Remembering when America valued true fairness

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.”

- Maureen Dowd

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 DC 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.

When the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses on the lawn of other beach neighbours, the only Jewish family in town, my dad tracked down the local Klan leader and told him to back off, or else. My dad, a police detective, made sure the Klansman saw his service revolver on his waist. When dad was in charge of the US Senate’s security, he judged politicians not only on their ideology but also on how they treated people. Were they nasty to the elevator operators and Capitol Police officers and cafeteria workers? That wasn’t fair.

My parents did not think they behaved in an out-of-the-ordinary way. They considered fairness a very American trait, like their fierce patriotism. (Our clothes, napkins and candles always had to be red, white and blue on July 4.)