About five weeks ago New York City’s First Lady Chirline McCray sent a mass email inviting recipients to be an “UpStander.” Her message said in part “…all of us can be UpStanders, not bystanders, in preventing domestic violence. We can be UpStanders by teaching our kids to respect one another, by supporting victims fleeing abusive relationships, or by speaking up when we hear jokes or other statements that promote violence or victim blaming.” The missive included a link to a city website.

This crystalized why Rachel Noerdlinger should have resigned as McCray’s chief of staff as soon as details of her controversial home life became public in early October. None of the many stories about her relationship with her problematic live-in boyfriend Hassaun McFarlan indicate she was ever physically beaten. However, police records indicate that she made a very bad choice of a longtime companion for herself and for her son. McFarlan’s background includes recent arrests, inflammatory rants against the police on his Facebook page and a six-year term in prison for manslaughter.

If Chirline McCray takes it upon herself to urge women to make healthy life choices, Noerdlinger is not the person she should have by her side. So it is a good thing that the chief of staff finally took an indefinite unpaid leave of absence after her son’s arrest last weekend.

The people who should have been involved here are not McCray and Mayor Bill de Blasio but Oprah or Dr. Phil. Perhaps New York’s first couple stuck by Noerdlinger because they did not want to give in to foes like police unions who may well have fed facts to the media. Possibly the two are blindly loyal. Whatever. If Noerdlinger were the essential public relations whiz she was supposed to be she would have resigned immediately, no matter how the de Blasios protested that she must stay. She would then have been at least as loyal to them as they have so unfortunately been to her.

The background: DNA Info broke the story that McFarlan served six years for manslaughter in the 1990s. Noerdlinger lives with him and her son in Edgewater, New Jersey where in 2011, police arrested him for possession of marijuana. He had been driving her Mercedes-Benz the wrong way with Noerdlinger and an underage passenger, presumably her son, in the car. She received a violation for allowing McFarlan to drive her car without a license.

De Blasio stood by her, saying that his aides knew about McFarlan, even if she had not included information about him in information the law required her to submit to the city’s Investigation Department. The mayor said, with some righteousness, that she should not be judged by the behavior of a companion. What if the behavior endangers a minor and the public and is part of a larger pattern? Will de Blasio allow himself to learn from this? Please scroll down to the “Leave a reply” box and comment.