Ideas

Thomas Maier is the author of When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys.

When Joe Kennedy set out across the Atlantic in 1933 to secure lucrative liquor importing licenses, he had the President's son in tow and a business contact in Winston Churchill

“We are past the point where being a capitalist is the only way of becoming a politician, and we are dangerously near the point where being a politician is much the quickest way of becoming a capitalist.”

—G. K. Chesterton

What for most married men would seem an indelicate travel arrangement—cruising across the Atlantic with his wife and mistress—seemed nothing more than a cozy accommodation for Joe Kennedy aboard the steam-driven ocean liner, the SS Europa. Departing New York Harbor in late September 1933, the Kennedy entourage included his wife, Rose; his latest flame, Kay Halle; and his namesake eldest son, Joseph Jr. He also brought along the lynchpin for his newest deal, James Roosevelt, the American president’s oldest son. Before leaving, Jimmy, as he preferred to be called, had told the press that “his trip was primarily for pleasure, but that he hoped to combine some business with it.”

Ever the opportunist, Kennedy also planned to mix business and pleasure. His ultimate prize would be to gain the British rights to send Scotch whiskey, gin, and other imported liquors to a thirsty United States, now that Prohibition appeared almost over. As part of his secret strategy, Joe had enlisted the president’s 25-year-old son to help organize a private visit with Winston Churchill that underlined Kennedy’s clout with the new administration. In their own ways, Jimmy and Kay impressed upon Churchill the importance of Joe Kennedy, which led to a memorable visit at Churchill’s Chartwell home.

Churchill, by position and disposition, was a naturally ally for Joe Kennedy’s plan to profit from the liquor trade. By September 26, 1933, the day he and the president’s son left for Britain, Kennedy had created a new firm called Somerset Importers (apparently named for Boston’s WASPy Somerset Club, which kept Irishmen like him from joining) with an initial $118,000 investment. Somerset became his piggy bank for cashing in on Prohibition’s demise. On this cross-Atlantic boat ride, Kennedy carried with him the letter from Seton Porter, of National Distillers Products Corp., appointing Somerset exclusive sales agent in New England for its liquor products.

When they arrived in London, Joe complained to Kay Halle, a Churchill family friend, that they needed to meet with “the very best people” during their stay. Most historians have focused on Churchill’s chat with Jimmy Roosevelt, without considering Joe Kennedy’s presence. But years later, in the early 1960s, Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son, insisted Joe Kennedy came to Chartwell with the rest of the Americans, including Kay Halle and Jimmy Roosevelt. Randolph told New York Times columnist C. L. Sulzberger that he didn’t know the purpose for this 1933 expedition underwritten by Kennedy, but quickly found out. Kennedy “assure[d] them Prohibition would shortly end and he wished to line up contracts to represent the best firms,” Randolph said. As a top fundraiser, Kennedy claimed he gave fifty thousand dollars to the 1932 Roosevelt campaign, Randolph recalled, and the presence of Jimmy Roosevelt on this trip seemed to underscore that point.

Ultimately, Joe Kennedy pulled off an international coup that made him even richer. He landed the lucrative British importation rights to distribute Haig & Haig Scotch whiskey, Dewar’s, Gordon’s gin, and other imported drinks, all very desirable to customers in the no-longer-dry United States. When Prohibition finally ended two months later, in December 1933, Kennedy seized his chance. With this new arrangement, Somerset saw its business in the United States soar, selling 150,000 cases of Scotch whiskey in the first full year. “We have done surprisingly well with contracts,” Joe wrote his oldest son. By the end of 1934, National Distillers Products Corp., including its New England franchise run by Kennedy, declared that its net profits had quadrupled in a year. When he sold the Somerset franchise a decade later, Joe Kennedy earned $8.5 million (the equivalent of more than $100 million in today’s currency).

Another set of finances surrounding this trip involved Winston Churchill. In September 1933, as the Kennedy group prepared to leave for London, Winston began a series of stock investments in two seemingly obscure American firms tied directly to Joe Kennedy: Brooklyn Manhattan Transit and National Distillers Products Corp. These Churchill stock investments were clustered around the Kennedy trip—executed both shortly before the Chartwell visit and in the months afterward—and were known only to a few, perhaps not even to Randolph. Where Winston got the money for such investments is not clear from available documents. On their face, however, these transactions seemed remarkably risky for a man who had lost much of his fortune in bad investments, who feared he might lose his beloved home, debt-ridden Chartwell Manor, and who had previously relied on friends to bail him out financially.

Winston’s involvement with the American liquor industry emerged shortly after Kennedy began selling British whiskey, archival records show. In March 1934, Churchill was able to invest $5,850 (approximately $101,000 in today’s currency) in National Distillers Products Corp. – the same American company that awarded its New England franchise to Joe Kennedy. Later that year, Winston managed to buy some more of the same stock for $4,375 (about $76,000 in today’s currency).

Soon after both purchases, Winston sold his National Distillers stock, earning a neat little profit, records show. The paperwork for these transactions was handled by the Vickers da Costa brokerage firm, which included Churchill’s brother, Jack, as a stock broker and partner.

Winston’s stake in BMT—the private New York City subway line associated with Kennedy, Baruch, and others in their speculative investment “pool”—was even greater and proved more complex. In the two weeks before Kennedy left for England, September 11–26, 1933, Winston repeatedly bought BMT in batches of 100 shares for a total purchase of $21,725 (approximately $380,000 in today’s currency). Records show no other BMT exchanges for Churchill for another ten days, not until after the visit of the Kennedy entourage to Chartwell. The following day, however, Winston started cashing out. He quickly sold about two-thirds of this stock by October 11, 1933, making a substantial 10 percent profit within just a month of his investment.

The idea for Winston’s BMT stock transaction apparently came from Kennedy’s friend and business associate Bernard Baruch. “I bought seven hundred Brooklyn Manhattan T around 30, sold four hundred around 35, and am sitting on three hundred,” Winston wrote to Baruch on October 15, 1933, shortly after entertaining his American visitors at Chartwell. “Many thanks for the fruitful suggestion.”

Baruch, Kennedy and other “pool” speculators involved in BMT expected their shares of private stock would boom if the subway company were merged into New York City’s overall system. Back and forth throughout 1934, Winston sold and bought BMT stock, at least some of which was purchased on margin with the hope that it would go up. The amount was much more than Winston previously said he’d ever invest on Wall Street. In the months surrounding the Chartwell visit, Churchill managed to purchase a total of more than $82,000 in BMT stock (about $1.4 million in today’s currency) and sold a total of some $72,000, according to available archival records. The BMT collection was among the biggest in his portfolio, which included a handful of other stocks in 1934. It also far exceeded the overall $12,000 that Churchill told his brother he was willing to wager in low-risk American overseas investments, particularly after losing a bundle in the 1929 Wall Street crash. “The more I study the stocks I know about,” he advised Jack’s brokerage firm prudently in 1931, “the more sure I am that the only way to recover the losses is to acquire some low priced solid securities without reference to any immediate dividends, and then put them away for two, three or four years.”

Quite the contrary, Churchill’s large stake in BMT stock posed a tremendous risk and broke every sensible rule of investing—unless someone had promised him it’d be a sure bet. Increasingly, this risky stake in one stock left Winston worrying that his anticipated bonanza might never happen. On November 18, 1933, he cabled Baruch: do you still like bwt [sic] kindest regards winston.

Baruch, like most speculators in discussing stocks, didn’t leave much documentation. His telegram contained a one-word reply: yes.

Over the next year, Winston’s anxious messages continued, as the situation surrounding BMT became only murkier. He wondered whether to cash out. are you still pleased with b.m.t. around forty regard [sic] winston, he cabled Baruch on October 27, 1934. That same day, he dropped a personal note to his brother, Jack, about his stock account. “I telegraphed Baruch about Brooklyn,” he wrote, assuring Jack that he expected to make more money from his investments in the following year. But Baruch’s telegram reply was decidedly mixed: while disappointed delayed transit consolidation feel brooklyn comparatively best thing on list although affected by politico economic situation. bernie.

Increasingly, the BMT investment by Kennedy and Baruch would come under greater scrutiny. Their dream of a big payday soon evaporated. Instead of a rapid merger that would dramatically increase the stock’s value, the BMT took years to be unified into a citywide system under municipal ownership. While Joe’s initial half-million-dollar stake swiftly doubled in value, it is not clear how much he finally earned. Most biographers say Joe Kennedy lost money in the BMT investment, and presumably so did his partners.

How Churchill obtained money to invest in these two American stocks so intricately linked to Joe Kennedy’s quick-hit investment strategy remained part of the overall mystery shrouding this 1933 trip to Great Britain and its lucrative alcohol deals. Winston’s subsequent note of thanks to Baruch about BMT suggests Kennedy’s pal helped orchestrate the buying of this particular stock. For much of his career, Churchill — unencumbered by stock disclosure rules and ethical “pay to play” restrictions that regulate much of twenty-first-century government — wasn’t inclined to refuse the helping hand of a friend. Earlier, in 1929, Baruch provided money to Churchill when the latter nearly lost his fortune in Wall Street’s crash.

But how Churchill learned of National Distillers Products Corp. seems unlikely to have been divined from any other source than Kennedy and his circle of associates. Shortly after this trip, records show, Churchill also managed in June 1934 to buy shares in the distilling company of Sir James Calder—another of Kennedy’s business partners, who provided Haig & Haig whiskey—which Winston soon disposed of at a slight loss.

For a time, Jimmy Roosevelt’s role in Kennedy’s British venture would remain hidden. Rather than sell booze directly as Joe’s business partner, Jimmy and his insurance firm made a bundle by safeguarding the ships and their cargo of Scotch whiskey and other liquors delivered from Great Britain. Jimmy’s tax disclosures showed that his income more than doubled—from $21,714 in 1933 to $49,167 in 1934 (about $850,000 in today’s currency), a huge sum during the teeth of the Depression.

Emboldened by his coup in London with Kennedy, Jimmy Roosevelt came home bragging about nabbing the National Distillers account. He tried a similar strong-arm tactic with a Boston bank president, who learned that government checks would be pulled from his bank unless young Roosevelt handled its insurance coverage. “Your son James, engaged in the insurance business, is diverting accounts to himself from old established Insurance Brokers on the strength of not only the name of Roosevelt but implication that obtaining such business, favors will be granted by the administration,” warned J. Henry Neale, a lawyer and banker who supported FDR. “This is said particularly to apply to National Distillers’ account.” After the White House received Neale’s private letter about this “malicious rumor,” the president demanded an answer from his son.

In an August 28, 1934, “Dear Pa” letter sent to the President Roosevelt’s private home in Hyde Park, New York, Jimmy apparently disclosed to his father his deal with the Kennedy-connected firm for the first time. “You wanted a statement of facts as to the National Distillers,” he acknowledged. “It is true that I have this account, but I can’t understand why I shouldn’t have it.” Jimmy’s two-page letter explained how he had approached Seton Porter of National Distillers, seeking his firm’s insurance contracts, after he “got the idea prior to the repeal of Prohibition that when this was accomplished, the liquor industry would need to make some changes in the way of insurance.”

Jimmy didn’t mention Joe Kennedy’s name, but he probably didn’t have to. He described Seton Porter, Joe Kennedy’s partner in the liquor business, as his own good friend. “I think Mr. Porter would be willing to say that I have his insurance solely on the basis of merit, and I would only want it on that basis,” Jimmy promised his father. “Also, I have never tried to do anything for them with the Administration and never will. Mr. Porter understands that completely, as I think he told you when he saw you” at the White House.

Jimmy seemed clueless about the political embarrassment the British liquor deal might cause his father if it became public. In enlisting the president’s son as his ally, however, Joe Kennedy displayed more than financial acumen. With a rapier instinct, Joe could spot the fault lines in Franklin Roosevelt’s personal life—in this case, the complex relationship between a great man and his son—and exploited them for his own purposes, all under the guise of friendship. Kennedy even described himself as “foster-father” to Jimmy, a young man only a few years older than his own son Joe Jr.

“You know I’m still cutting my teeth in a business way,” Jimmy wrote gratefully to Kennedy in 1933, around the time of their British trip. The president’s eldest son expressed his determination to follow through “with these big concerns” and show that he didn’t have to rely “on the old man’s reputation and have no guts of my own.” In this deal, young Roosevelt agreed to Kennedy’s wishes, naively and greedily, with the expectation of more benefits to come.

Ultimately, the secrecy surrounding Kennedy’s 1933 trip obscured the origins of his relationship with Winston Churchill. Most historians say it began later in the decade — when Kennedy became FDR’s ambassador in London in 1938 — and was acrimonious almost from the start over differences leading to World War II. However, earlier documents showing the two men’s shared friendship with Bernard Baruch, their contacts with Kay Halle and the Roosevelts, their political ambitions for profitable relations between their two countries, and their stake in two companies involved in Kennedy’s business empire suggest a kindly alliance between them. Certainly in private, Joe gave the impression that he had a friend in Winston Churchill.

Only a few seemed to know of these initial friendly Churchill-Kennedy exchanges before everything changed so dramatically. Joe’s granddaughter Amanda, in her 2001 collection of his letters, noted that Churchill “had been one of his earliest British political contacts, and had even suggested Kennedy’s name for an award celebrating freedom and peace” in 1938. One of Joe’s few trusted confidants, James A. Fayne, a Kennedy man in business and government, declared that Joe’s “greatest friend in Europe” was Winston Churchill. “Before Mr. Kennedy was appointed Ambassador, his chief world contact was highly personal though it was Churchill,” recalled Fayne in 1968, “. . . and then they became oceans apart.”

Thomas Maier is the author of When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, as well as four other books, including The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings and Masters of Sex, the basis for the Showtime series.

Excerpted from the book When Lions Roar by Thomas Maier. Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Maier. Excerpted by permission of Crown Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Jill Abramson is the former executive editor of The New York Times.

The former top editor of the New York Times remembers the man who ran the Washington Post. 'Ben had total joie de journalism,' she writes. 'It oozed from every pore'

“[Ben] Bradlee is luminescent.” The Washington Post April 19, 1981.

This is the best description of him ever. Oddly, it was published as part of the long, painful autopsy written by Bill Green, the ombudsman of The Washington Post, after the Janet Cooke scandal, certainly the Post’s, and Ben’s, lowest moment.

During that time Ben showed what he was made of. He had to return a Pulitzer Prize that Cooke had won about a made up 8-year-old heroin addict. He had to invite his boss, Donald Graham, to have breakfast at his house and tell him that he and his vaunted team of all-stars, made famous in the movie All the President’s Men, had failed the Graham family. He had to face his own crushed newsroom and, ultimately, the Post’s disappointed readers.

This would surely have brought down any other editor. So why did Ben Bradlee survive and triumph? It wasn’t simply because he was so powerful or well connected, having transformed the Post during Watergate into a national newspaper and showcase for the blazingly talented writers he hired and nurtured. Bob Woodward tried to explain Ben’s durability after the top editors at the Times lost their jobs in the Jayson Blair scandal. “Bradlee was a great editor and loved by everybody,” Woodward said. “Not just the people who knew him well, but down the ranks.”

But it was more than that. It was his great strength of character and gutsiness under fire that made him indestructible. David Halberstam, writing about Ben two years before the Cooke affair, understood this about Bradlee. In his great book, The Powers That Be, Halberstam wrote, “his own personal self-image, developed long before he went to the Post, simply did not permit him to show fear.”

Bradlee has been criticized for being too chummy with JFK and praised for the intrepid investigative reporting that brought down Richard Nixon. Watergate inspired a new generation of journalists, me included, to come to Washington and be investigative watchdogs. But lately, watching the scandal-obsessed Washington pack snarl at every pol’s ankles, it’s hard not to wonder about the proper relationship between the press and the president. Ben’s legacy as the most consequential editor of our times should provoke some thoughtful questions about this.

Ben had total joie de journalism. It oozed from every pore. No one had more fun chasing a big story and no editor made the chase more fun. He wrote his first newspaper story at age 15 as a copy boy for the Beverly Evening Times in Massachusetts. But the reporter was a born editor and during his tenure at the Post the paper won 23 Pulitzers, doubled its staff and nearly doubled its circulation. The Bradlee period was truly a golden time.

Asked by the Harvard Business Review to describe his management style in 2010, he said, “Everyone knew I had an overpowering interest in finding out the truth and getting it in the paper. They saw what made me tick, what made me smile, what turned me on. I surrounded myself with people who shared my fervor.”

One of the sadnesses of my career is that I never worked for him. I met him when I first moved to Washington in 1983 and was profiling his pal, the super lawyer Edward Bennett Williams. Ben and Ed and their third wheel, Art Buchwald, had a lunch club that had only one reason for being: to keep other people out. Katharine Graham was desperate to join, but she kept getting blackballed by one of the Three Musketeers. Finally, on her 65th birthday, she was invited in. But there was a catch: club rules required members to leave at 65. Ben roared when he told the story.

Ben loved women. Around Mrs. Graham, it was said, his walk was even jauntier and his sexy voice became raspier. He was just crazy about his wife, Sally Quinn.

He got a kick out of my climb at the Times. When I hit a rough patch there in 2003, Ben advised me to come to the Post. We met one afternoon at his favorite table in the bar at the Jefferson Hotel. Mostly, we gossiped and laughed. If he had still been in the editor’s chair, I wouldn’t have been able to resist.

One of the final times I saw him was at the last party he and Sally threw. He had started to fail and was sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by a coterie of loyal friends. Everyone still wanted to sit next to him for awhile. He was luminescent.

I've caught myself apologizing to a table I jammed my toe on. The table and I are still friends

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

I’ve always been the one who feels a knee-jerk need to apologize for everything.

Very often I mean it. When you’ve had a bad day, when something sad or terrible happens to you, when I’ve done something stupid and my actions warrant an apology, you can count on me.

When an actual “I’m sorry” is necessary, you’ll never find a person more willing to gnaw on a piece of your frustration, anger, or sorrow with you. These past few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to divvy out my “I’m sorries” much more judiciously so that they actually MEAN something. Most people deserve something more than a breathless attempt at smoothing things over.

However, when I’m nervous, unsure, or feeling guilty (whether it’s necessary or not), “I’m sorry” can become my version of “Oops” or worse, “Don’t you think you should say the same?” Ugh, passive-aggressive BS.

Lately, through all the struggles and victories of living in Japan, I’ve found “I’m sorry” popping up more and more in my English vocabulary. Some of it is an attempt at cultural acclimation, some of it is just plain old Default Louise trying to absorb some sort of real or perceived faux pas.

I could spend thousands of words talking about how I got this way — upbringing, social anxiety, people pleaser, self preservation, fear of judgement, blah blah blah — but whatever all of that amounts to, and while I begrudgingly accept this part of myself, it’s a part of me that is at times wholly useless.

For crapsake, I’ve caught myself apologizing to a table I jammed my toe on. The table didn’t care, and neither did all the people who weren’t there to witness it. The table and I are still friends.

I’m fully aware that an onslaught of apologies when I have no reason to be sorry is not only annoying but can be vaguely offensive. No Lou, you’re not sorry when the words just tumble out. What I’m actually saying is, “Don’t blame me” or “I feel dumb.”

I really started paying attention to how I handed out apologies when a dear friend and professional mentor finally snapped at me.

“Louise, cut out the ‘I’m sorries.’ You’re better than that. You don’t mean it, and you don’t have to. Don’t waste your words. Mean what you say.”

And all I wanted to do was say, “I’m sorry.”

It’s an ongoing battle. “I’m sorry” is not a prefix, a suffix, a qualifier, or a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for when I’m uncomfortable. But in Japan, I’m having to negotiate the “I’m sorries” in a whole new way.

From what I’ve observed so far, Japan is a culture of apologies. I’m not saying that Japanese people are insincere or pushovers. Far from it. Rush hour in a busy subway station or negotiating with the friendly but unwavering cell phone salesman over the up front, one year service payment due in CASH, will teach a person that right-quick.

What I am saying is that as a culture that is incredibly polite, sensitive, and gracious, apologizing is part of formal interaction. “Apologize first” is just the way things are done here. Often times when I’m out and about with fluent Japanese speakers, I’ll hear the nugget of a request or question imbedded deep within profuse apologies and slight bows. Yet despite the social requirement, people really seem to mean it when they apologize.

“I’m sorry I’m interrupting you…”

“I’m sorry that I don’t speak English/Japanese…”

“Excuse me, I’m sorry that I don’t know what this purple thing on your menu is. I’m sorry. Thank you!”

You’d think my compulsively apologizing little heart would rejoice! Well, it did at first. Every accident, every mistake, could be cleared with a “sumimasen” (I’m sorry). It was expected, it was welcomed, it was glorious.

But you can imagine the slippery slope this started. The apologies started seeping into my non-Japanese interactions.

My husband would step on MY foot and I’d apologize. A friend from America would call me on Skype two hours late, and I’d apologize. An expat friend would show up unannounced at my apartment, catching me in my full “Today Was Not Human Interaction Day” glory, and I’d apologize.

Since I’ve noticed my compulsion rearing its head again, I’ve been sorting through a duality I’ve never encountered before.

No, there isn’t some feral Louise roaming the streets of Yokohama maniacally apologizing to vending machines and gurgling infants, but this is my first experience immersing myself in a foreign culture and finding the balance between Japan Louise and American Louise is something that requires much more self awareness than I thought I was capable of.

I need to play by Japan’s rules to some extent. There is some pleasure in losing myself in the foreignness of it all, and just doing as I’m expected to do. It’s not always easy, but in the middle of it there’s a lesson in unclenching my ego. Japan doesn’t care if I find their customs “unusual” or “compromising” to my “individuality.” Their definitions of such are different, work just fine for most Japanese people, and have been around a lot longer than me.

When I find myself getting my kittens in a twist, I just remind myself that I don’t have to drink the Kool-Aid but I do have to respect it.

Look at me making discoveries all over the place!

But while I’m discovering all this in the context of my Japan life, I’m realizing that this is not an all-or-nothing situation. I can pass a lot of my Japanese cultural experience through my American filter.

I’m learning that ideally, the basic intent is the same anywhere: Be considerate of other people, and if you’re going to say, something say it with conviction. In other words, mean what you say.

When the Japanese people I’ve met here apologize, it appears as if they are genuinely sorry for having bothered me, that they appreciate that my time is valuable. They say it because it’s expected, but the intent is also expected. It’s not just empty words. There’s an unspoken willingness to start from a place of respect and go from there. I’m making a generalization — I’m new here and probably a little naive, but there is still something to be learned in that kind of interaction.

So while I don’t want to adopt the cultural norm of constantly apologizing, my constant apologizing within the context of my western culture can be quelled by taking a few lessons from the intentions of the people here.

I’m still working at it. There are still times I have to clamp my mouth shut to stop myself from apologizing to my American friends for the sound my nose makes when I breathe, but I’m making an honest effort to live by the mantra, “Mean what you say.”

During this time of trying to learn a foreign language, being keenly aware of every word that comes out of my mouth, I find that it’s worth applying that logic to my mother tongue. English may be easy for me, but it does not have to be thoughtless.

Louise Hung is a writer and theater director.

Walter Russell Mead is a professor of foreign policy and humanities at Bard College.

The opera is a morally questionable production.

When they told me last spring that the Met was going to present a controversial, anti-Semitic opera, my first response was to wonder why the Met would be launching a new Ring production so soon after the Giant Popsicle Sticks fiasco of the last one. After all, anti-Semitism is to Wagner, a great composer and deeply flawed human being, what ham is to a ham sandwich. When I found out that the opera in question was John Adam’s “Death of Klinghoffer”, I was a little non-plussed. I’ve listened to Klinghoffer on CD, but had never seen it performed and, politics aside, I thought it was a snoozer. If I’m going to watch evil, Jewish-looking untermenschen scheme against the glory of the gods, at least let me listen to music like the Ride of the Valkyries and Siegfried’s Idyll while the composer inflicts his political idiocy on an unoffending audience.

However, as readers of this site know, I am not of the boycotting persuasion, and when the Monday night opera series I had selected for other reasons included Klinghoffer’s Met premiere, I had no hesitation about going to see for myself. Having seen Merchant of Venice, both Parsifal and the Ring cycle, not to mention having read Mein Kampf, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and a tasteful compilation of editorials from Henry Ford’s newspaper, it seemed a little late in the day to start drawing lines in the sand.

Not everybody in New York shared my opinion; protestors blocked the street in front of Lincoln Center and we had to pass through police lines and barricades to get to the show. The lines at the entrance stretched far out into the plaza as the ushers conducted unusually thorough searches of bags at the door. With protestors shouting “Shame! Shame!” and speakers addressing the crowd in heavily miked voices, it was easily the most dramatic moment I’ve ever seen at a New York arts venue.

The excitement continued inside; some of the people opposed to the performance had tickets, and dozens stood to boo or cry out slogans like “Klinghoffer’s murderers will never be forgiven!” at various points during the performance. For history of opera aficionados, it was like a revival of the nineteenth century drama in European opera houses as rival factions of fans cheered or booed politically or musically controversial works.

For those who haven’t followed the latest tempest in the opera world, “The Death of Klinghoffer” is a 1991 opera with music by John Adams and a libretto by Alice Goodman. It is based, loosely, on the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, a cruise ship, by a group of Palestinian terrorists. During the hijacking the Palestinians murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair bound, 69 year old Jewish American passenger on the ship. A number of Jewish groups have voiced strong objections to the opera over the years on the grounds that it misrepresents the events on the ship and offers undue sympathy to the terrorists. Among those objecting to the opera are Leon Klinghoffer’s daughters Lisa and Ilsa; they issued a statement that the Met placed in the program saying, among other things, that the opera “rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father. Our family was not consulted by the composer and librettist and had no role in the development of the opera.”

From my perspective, I am less than fully persuaded by their first charge; the opera may portray the murderers in a more sympathetic light than many might prefer, but is neither an endorsement of nor an apology for the murder. Terrorists, however reprehensible their actions, are human beings, and it is not beyond the province of art to seek to examine and understand, so far as is possible, their motives.

The real problem, and it is a serious one, involves the decision by John Adams and Alice Goodman to use a family’s tragedy for their art without the permission of the family’s members. Leon Klinghoffer was not a public figure; nothing gave Adams and Goodman a moral right to profit from his death or to use it for political or artistic purposes of their own without the permission of his loved ones. The opera not only shows the death of Lisa’s and Ilsa’s father, putting words in his mouth, it presents a fictionalized portrait of their mother’s shock and reaction on hearing the news.

No family not already in public life deserves to have their most intimate and painful moments taken over and made into a public spectacle against their will. You couldn’t take liberties with Mickey and Minnie Mouse without having Disney lawyers come at you with cease and desist orders; Leon Klinghoffer’s family deserves more consideration than a fictional rodent and without in any way seeking to curtail free speech, one can regret the decision of two famous and well established artists to turn someone else’s private grief into a public entertainment.

If I were Peter Gelb, I would have declined to put the opera on, but not on political grounds. I would not have wanted to associate myself with what amounts to psychological rape, and I would not have staged it against the wishes of the murdered man’s family. Dehumanizing Leon Klinghoffer, turning him from a human being into a symbol in their political theater, is what the terrorists did on the Achille Lauro; John Adams and Alice Goodman echo this violation by trampling on the family’s privacy and wishes, stripping the Klinghoffers of their rights and dignity and using them as props. There were other ways to write an opera about the tragic conflict between the Palestinian and Jewish national movements.

The New York Times reviewed the same performance I saw, and the Times critic slid by the ethical vacuum at the heart of the work:

Yet, in death, Leon Klinghoffer became a public figure, an innocent but defiant hero, lost to what still seems like a never-ending conflict in the Middle East.

That is a bloodless way to put it and overlooks the reality that Adams and Goodman, by treating the Klinghoffers as public property and disregarding their wishes as so much worthless babbling from untermenschen and little people unworthy of consideration by Serious Artists, have not merely dared; they have transgressed.

As to the musical and dramatic qualities of the work, the verdict is mixed. Whatever his moral blind spots may be, John Adams is one of the most talented American composers of our time, and this opera, while not as musically compelling as “Nixon in China,” contains elements and passages that one cannot but admire. While his minimalist approach to music strikes some as repetitive, Adams’ keen ear for the capabilities of different instruments makes for a rich and varied sound that is capable of great lyrical beauty and dramatic intensity. Adams’ style is a romantic minimalism that builds and swells in glorious profusion and while the opera has its longueurs, at its best the music is powerful and appealing.

Adams’ greatest weakness, and it is a serious one for an opera composer, has to do with his difficulty in writing effective music for singers engaged in ordinary speech. Particularly in the recitatives, and there are a lot of long winded recitatives in this opera, the vocal lines can be much less pleasing and inventive than the orchestral music. Words like boring, cliche and predictable came frequently to mind. The libretto adds to his difficulties; a self conscious and not particularly successful effort to achieve a high poetic tone through allusive language and extended soliloquies often comes across as awkward and long. At its worst, the work features singers interminably droning dull lyrics as the audience waits restlessly for a chorus to break the monotony.

As I struggled to understand why Adams and Goodman chose to steal the Klinghoffers’ story rather than to make up a fictional one, or to find a historical tale that could take on the contemporary issues that engaged them, I found myself thinking of the portrayal of Henry Kissinger in “Nixon in China.” In that opera, also with music by John Adams and a libretto by Alice Goodman, most of the characters are treated with imagination and sympathy—even figures like Richard and Pat Nixon. This helps make that opera one of the most successful contemporary works of art, and adds layers of complexity and depth to the work that, combined with some extraordinary music, might put this opera among the classics.

But when it comes to Kissinger, Adams and Goodman turn him into a clownish villain. In part that may be because they felt that sympathetic portraits of the two Nixons and Henry Kissinger would be too much for a liberal, post-Watergate audience to bear. I’ve always felt that this was an opportunity lost; their criticism of Kissinger would have been more effective and the opera as a whole significantly stronger if they had given him his due. One feels that it was a lack of artistic confidence that led them to take the low road in portraying Dr. K; at some level they didn’t quite believe that the music and libretto could succeed unless they threw in some cheap stunts and tricks.

It’s possible that a similar lack of confidence contributed to the decision to take the low road with the Klinghoffers. It is hard, even for a composer as accomplished and admired as Adams, to get operas into regular production in these times. Opera is expensive, and audiences often fight shy of contemporary works. (At the Met’s Klinghoffer premiere, many patrons didn’t return for the second act; half the seats in the rows immediately in front of me were empty after intermission.) Without the frisson that comes from ‘real’ events and the lure of political controversy, would this opera have had the international success it has enjoyed? Did the composer and librettist feel that they needed to trash the Klinghoffer family’s privacy to get their work the attention they wanted for it—or to make it sharp and powerful in a way that they felt that their imaginations and artistic talents couldn’t achieve without sliming the Klinghoffers?

John Adams is a very good composer. If in the future he places more faith in the power of his art, and rejects unworthy compromises and short cuts, his work would be richer and deeper.

At the end of the Met performance, the boos were silent. Michaela Martens as Marilyn Klinghoffer sang a closing aria that united the audience in admiration of her inspired interpretation of Adams’ haunting music. Those who stayed for the full performance gave her and the cast a standing ovation. I applauded too, and I salute Adams’ talent, but Ilsa and Lisa still didn’t deserve what he did to them—and he didn’t have to do it to create something great.

Walter Russell Mead is a professor of foreign policy and humanities at Bard College and the editor at large at the American Interest. A version of this article originally appeared in the American Interest. The views expressed are solely his own.

Exploring egg freezing doesn’t mean the end of civilization as we know it

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

I tell people about my reproductive organs in excruciating detail and advocate for egg freezing on an almost daily basis.

It’s my job as a patient care advocate for a fertility center, and I love it. I see no evil Big Brother plot to control women’s lives. I see it as options.

Since I’ve started planning these egg-freezing parties, we quickly started to see some people lose their minds over the issue.

One accused us of using scare tactics, another said we were encouraging women to have “bastards” and another claimed we were trying to do away with men.

Enter Facebook and Apple’s news this week that they would now be paying for their female employees to freeze their eggs, and the freaking out has reached a whole new level of lunacy.

Let me tell you why these benefits are a good thing — and not in fact an Orwellian attempt by Silicon Valley geeks to control your fertility future.

First, let me tell you my story: I met my husband at age 33. We got married when I was 34 and we starting trying to conceive soon after. What followed was years of doctors, invasive tests, various forms of fertility treatment and a lot of heartache and disappointment. By the time we were doing our third in vitro, we had depleted our savings account and only had one embryo. At the time, it literally felt like everything was riding on that lone embryo; our marriage, our finances, our hopes, everything. Through luck and good odds, I was fortunate enough to get pregnant on that cycle. Even though I was more grateful than I could possibly say for our now two-year-old son, I pressed my doctor as to why she thought we had issues. The only explanation was my age.

I never thought that early to mid-thirties was old or even questionable in terms of fertility. In my mind, the forties are when things really go downhill. As I’ve learned over the years, I’m not the only one who thought this way. Dr. Anate Brauer from Greenwich Fertility told me, “What people don’t understand is that even at age 30 years old, up to 40% of your eggs are genetically abnormal.”

After going through my experience, I became very active in the infertility community and switched jobs. I’ve been working as the director of patient care at Fertility Authority for over two years and you would be shocked at how many women don’t know anything about their own bodies, that age is a real factor when it comes to fertility or even how one actually gets pregnant.

My theory is when were in health class, they told us all about how NOT to get pregnant or get an STI but no one really explained how to conceive and the fact that we live in a time where more and more women are delaying having children.

A very important piece of blood work that women should get is called your “day three blood work.” This is when your blood is taken on day three of your menstrual cycle and informs you and your doctor what your FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and your AMH (anti-mullerian hormone) numbers are. These two aspects will give you an idea of how many eggs you have in storage (so to speak) and the quality. This is an extremely important test and yet, if I left my office right now, stopped a woman on the street and asked her if she knew what her FSH and AMH was, she’d think it was an acronym used on Twitter. Shouldn’t this be general knowledge or part of your yearly checkup? Why aren’t women more aware of this?

Isn’t it a good thing that Apple and Facebook are helping more women BE aware? Not to mention helping them pay for what can be insanely costly?

In effect, I look at myself as the “ghost of infertile future” hoping to educate and empower women who perhaps are going to medical school, law school, trying to climb the corporate ladder or who are actually waiting to meet the right partner for them instead of settling out of some biological fear. It used to drive me insane when I was single and people would say, “Your standards are too high!” If you make the commitment to marry and spend the rest of your life with someone, shouldn’t you have high standards? And what does that say about their own marriages? That their standards were low?

Also, if you take into consideration that in the last four decades, there has been a 900% increase in women over 35 having their first baby, it makes sense that companies at least make this offer of egg freezing to their employees should they want to explore it. You also have to be aware that typically, if you’re over the age of 42, most clinics recommend you use donor eggs as the quality of your eggs drop significantly. Basically, companies aren’t forcing their female staff to go through with egg freezing, they are just making the option available if you know you may want to conceive down the line using your own eggs.

This is why I don’t fully understand why so many are offended by egg freezing. It’s not mandatory and in the long run, it may save both the company and their female employee’s time and money. It cost me roughly $35,000 and three years with time in and out of work for my medical procedures to have my son. One cycle of egg freezing can cost around $10,000 and can possibly not only spare you from having to go through years of fertility treatment but save you additional money on exploring other options such as using donor eggs which can cost a profound amount.

I saw one comment yesterday by a man saying that the fact that companies were offering this was unfair to men. After I was done laughing, I commented back to him that this is not favoritism to women. It’s just biology. Steve Martin became a first-time dad at age 67 years old. I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge that Helen Mirren wouldn’t be able to do this (even as amazing as she is). Men don’t need this option as they do not have limitations on their fertility while women do. We can argue all day about whether or not you believe in Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” advice but whether you lean in or not, top female talent at companies like Facebook and Apple might appreciate having the assurance of egg freezing.

And assurance is the key word here.

As Dr. Fahimeh Sasan, chief medical officer at my company and a gynecologist at Mt. Sinai, said at our event this past Tuesday, “Just because you freeze your eggs doesn’t mean you have to conceive that way! You can still get married, conceive naturally and end up never using the frozen eggs. They are just insurance should you find that you have difficulty getting pregnant and you prefer not to use donor eggs. It’s like car insurance. No one buys it expecting to get into an accident but it’s there if you need it.”

See? No one is replacing egg freezing with conceiving naturally or even relationships. Even in the best case scenarios, “car insurance” doesn’t always protect you from everything so it’s extremely important to note that there are no guarantees with egg freezing. I can’t say for certain that it will completely spare you from additional fertility treatment beyond the in vitro needed for the eggs you’ve frozen. It’s just a back-up plan should you need it. That being said, pregnancy rates from frozen eggs are currently the same as they are fresh eggs, so it is a viable option to explore.

As for the criticism that companies should put the money and energy instead into offering paternity leave for men or providing in-house childcare for parents; my question is why is it an either-or proposition? Why can’t companies offer all of the above? I know many feel that it’s not an employer’s responsibility to accommodate people’s personal lives but I contend that if you value your workers and want to retain them, it’s a valuable investment.

Another major complaint I’ve heard about egg freezing is it encourages women to have babies in their fifties. Again, this is just ignorance.

Dr. Brauer explains, “We know that carrying a pregnancy at an advanced age increases complications of pregnancy such as hypertensive disorders or pregnancy, gestational diabetes, placental abruption and growth restriction. Because these risks increase as a woman progresses into her late thirties and forties, most clinics have established an age cut off, usually in the late forties.”

This is true even when using donor eggs. It’s not like there are no age restrictions and that the industry is telling women old enough to be grandmothers to have their first child. There are guidelines.

Here’s the bottom line: If you are a woman interested in having children and are not yet ready for any reason whatsoever, just see your OB/GYN or a reproductive endocrinologist, get your AMH and FSH, tell them your history (do you smoke, have diabetes, etc.) and find out if you are fertile or if you have any issues. Through my job, around 20% of women who contacted us for an egg freezing consult found out they had a fertility issue they knew nothing about. One had blocked fallopian tubes, another was going into early menopause and one in particular sadly found out she wouldn’t be able to have any biological children. All of these women were in their thirties and absolutely had no idea there was any problem with them whatsoever.

Educating women on knowing their fertility health is so incredibly important. Whether they freeze their eggs, whether it’s moral or not is no one’s business. It’s between them, their doctor and whatever god they choose to worship.

I for one “like” this.

Jennifer Palumbo is a writer and former stand-up comedian.

Brian Moylan is a writer and pop culture junkie.

There is a very real reason why the actress would want a whole new face: we were all incredibly mean to her old one

Last night Renée Zellweger did something totally normal for a celebrity of her magnitude: she went to a red carpet event. But something different happened when the photos from her trip in front of the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards step and repeat hit the wires. Everyone freaked the hell out. “Is that you, Renée Zellweger?” CNN asked. “What has Renée Zellweger done to her face?” the Daily Mail cried. “Stop what you are doing: Renée Zellweger has a whole new face,” Metro implored, past the stage of mourning where we ask questions and are moving toward acceptance.

Yes, it’s clear that Zellweger has had some work done. Welcome to Hollywood. I would like to introduce you to Meg Ryan’s lips, Nicole Kidman’s forehead, and everything that is currently going on with Bruce Jenner. The reaction to Zellweger’s big reveal seems more than a little bit unjust.

Most outlets are taking the tack of asking readers if her new look is good or bad, and there are some people that will fall on either side of the debate. However, the subtext to this question is always, “Holy hell, what did this lady do to her face and how is she going to fix it?!” If it was a text from your best friend, it would have about 100 times more exclamation points and probably the emoji of the girl crossing her arms in front of her body. Everyone is very concerned that Zellweger doesn’t look like herself anymore. Her signature squint is gone, her lips seem a little more full and less pursed, and her cheeks just aren’t quite as puffy as they used to be.

It’s always dicey for an actress to mess with her looks. When her face is unrecognizable, it distracts from her work as an actress (and any lack of mobility in the face can certainly make it harder for her to ply her craft). Why would Zellweger want to look like someone else when she makes money partially off of her appearance? That seems to be a bad decision. Just ask Jennifer Grey’s nose and Kate Gosselin’s new haircut. (Actually, please don’t ask Kate Gosselin anything, it’s better that we just keep on ignoring her for the time being.)

But there is a very real reason why Zellweger would want a whole new face: we were all incredibly mean to her old one. Here is a post likening her to Mr. Magoo and making multiple stabs at her appearance. Here is a mock up for Renée Zellweger’s Extreme Sour Lemon Candy, making fun of her pout and squint. Here is her Urban Dictionary entry calling her a “cure for a case of the boners.” Here is Dlisted saying she looks “like she’s staring directly into the sun after swallowing a cup of Sour Patch Kids dust” right before retiring her nickname Squinty Zellweger forever. Here is me making a really lame cheap shot on her back in 2009. Oh, I have been mean to the Zellweger myself, and I should be ashamed.

Now, you wonder why Zellweger would want to do such extreme things to her face. Maybe it’s a reaction to the extreme things that are constantly said about her old one. If people always made fun of a giant mole on my neck, I would have that removed too. If I was bullied for being overweight, I might think about going on an extreme diet just to shut the haters up. Maybe Zellweger did the same thing and, now that she fixed the squint and pout that have created a million “looks like she’s having an allergic reaction to shrimp” jokes, everyone is being just as mean.

The celebrity media is fascinated with bodies. Headlines are constantly made out of “baby bumps” and “bikini bodies,” as if these aren’t real people but instead lumps of flesh for our inspection, like breeding animals at the state farm. (The women certainly get it worse, but we’re increasingly critical of men without Gosling-esque abdominal muscles, too. )

I sincerely hope that the media’s fascination with Zellweger’s appearance didn’t lead to her undergoing such extensive surgery. As we’ve seen, her detractors aren’t going to let up. There is no appeasing the beast. The only solution is to disappear from public view entirely. Harsh scrutiny is the price anyone has to pay to pursue a very public career and we shrug our shoulders and say they should know that. But is that clause in the unspoken celebrity contract really non-negotiable?

Maybe we should just leave Renée Zellweger’s face alone altogether? It’s her body and she can do whatever she wants to it. If she wants to get “I am Bridget Jones” tattooed across her forehead, then she should feel free to go ahead and do it. Sure, her changes might cost her some jobs, but that is a decision that she made and she can deal with it.

Now that her new face has been revealed, we’ll all get used to it, just like we have Cher’s, Madonna’s, Kenny Roger’s, and the countless iterations of Dolly Parton’s and Joan Rivers’ (RIP). Pointing, gawking, and screaming about it says more about our media, our vanity, and the type of society that would lead a star to completely rearrange the most personal part of her body than it ever will about Renée Zellweger.

Brian Moylan is a writer and pop culture junkie who lives in New York. His work has appeared in Gawker, VICE, New Yorkmagazine, and a few other safe-for-work publications.

Read next: Renée Zellweger: ‘I’m Glad Folks Think I Look Different’

Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes teaches and writes in Maine.

I care about protecting all of our children, not just mine.

I know there are teachers and administrators and people in my community who consider me one of the helicoptering, overprotective parents who seem to be our society’s latest favorite punching bag. My husband jokes about a betting pool in the teachers’ lounge based on when I will make my first indignant appearance each year. But I’m no tiger mother. I don’t see parenting as a battle. I just insist on competency and civility from the world my children are in for now in the face of what seems like utter madness in the world at large.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine and I talked about the way we parent versus the way we grew up in the 70s, on opposite sides of the country, about the way our parenting is influenced by our own childhood experiences. We were both deeply affected by early exposure to violence in films and on television, in the news and in the communities we grew up in, and by disparities among the haves and the have-nots. We were both bullied as children and we both worried about nuclear war. We both also accepted all of this, at the time, as “part of growing up.” But neither of us sees any benefit in cultural trauma being a part of our children’s growing up.

I wonder if many of my fellow Gen-X parents experience adulthood as a recovery from childhood, and if our parenting choices reflect our desire to not have the harshness of the era our children are growing up in visited upon them. But we often hear that our approach is doing our kids, and society, untold harm and that we will be directly responsible for a generation of spineless, helpless wimps.

I’m surprised to find myself in the category of “overprotective,” because as a college professor, I’ve had the unpleasant experience of teaching some of the children of “helicopter parents”: students who can’t think for themselves or who balk at the demands of a college education. Even before my husband and I had children, I was determined that we would do whatever it took to raise them to be independent, capable people. I still am. Equipping them for self-sufficiency does not, in my mind, require exposure therapy to all that is wrong with the world. That will come soon enough.

Our instincts, when our children were ready for school, were to let them go, both literally and figuratively. We couldn’t afford the tuition at the local Montessori School, but I kept telling myself that I would send my children to public school even if we could have sent them to Montessori, because I believe in public education and I wanted our girls to be gently immersed in a gradual understanding of socio-economic differences.

Except for the reality that a large percentage of the children in our community do not get their basic needs met—a fact I tried to blunt by helping some of the neediest kids myself— all seemed relatively well. Until our eldest daughter started third grade. She and her teacher did not seem to be a good fit, but my husband and I, sensitive already to accusations that our generation coddles its children, didn’t intervene when it appeared that her teacher was being hard on her, singling her out. When she came home saying “My teacher doesn’t like me,” we tried to address it from her end, asking her to consider if the choices she was making were helpful or not. We learned from the teacher that our daughter protested when the posted classroom schedule was not followed; the teacher said that she needed to “roll with things” and “respect the teacher’s authority.” We didn’t entirely disagree, believing that learning to work with difficult people is a useful skill.

However, thinking we were being good parents by not rushing in and protecting our child so that she could learn some social survival skills, we overlooked the damage that was being done. In hindsight, I recalled that the teacher seemed nervous whenever I would come in to volunteer in the classroom; she would often ask me to photocopy material in the teachers’ lounge instead of letting me work directly with the children. I learned later that she told the principal that she thought I was “spying” on her. Our daughter was in fact being regularly, and badly, mistreated; the end result was that she came home one day, at eight years old, saying that she hated herself, that she was stupid. She said, sitting on the kitchen floor in tears, “I want to kill myself.” The teacher had made her tell the class that she got a C- on a math test. We pulled her out of the classroom (it was April by now) and put her into therapy, chastising ourselves for not intervening sooner, for ignoring the clear warning signs.

In fourth grade, she had an excellent teacher, but was physically assaulted three times by a child whose parents seemed to not just ignore, but value, his apparently sociopathic tendencies. The school did not have the resources to keep her safe and told us so. The next year, we homeschooled. “Homeschooled” is a code word for “helicoptered,” I know. But it was our only option.

The year she started middle school (we sent her back to public school as soon as she wanted to go), I didn’t waste time worrying about what anyone would think about me and my helicoptering tendencies. She came home upset about a movie on climate change that had graphics making the apocalypse seem real, and I fired off an email asking the teachers to better contextualize their material. She saw the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination because unsupervised students found it online and played it in the classroom, and I was on the phone asking why there wasn’t better classroom management. She was bullied by a classmate, and I was in the principal’s office at the end of the school day. While we are bombarded with accusations that we want to wrap our children in bubble wrap and tie them to mattresses, we are also bombarded with stories about children jumping to their deaths at cement factories and hanging themselves from stairwells, or being gunned down in their own classrooms.

So I hover over my children. I still remind my kids, now 10 and 12, to be careful when we get out of the car in a parking lot. I don’t let them stay up late and I don’t let them watch television at night, because of the violence in the network ads for other shows. I’ve just recently started letting them walk up our (safe, generally quiet, dead-end) road alone. But I don’t do their homework for them and I do insist on them picking up after themselves; I make them do extracurricular activities but I don’t overschedule them. I don’t let them eat much sugar, but I let them experience what it feels like so they know for themselves. I don’t tolerate as much fighting as I probably should because that is part of understanding unconditional love, and I let them see me drinking wine or even a martini at the end of the day.

My outrage over inappropriate material in the classrooms and bullying behavior from teachers and students isn’t just about the effects those things have on my children, but on all of those around them, especially those who don’t have actively involved parents. I care about my children being seen for who they are, and I care about other children being seen, period, especially the children who are left behind, in the wake of hyper-achieving, helicoptered children. I care about protecting all of our children, not just mine.

Helicopter parents may seem, at the outset, to be supremely selfish, a projection of ourselves on our children, directing rather than guiding. But consider the possibility that some of the parents being condemned for obnoxious hyper-parenting grew up too fast in a world that seemed terrifying. Perhaps we are determined to do what we can to change it for the better, not just for our children but for everyone’s. Whatever went wrong with our growing up, whatever scars or trauma we bear, something went right enough that we still believe we can make a difference. Teaching our children that they, too, have the ability to impact their surroundings, that they are not condemned to passivity because the world is hard—this may be the legacy of the helicopter parent after all.

Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes teaches and writes in Maine.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a syndicated columnist.

There is clearly something wrong with a justice system in which people who look at images of child rape can be punished more severely than people who rape children

Last week John Grisham, the best-selling author of legal thrillers, triggered a storm of online criticism by arguing in an interview with The Telegraph that criminal penalties for possessing child pornography are unreasonably harsh. Grisham, who has since apologized, spoke rather loosely, overstating the extent to which honest mistakes account for child porn convictions and the extent to which those convictions expand the prison population.

But he was right on two important points: People who download child pornography are not necessarily child molesters, and whatever harm they cause by looking at forbidden pictures does not justify the penalties they often receive.

Under federal law, receiving child pornography, which could mean downloading a single image, triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of five years—the same as the penalty for distributing it. Merely looking at a picture can qualify someone for the same charge, assuming he does so deliberately and is aware that web browsers automatically make copies of visited sites. In practice, since the Internet nowadays is almost always the source of child pornography, this means that viewing and possession can be treated the same as trafficking.

The maximum penalty for receiving or distributing child porn is 20 years, and federal sentencing guidelines recommend stiff enhancements based on very common factors, such as using a computer, possessing more than 600 images (with each video clip counted as 75 images) and exchanging photos for something of value, including other photos. In a 2009 analysis, federal public defender Troy Stabenow showed that a defendant with no prior criminal record and no history of abusing children would qualify for a sentence of 15 to 20 years based on a small collection of child pornography and one photo swap, while a 50-year-old man who encountered a 13-year-old girl online and lured her into a sexual relationship would get no more than 4 years.

Nine out of 10 federal child-porn prosecutions involve “non-production offenses”: downloading or passing along images of sexual abuse, as opposed to perpetrating or recording it. As a result of congressional edicts, the average sentence in such cases rose from 54 months in 2004 to 95 months in 2010, according to a 2012 report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The penalties have become so severe, the commission noted, that judges frequently find ways to dodge them, resulting in wildly inconsistent sentences for people guilty of essentially the same conduct. In a 2010 survey, 71% of federal judges said mandatory minimums for receiving child pornography are too long.

State sentences can be even harsher. Dissenting from a 2006 decision in which the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 200-year sentence for a former high school teacher caught with child pornography, Vice Chief Justice Rebecca Berch noted that the penalties for such offenses were more severe than the penalties for rape, second-degree murder, and sexual assault of a child younger than 12.

These draconian sentences seem to be driven largely by the assumption that people who look at child pornography are all undiscovered or would-be child molesters. But that is not true.

The sentencing commission found, based on criminal records and additional information in presentencing reports, that one in three federal defendants convicted of non-production offenses in the previous decade had known histories of “criminal sexually dangerous behavior” (including prior child pornography offenses). Tracking 610 defendants sentenced in fiscal years 1999 and 2000 for 8.5 years after they were released, the USSC found that 7% were arrested for a new sexual offense.

Even allowing for the fact that many cases of sexual abuse go unreported (as indicated by victim surveys), it seems clear that some consumers of child pornography never abuse children. “There does exist a distinct group of offenders who are Internet-only and do not present a significant risk for hands-on sex offending,” says Karl Hanson, a senior research officer at Public Safety Canada who has co-authored several recidivism studies.

Another argument for sending people who look at child pornography to prison, emphasized by the Supreme Court in its 1990 decision upholding criminal penalties for mere possession, is that consumers create a demand that encourages production. Yet any given consumer’s contribution to that demand is likely insignificant, and this argument carries much less weight now that people typically obtain child pornography online for free.

Defenders of harsh penalties for looking at child pornography also argue that viewing such images imposes extra suffering on victims of sexual abuse, who must live with the knowledge that strangers around the world can see evidence of the horrifying crimes committed against them. But again, any single defendant’s contribution to that suffering is apt to be very small.

Tellingly, people who possess “sexually obscene images of children,” such as “a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting”—production of which need not entail abuse of any actual children—face the same heavy penalties under federal law as people caught with actual child pornography. That provision, like the reaction to John Grisham’s comments, suggests these policies are driven by outrage and disgust rather than reason. There is clearly something wrong with a justice system in which people who look at images of child rape can be punished more severely than people who rape children.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a syndicated columnist.

Sharon E. Watkins is the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada.

We haven’t taken the time to delve into the longstanding tensions that set the stage for the protests

Maya Angelou once said, “Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

As I pray, write and think about Ferguson, I, like many of you, am searching for words and thoughts that serve to enter on the way toward wholeness in a very broken time in our nation’s history. So what words do we offer? How do we resist the sins of our past and make accessible in the present a way toward righteousness and peace?

Recently, I read a blog by Rachel Held Evans, who suggests that the place to start in our reflection on Ferguson is with lament. As Paul says in Romans 12:15, “weep with those who weep.” Then listen and learn. Then finally “loosen the chains” (Isaiah 58:6) with informed, prayerful action.

I think she’s right. We can lament, listen and then act. Ferguson challenges us all to engage, to listen to the pain, to name our fears, to hold each conversation in God’s loving embrace, knowing that we are all children of God.

Surprisingly, listening may be the hardest part. To seek understanding of the point of view of another requires patience and a setting aside of our own agendas. In our politicized climate, fear and distrust frequently take center stage before we ever hear the first words uttered by someone we perceive as on the “other side” of an issue. I have experienced this myself when I was immediately accused of disparaging law enforcement officers when I suggested racism may have had a role in the disturbances in Ferguson. We haven’t taken the time to delve into the longstanding tensions that set the stage for the protests, preferring instead to turn trolls in social media with superficial understandings.

As I think about Ferguson, the greater St. Louis community and our nation, I picture Jesus weeping at the pain of a city, conversing at the table with people with whom he disagreed, standing up for the downtrodden, being willing to die for the reconciliation of us all to God and to each other. I hear the risen Christ calling us to cast aside fear and instead to lament, listen and act as God guides us, each in our own place.

In the meantime, please join me in continued prayer over Ferguson, and all our communities, that we may together find the pathways toward healing and hope, reconciliation and wholeness.

Sharon E. Watkins is the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada. She was the first woman to lead a mainline denomination in the U.S., and has served on the Advisory Council of the White House’s Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Watkins is the author ofWhole: A Call to Unity in a Fragmented World, and holds a doctoral degree from Phillips Theological Seminary and Master of Divinity from the Yale Divinity School.