no longer ask that question before considering students for admission. That makes SUNY the nation's largest higher education system to reverse course. Some public university systems, such as California's and The City University of New York, don't ask about criminal history.

SUNY made this decision after considering the applicant drop-off rate reported in the Center for Community Alternatives' recent study. More than 86 other higher education systems and institutions around the country also have committed to distance their admissions decisions from criminal records, as part of the Obama administration's Fair Chance Higher Education Pledge in favor of expanding college opportunity for Americans who've served time behind bars.

This comes at a time of increasing fear that overpopulated prisons are simply turning out better-trained criminals who cycle back into the justice system at a high cost, both in terms of dollars and wasted lives.

Only after a student is accepted will a SUNY school ask about felony convictions, for the purposes of approving campus housing, clinical or field experiences, internships or study abroad programs. SUNY's information technology folks have even figured out how to hide the "felony" question when Common Application users apply for admission.

SUNY's decision is laudable, especially because getting a higher education is one of the best ways for former inmates to increase their chances of staying out of trouble.

College and Community Fellowship, a Manhattan-based group that helps formerly incarcerated women obtain college degrees, says 66 percent of incarcerated non-degree earners nationwide are likely to return to prison within three years of release. The likelihood drops to 5.6 percent with a bachelor's degree and less than 1 percent for people who earn a master's.

New Hour for Women and Children-LI, a nonprofit based in Brentwood, is trying to replicate CCF's program on Long Island. While SUNY's strides to "ban the box" asking about felonies will help many here, particularly at community colleges, it won't apply to private colleges and universities such as Hofstra, Adelphi, Touro, LIU Post or St. Joseph's.

Efforts to obtain details on their admissions policies went unanswered. Only New York Institute of Technology responded; it doesn't ask for criminal histories from applicants.

Bills in the State Legislature that would have banned the box for all New York colleges didn't get any traction this year. This is something lawmakers should reconsider for the next session.

First published in Newsday. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

Opinion: Trump's response to London Bridge attack isn't leaderlike

Among the statements a leader might make in the wake of a bloody, gut-wrenching terrorist attack is this: “It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault.”

Or perhaps this: The attacks are “a declaration of war against the entire civilized world.”

Those were the words of the Canadian and German heads of state, and a French newspaper headline, after the Sept. 11 massacre.

The London Bridge attack last weekend doesn’t compare in scope of lives lost and damage But there is something about the brutality of the assailants plowing into the crowd, stabbing bar and restaurant patrons at random, and the sheer repetition of assaults in Britain after years of relative quiet. This was the second terrorist attack in London in three months and the second in Britain in just two weeks.

The moment called for a response from President Donald Trump that expressed concern for the dead, the injured and their families. He could have praised the bravery of the British police, who took down the three terrorists within eight minutes. Trump might have expressed solidarity with our ally contending, as we are, with random, deadly acts. These atrocities are carried out to stoke fear in going on with our daily lives — in recent cases in Britain, people taking in the magnificence of the Thames River or swaying in Manchester to Ariana Grande’s beat.

Nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush said there were now two camps, and civilized people must choose. “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make,” he declared. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

After London Bridge, by inflaming division and fear, Trump traded in fear.

After London Bridge, by inflaming division and fear, Trump traded in fear.

In the moments after the London assault began on Saturday, before facts were known, Trump retweeted a Drudge Report story saying a terrorist attack might be in progress. Never mind that, as president, he has more than a dozen intelligence agencies that could have provided more credible information than Drudge. Never mind that days earlier, he mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that a suicidal gambler’s casino robbery in the Philippines was a “terrorist attack in Manila.”

Facts aren’t as important to Trump as lighting up his base to roar for a travel ban. His initial tweet Saturday night concluded, “We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” Only afterward did he express solidarity with Britain.

By the next day, he was back to making political points of the tragedy, saying the mayor of London was underplaying the cause for alarm. Of course with a name like Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London could be suspect in Trump’s worldview. He took Khan’s words out of context and tweeted that the mayor was making a “pathetic excuse.”

Imagine how Americans would have reacted to being called pathetic after Sept. 11, or San Bernardino or Orlando. Calling out Khan is reminiscent of the Trumpians’ constant reminders during Barack Obama’s presidency that his middle name is Hussein.

Trump’s admirers appreciate the authenticity he displays when his Twitter finger twitches. However, in troubled times, what unites and divides us aren’t the defining characteristics of our birth. What connects us are the conscious choices we make: to side with the civilized or with the terrorists.

In times of terror, a real leader would remind us of this higher human bond.

Anne Michaud is the interactive editor for Newsday Opinion.