Ideas

Tim Larkin is the founder of Target Focus Training and author of the New York Times bestselling book Survive the Unthinkable: A Total Guide to Women’s Self-Protection.

There's something we could be doing while we stumble over laws and misogynistic culture

Gender violence is back in the headlines after Utah state police drew criticism for their lackluster response to the cyber harassment of feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian last week. Scheduled to speak at a Utah State University, Sarkeesian was forced to cancel her address when the police decided they would do nothing to respond to a threat of “the deadliest school shooting in American history.” This drama comes mere weeks after the saga of the Ray Rice video showing him knocking his now wife unconscious in an elevator. Both of these incidents feel sadly familiar to those of us who work in the self-defense industry. The country watches while a seemingly defenseless female is assaulted or threatened, everyone gets enraged, then the spotlight passes and the country forgets to take any preventative action.

Wait, you might say, action was taken. There’s been serious talk of strengthening the laws that punish people like Ray Rice. And the NFL and the Utah state police are being held accountable – at least in the public eye.

Here’s the problem: In the white-hot heat of an assault, few women are considering Congressional resolutions, punitive damages or the legal system at all. They certainly aren’t thinking about the media. They are too focused on one thing and one thing alone: how to prevent themselves from being maimed or killed.

Let’s briefly consider the facts: Violence against women remains one of the most common human rights abuses in the world. Women ages 15 through 44 worldwide are more likely to die or be injured by male violence than from of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined. A study commissioned by the National Justice Institute (NIJ) stated that approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the U.S.

And yet, in the face of all that, the best response we can muster is, essentially, a collective shrug of the shoulders. These things happen, we say. The government and other organizations will step in, we hope.

This isn’t enough. It’s time for this country to commit to teaching women how to defend themselves against attack. This is an effort that should begin in our homes, spread to our schools and involve entire communities. It should be a nationwide effort, and it should be mounted with urgency and energy.

Arguing that women should learn how to defend themselves isn’t a popular opinion. Self-defense for women is seldom discussed in the aftermath of these incidents, at least in part because the people who suggest it are accused of blaming the victims. Or worse, they are accused of indifference to the systemic issues that lead to violence in the first place.

After Nia Sanchez, the newly crowned Miss America, commented that she believed women should learn self-defense, social media erupted.

Sanchez’s comments came from a deep well of experience in the martial arts, years spent training on the mat and sparring with opponents. Yet to listen to some of her critics, you’d think she’d offered some kind of wholesale defense of rapists and predators.

Some of the commentary is even more galling. These days, you’ll find even law enforcement commentators arguing that women can’t protect themselves from male attackers, that they ought to simply scream at attackers, cooperate with them, or – if worst comes to worst — simply submit to force used against them. A self-defense pamphlet at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina – yes, a military base — suggested that often it is better for the woman to submit to rape rather than resist. University of Colorado at Colorado Springs offered women this gem: they should vomit or urinate to discourage attackers.

The critics and the cynics couldn’t be more wrong. Women need to be taught how to fight in their own defense should the need arise. And believing that women shouldn’t be harmed and teaching them to defend themselves when they are in danger are not inconsistent. In fact, there are plenty of male and female trainers who want to see violence against women disappear, but who also want to make sure that women are prepared in those regrettable instances where violence occurs.

We need to have a more sober discussion about this issue. If we give women the necessary tools to protect themselves in situations where self-protection becomes unavoidable, we will make them safer. Our daughters, our sisters and our mothers deserve a fighting chance. And until we abandon the idea that women are simply victims at the mercy of their attackers, another generation of women will be forced to live in fear, rather than walk with strength.

Tim Larkin is the founder of Target Focus Training and author of the New York Times bestselling book Survive the Unthinkable: A Total Guide to Women’s Self-Protection.

Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of the recently released The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest that Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.

Dream of walking across the country? Spotting every species of bird? Regret-free people inspired Chris Guillebeau—and they will inspire you

Nate Damn, a young man from Portland, Maine, had what he called a crazy idea: he wanted to walk across America. At first, the motivations for his goal were fuzzy: “It’s just something I have to do for myself,” he would say. Some of his friends thought it was awesome, but others didn’t get it. No matter.

On an early spring morning, Nate set out from Maine and began walking. Mile after mile turned into day after day, and he settled into a routine of daily progress as he left New England and steadily marched toward California.

“Once I had the idea,” he told me at the end of his seven-and-a-half month trek, “I couldn’t get it out of my head. If I didn’t attempt the walk, I knew I’d always regret it.”

Phoebe Snetsinger had raised a family in the Midwest and wanted to do something for herself. Just as she began to explore birdwatching as a new hobby, she received what was initially a terminal diagnosis of cancer. Her first thought, as recorded in her journal, was “Oh no. There are still so many things I want to do!”

Phoebe resolved to spend the rest of her life, however long it would be, traveling abroad and seeing as many birds as possible. Fortunately, she had a lot of time; the diagnosis was premature and she responded well to treatment. But Phoebe still trekked to Amazonian rainforests and African jungles, gaining confidence and going further into the wilds. By the time she died twenty years later in a car accident, she had seen more birds than anyone in the world, setting a Guinness World Record and an advocate for nature.

In some ways, Phoebe lived a stubborn life. She answered what she felt was a calling to go “all-out” for as long as she could. After that premature diagnosis, there was so much left undone—so she got to work doing it and never looked back.

I’d met Nate at the beginning of his journey, and then continued to follow along as he pursued his dream across the country. I’d heard of Phoebe and began learning as much as I could about her life, too.

I understood their motivations perfectly well. I had a similar crazy idea—to visit every country in the world before my 35th birthday. The idea came to me as I traveled independently to my first thirty countries, working as an aid worker and entrepreneur. When I compiled a list of everywhere I’d been thus far, the question struck me: “What would it be like to go everywhere?”

I accepted the fact that I might fail along the way, but if I did the failure would come from an external circumstance and not from my inability to attempt the challenge.

More than ten years ago I set out on the journey, finally coming to an end at my final stop (Norway, country #193 of 193) on the eve of turning 35. The ending was triumphant—I had no regrets and was thrilled that I’d accepted the challenge so many years earlier.

As I roamed the earth on my own quest, visiting tiny island nations and Central Asian autocracies, I found hundreds of people who’d chosen to pursue a quest or embrace a big adventure. They too had “crazy ideas” that they knew they’d regret if they didn’t try them. They often spoke of it like a calling, something they simply had to do.

Even if you don’t want to visit every country in the world or walk across a continent, thinking about what you might regret if you leave it undone can still help you. Ask yourself, “Ten years from now, how will I feel if I pursued this goal, and how will I feel if I decided against it?”

Next, take action. Carve out time to develop the work you decide is important. Set parameters around the project, just as Nate and Phoebe did. For Nate, it wasn’t just “go on a long walk”—he wanted to walk across America on a point-to-point journey.

By the time I arrived at the end of my quest, a lot of things had changed. I’d begun the journey as a solo, independent traveler, but a whole community had sprouted along the way. Now I had another challenge to deal with: the dilemma of “What’s next?”

But this was a good problem to have, and as I reflected on the fact that much of my identity came from visiting the whole world, I also realized that without pursuing the goal, I wouldn’t have had that identity in the first place.

We often think of regret as a negative emotion. But when we proactively anticipate it, and take steps to prevent it, the notion of what might be lost if we don’t take action can inspire us to do something.
Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of the recently released The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest that Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.

Denise Morrison is the President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company.

I’m from a generation of women that found it exhilarating to shatter the glass ceiling. We viewed obstacles as opportunities and earned our seat at the leadership table

This Influencer post originally appeared on LinkedIn. Denise Morrison shares her thoughts as part of LinkedIn’s Influencer series, “Let’s Fix It” in which the brightest minds in business blog on LinkedIn about how they would fix what’s broken in this world. LinkedIn Editor Amy Chen provides an overview of the 60+ Influencers that tackled this subject as part of the package. Follow Denise Morrison and insights from other top minds in business on LinkedIn.

I’m a woman and a CEO, which at present is a rare occurrence in Fortune 500 companies. If I had a magic wand (and they’re also hard to find), one of the first things I’d fix would be increasing diversity in the C-suite.

I feel strongly about the need for diversity, and with good reason. I’m from a generation of women that found it exhilarating to shatter the glass ceiling. We viewed obstacles as opportunities and earned our seat at the leadership table.

But we still have a long way to go. Glaring diversity and gender gaps in business remain. Consider this – women make up slightly more than half of the U.S. population but we account for only 5 percent of the CEOs in the Fortune 500. I was heartened to see that Safra Catz was appointed co-CEO of Oracle last month. Including her, I’m one of 25 women CEOs in the Fortune 500 and one of 53 in the Fortune 1000, a group that includes my sister Maggie Wilderotter, Chairman and CEO of Frontier Communications.

When Maggie and I speak together publicly at various business schools and events (it’s one way for two busy sisters to see each other on a regular basis), we talk about the scarcity of women in the C-suite and how we broke the gender barrier. Our success started with our parents.

When we were growing up in Elberon, New Jersey, our mother told us “ambition is a part of femininity” and our dad, a high-ranking executive at Bell and AT&T, inspired us to pursue business careers.

When Dad came home from work, he’d turn our family dinners into tutorials on business, money, sales and profit margins. He shared fascinating stories about his customers, marketing and my favorite topic when I was a kid – new product launches. Our father also took us to his office before the advent of “Take Your Child to Work Day.”

In an era when leadership positions in public companies were reserved for men, he said the business world would open up to women and he wanted us to be prepared.

Things have changed since then — slowly. I’m the first woman to lead Campbell in its 145-year history and one of four women serving on our Board of Directors this year. But when I attend meetings with other CEOs, there are still times when I’m one of the few women in the room.

But women aren’t the only people missing in the C-suite. Minorities are vastly underrepresented in the Fortune 500, with African-American, Asian and Latino CEOs each in the range of 1 to 2 percent.

I’m equally a proponent of increasing women and minorities on the boards of public companies. You may have seen the Catalyst report that women held about 17 percent of the board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2013, and more than 70 percent of the Fortune 500 had no directors who are women of color.

I’d like to see that change. With three decades of experience in the consumer packaged goods industry, it’s clear to me that diversity will become a competitive advantage in a global economy for companies that are willing to open their minds and embrace change. The best companies will build culturally-diverse leadership teams and workforces with divergent backgrounds, perspectives and ideas.

That’s our goal at Campbell. We have more work ahead, but I believe diversity will help us forge stronger connections with the consumers we serve today and with the new generations of consumers we will serve tomorrow.

The path to diversity begins with supporting, mentoring, and sponsoring diverse women and men to become leaders and entrepreneurs. For instance, we’ve established distinct business resource affinity networks for our women, Hispanic, African American and Asian employees. Externally, we are partnering with or sponsoring non-profit organizations like the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, which I addressed last month in Philadelphia.

Diversity is not only the right thing to do — it’s smart business — so let’s embrace diversity and lead change within our companies, within the business community and within our society… starting at the top.

In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

1) Know What Really Works

Most of the things you instinctively do to relieve stress don’t work.

Via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It:

The APA’s national survey on stress found that the most commonly used strategies were also rated as highly ineffective by the same people who reported using them. For example, only 16 percent of people who eat to reduce stress report that it actually helps them. Another study found that women are most likely to eat chocolate when they are feeling anxious or depressed, but the only reliable change in mood they experience from their drug of choice is an increase in guilt.

So what does work?

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours.)

2) It’s All About A Feeling Of Control

As is often said, stress isn’t about what happens to you, it’s how you react to it. This is true.

We’re not as stressed when we feel in control. Again, the emphasis is on feel. Even illusory feelings of control can eliminate stress. (This is the secret to why idiots and crazy people may feel far less stress than those who see a situation clearly.)

Anything that increases your perception of control over a situation — whether it actually increases your control or not — can substantially decrease your stress level.

Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long:

Steve Maier at the University of Boulder, in Colorado, says that the degree of control that organisms can exert over something that creates stress determines whether the stressor alters the organism’s functioning. His findings indicate that only uncontrollable stressors cause deleterious effects. Inescapable or uncontrollable stress can be destructive, whereas the same stress that feels escapable is less destructive, significantly so… Over and over, scientists see that the perception of control over a stressor alters the stressor’s impact.

Why do people choose to become entrepreneurs when working for yourself often means more hours for less money? Control:

A number of studies show “work-life balance” as the main reason people start their own small businesses. Yet small business owners often work more hours, for less money, than in corporate life. The difference? You are able to make more of your own choices.

Do things that increase your control of a situation ahead of time. According to one study, the stress management technique that worked best was deliberately planning your day so that stress is minimized.

The best way to reduce job stress is to get a clear idea of what is expected of you.

The trick to not worrying about work stuff while at home is to make specific plans to address concerns before you leave the office.

3) You Need Some Stress To Be Your Best.

Heavy time pressure stresses you out and kills creativity. On the other hand, having no deadlines is not optimal either. Low-to-moderate time pressure produces the best results.

Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work:

If managers regularly set impossibly short time-frames or impossibly high workloads, employees become stressed, unhappy, and unmotivated—burned out. Yet, people hate being bored. it was rare for any participant in our study to report a day with very low time pressure, such days—when they did occur—were also not conducive to positive inner work life. In general, then, low-to-moderate time pressure seems optimal for sustaining positive thoughts, feelings, and drives.

In his book The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin discusses one of the key elements that pro athletes like Jordan use to perform at their peak: spontaneous relaxation.

“…one of the most telling features of a dominant performer is the routine use of recovery periods.”

They’re not Zen masters who experience no stress. Far from it. But they’ve taught themselves to turn it on and off. The pros are able to fully relax during the briefest periods of rest. This prevents them from burning out during hours of play.

Via The Art of Learning:

The physiologists at LGE had discovered that in virtually every discipline, one of the most telling features of a dominant performer is the routine use of recovery periods. Players who are able to relax in brief moments of inactivity are almost always the ones who end up coming through when the game is on the line… Remember Michael Jordan sitting on the bench, a towel on his shoulders, letting it all go for a two-minute break before coming back in the game? Jordan was completely serene on the bench even though the Bulls desperately needed him on the court. He had the fastest recovery time of any athlete I’ve ever seen.

One Last Thing:

I’m stressed RIGHT NOW!!! What’s the quickest, easiest thing to do?!?!?!

Watching a video of a cute animal can reduce heart rate and blood pressure in under a minute.

Via Richard Wiseman’s excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute:

In an innovative study, Deborah Wells examined whether merely looking at a video of an animal can have the same type of calming and restorative effects as those created by being in its company… compared to the two control conditions, all three animal videos made the participants feel much more relaxed. To help reduce your heart rate and blood pressure in less than a minute, go online and watch a video of a cute animal.

Here you go:

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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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.