George Mendonsa likely would never have gotten away today with what he did nearly 74 years ago.

He was a sailor who was strolling down a busy New York City street when Japan surrendered to end World War II. He grabbed a nurse and kissed her hard. On the lips. It was a moment captured for all time.

Mendonsa died the other day at age 95; he would have turned 96 in two more days. He had fallen in a Rhode Island nursing home where he lived with his wife of 70 years.

He did not know the nurse he grabbed that day in Times Square. She was Greta Zimmer Friedman. He saw her in her white nursing uniform, grabbed her and planted a wet one on her. Friedman died in 2016 at age 92.

Mendonsa was on leave when the war ended. He had served on a destroyer in the Pacific Theater, fighting the very forces that surrendered in August 1945.

The act that Mendonsa pulled off has gotten criticism in recent years as women have spoken out against sexual abuse, harassment and assault. Their concerns about what has happened to them are real, legitimate and worth hearing.

However, I just cannot equate Seaman Mendonsa’s spontaneous bit of joy at the news of the end of World War II with what we’re discussing today, in the next century.

The picture likely will remain as one of the more iconic images of the 20th century. As it should.