Are Americans still fair, as my parents were? It’s unfair that I must ask

June 28, 2026 — 4:00pm

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When I was growing up, if anyone broke a glass in our house, my mother would carefully wrap the shards before she put them out for the trash collectors. “I don’t want them to cut their hands,” she would say. If you broke a glass, it was only fair that you made sure the sharp edges didn’t hurt anyone.

When I complained once about a lot of ads on a TV show we were watching, she told me I wasn’t being fair. “Advertisers pay for the show,” she said. “They have a right to be heard.”

Later, when she was living in an apartment building and on crutches, she delivered meals to the men and women working in the building at Christmas. It was only fair, she said, since they couldn’t be with their families.

In the ’90s contretemps that pitted Hillary Clinton against Monica Lewinsky, my mother chose both. She said they were both very smart and pretty and had a lot to offer. That was the fair way to look at it, she said. She also still had a soft spot for Bill.

My father was the same. When our neighbour in a Maryland beach town fell on hard times, my dad went down to the bank and co-signed the man’s mortgage – without saying a word to anyone. It was only fair. The neighbour not only repaid his debt; when my dad died, the man drove to D.C. and waited in a line for an hour in the freezing cold to get into the wake, so he could tell my mother what my dad had secretly done.

Trump marched in to transform DC’s reflection pool. The slimy result is just like his presidency

Maureen DowdNew York Times columnist

New York Times........

© The Sydney Morning Herald