Letters
LETTERS to the Editor The Age of Hysteria Your editorial "The Age of Hysteria" (Comment, October issue) presented a timely counterbalance to the antidrug mania that has swept the nation. As you...
...I wonder whether, out of pain over the effects of pervasive social misogyny, some feminists have sided with the predominant hatred, adopting the position that socially defined masculine character—work style, sexual style, achievement—is better...
...I used to teach, and at my own school assemblies have largely disappeared, so unruly have students become...
...I believe the industry must claim that smoking is harmless because the product-liability laws of many states enable consumers to sue companies that knowingly manufacture harmful products...
...In fact, the worst error has not been feminist disrespect for the family...
...She does not respect a woman's choice not to have children...
...Sheryl Hobbs Long Beach, California Only in Amerika As Robert Karl Manoff reported in "Only in Amerika" (Media, October issue), an estimated sixty million viewers will be LETTERS to the Editor treated to the horrors of a fictional Soviet occupation of the United States in the forthcoming ABC miniseries, "Amerika...
...We will no longer need to depend on drugs for relief and excitement when we begin joining together in a process of risky self-disclosure and openness to the influence of people who look at the world differently than we do...
...The task of parenting in a creative, nurturing fashion in response to my daughter's needs is the biggest challenge I have ever undertaken...
...Jeb Brugmann Cambridge, Massachusetts Free Speech in High School You imply that freedom of speech in a high-school assembly should encompass a student's use of sexual innuendo in behalf of a candidate for student office ("Reign of the Woolly Mammoths," Comment, September issue...
...They aren't really thinking about building a stable economy freed of its Pentagon addiction, but about removing capitalists from their roles as capitalists...
...Mike Friedman Champaign, Illinois Editor's Note: Molly Ivins has graciously permitted us to twist her arm...
...Nor will I embrace a social movement that wavers in its commitment to the family...
...The naive-left call to gang up on capitalists is a dead end for conversion organizing...
...Careful inspection of the ad revealed that all the clippings referred to a single study...
...The Friedan of later years shows signs of falling into the same trap...
...Judith Baer Upland, California Though the family continues to be a source of profound meaning and gratification for most women, Joan Walsh suggests we need a new social policy that "frees women from excessive responsibilities of economic and emotional caretaking...
...I see no reason why tobacco makers should be allowed more license to avoid product-liability suits...
...And there is the question of exactly what that study said...
...If feminists want a way to link feminism and the family, it would be well to remember that the family is communal in nature and generally useful as a foundation of individual fulfillment, male and female...
...What is required, I gather, is that we adjust to a reality we created, in part, out of self-contempt (society does not value "women's work," so it must be valueless), and move on in further self-denial toward a society in which a woman feels liberated because paid employees attend her baby's growth while she performs "valuable" work attached to a CRT...
...Ronald Reagan said, "I don't know why the Russians are so paranoid...
...Father Paul Kabat Federal Correctional Institution Sandstone, Minnesota Smoke Signals Your editorial questioning the Federal Trade Commission's ruling on tobacco-industry ads ("Smoke Signals, Too, Are a Form of Speech," Comment, September issue), ignored the deceptive techniques used in those ads...
...The multi-billion-dollar private drug industry has played a pernicious role in generating our near-dependence on prescription products, which have been responsible for many more instances of needless death and disability than illicit drugs...
...Jay Hodin Portland, Oregon appreciate the main point of "The Age of Hysteria"— that we need to address the reasons for Americans' widespread resort to drugs...
...But we have settled, as individuals and as a nation, for the pursuit of security, comfort, and control over others...
...Carol E. Jackson Miami, Florida Feminism's Next Frontier I oan Walsh's article, "Fam-Jily Ties: Feminism's Next "Frontier" (September issue), is a welcome contribution to feminist debate...
...I have already endured much more suffering and repression than I had anticipated from our disarmament effort, but you are absolutely right to conclude, "A better way of showing sympathy and understanding is to go out and repeat their crime...
...Few Americans have ever heard of these events...
...well-informed people know that the mainstream press often sensationalizes and distorts the findings of medical research...
...Harry R. Major Los Angeles, California There is a difference between exercising free speech in exposing injustice and permitting a young (or old) smart aleck to spout offensive speech at a captive audience...
...Perhaps The Progressive is not published for prudes like me...
...the book contains diatribes against feminist leaders for making that choice...
...As human beings, we are built for continuous transformation by creative interchange...
...But, in fact, it was the United States that invaded the Soviet Union and occupied large areas around Archangel and Vladivostok in 1918-1919...
...Ray Anderson Wichita, Kansas Thanks for "The Age of Hysteria," but a more complete view would examine the history, pharmacology, and special interests that have imposed prohibitions on seed-bearing plants...
...After all, the taxpayers are paying for the time...
...None of it is in any way a thoughtful rehearsal for the adult political process...
...She reveals a bias that underestimates the challenges of childrearing ("mind-numbing child raising") and offers a scenario of a society in which children are raised collectively "apart from their parents...
...It represents the "us/ them" mode of thinking that we are purportedly trying to tone down in the world...
...Before a truly humancentered answer can be found, feminists must listen to those who would reclaim children, home, and family as valuable and essential concerns—as a legitimate occupation, for that matter...
...But her latest counterpoint to Gordon Adams ("The Case for Conversion," September issue) does not move us forward...
...It could set the record straight, and with Rambo wading through rivers of Bolshevik blood, it ought to be a smash...
...Robert D. Watt Missoula, Montana Ivins by the Month In "A Grand Month for Sex" (Small Favors, September issue), Molly Ivins used expressions I found crude, rude, pertaining to the gutter—not the sort of thing I am proud to have on my coffee table...
...One such ad featured a pile of newspaper clippings about "new" evidence supposedly indicating that smoking was not as dangerous as the warnings on cigarette packs suggest...
...Readers who support this call for balance can let ABC know by writing to Alfred R. Schneider, vice president for policy and standards, Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., 1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019...
...There is a much more crucial point that The Progressive missed altogether: So-called student government is a fraud, a farcical nonprocess whereby students become administrative patsies...
...The candidates have no issues to run on except such doubtful notions as "school spirit...
...Laurie Menard Solana Beach, California Iwas impressed by Joan Walsh's article, but I found her reference to "mind-numbing child raising" extremely offensive...
...And in that mood, isn't it possible that what emerges is a movement vulnerable to the forces that would turn us all into extensions of corporate and bureaucratic machines...
...The principal factor, it seems to me, is that we are bored...
...Bessie L. Steward Vista, California In Molly Ivins, The Progressive's readers have a watchdog on special interests in the nation's second most populous state—a wry observer who has descended into the very belly of the beast...
...To develop such sophistication, the current advocates will have to take a fresher look at the world...
...it has been the failure to assign responsibility for current problems...
...Obviously, it is not in anyone's intellectual interest to eliminate assemblies, but good manners are a prerequisite to group involvement...
...I know it is asking heroism of others, but I strongly believe the most productive way to confront the greed, oppression, and violence of the global corporate state is to go out and repeat the crime...
...However, you overlooked a significant cause of widespread drug abuse...
...In a world increasingly devoid of real connectedness, commitment, and meaning in relation to others, the disappearance of the family and the extended family is an intolerable notion, one I cannot embrace...
...Jeff Cohen Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) New York, New York The Case for Conversion Suzanne Gordon has been a tireless organizer and thinker in the field of peace conversion, and has done us all a major service in developing an international conversion campaign...
...However, Walsh should have devoted more attention to placing the blame for "the deteriorating social and economic condition of many women in the United States" and less space to feminist errors...
...If I, as a child-free feminist, thought her views were typical of women like her, I would find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for maternity leaves and child care...
...if a student wants free speech, he should be mature enough to rent his own hall...
...What is needed is more Eleanor Smeal and Barbara Ehrenreich and less Betty Friedan and Sylvia Ann Hewlett...
...There is less scientific disagreement over whether tobacco is dangerous than there is over "creation science...
...Beginning with this issue, her Small Favors column will appear every month...
...As I write this from my crowded prison cell, I rejoice in the Good Friday action of the five Silo Plowshares from Davenport, Iowa, who were willing to emulate our example of trying to disarm a nuclear-missile silo, knowing the harsh sentences we had already been given...
...Walsh helps counter the epidemic of guilt-tripping and victim-blaming that threatens the women's movement...
...Without a vision of a balanced and fully life-enhancing world, how can we make changes that will be in the best interest not only of women but also of children and men...
...This process will take an even more sophisticated approach than the conversion task before us...
...Such a position is most unreasonable...
...To deny the value of the family simply because authoritarian sentiment would claim it for its own purposes is absurd...
...Most illicit-drug laws have their foundation in ignorance, racism, and greed...
...The Supreme Court is right in upholding responsible adults who are trying to educate the young...
...The Frie-dan of The Feminine Mystique trenchantly criticized the academic premise that "what 51 per cent of the population does today, 100 per cent should do tomorrow...
...But I don't believe, as you seem to, that the lack of "control over our daily lives" is the basic cause...
...Before my daughter was born, I worked full time...
...More than 400 Yanks and thousands of Red Army defenders died in bitter winter fighting...
...Jack Bock Clinton, Washington Robert Karl ManofFs column about "Amerika" misstated our strategy for balancing ABC's exercise in Cold War propaganda...
...We are like the wild geese that have succumbed to the temptation of letting our wings be clipped in exchange for the safety and comfort of life in the barnyard...
...Even as we appeal our conviction on certain charges and the harsh severity of our punishment, we are also aware that, as you put it, "those who engage in civil disobedience should not be shielded from the consequences of their acts...
...Robert Sullivan Madison, Wisconsin I'm sure many readers would be very happy to see Molly Ivins's bimonthly column, Small Favors, made a monthly feature of The Progressive (hint, hint...
...Restricting self-medication enriches certain interests while controlling and suppressing those who would challenge the status quo...
...Friedan and Hewlett are not giving necessary re-emphasis to women's "special needs...
...I don't see how vilifying the unfortunate agents of injustice and oppression will get them to cooperate in changing our oppressive society...
...We did not expect to be charged with sabotage and to be given such severe sentences...
...The result is shallow rhetoric and excessive hoopla about nothing at all, often with a big dose of cuteness thrown in...
...Child-free women are an integral part of the feminist movement...
...Cullen Stuart Lincoln, Maine One can't help wondering how the authors of Common Sense, the Declaration, and the Constitution would view the outcome of their noble experiment now that our current leaders offer up urine specimens as proof of worthiness to wear their mantle...
...As the media wallow in the imagined horror of a Soviet invasion of America, I wonder why some enterprising television mogul hasn't caught on to the commercial possibilities of a docudrama on the American invasion of the Soviet Union...
...I realize that for a number of conversion advocates, working with business management is not what they have in mind...
...Richard R. Mayer Schuylerville, New York High Crimes, Misdemeanors Your editorial "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Comment, October issue) well expressed the difficult ambiguity of our witness as the Silo Pruning Hooks in trying to disarm a nuclear-missile silo on November 12, 1984...
...Not only were Matthew Fraser's comments out of line, but he seemed to have no concept of the effect of his ribald words on an immature audience...
...Why should we work for benefits we do not need, if the women who need them disesteem us...
...Please, please print more of Molly Ivins...
...The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...The peace and labor movements can busy themselves forever with drafting "alternative-use plans" (or at least with talking about them), but plans mean nothing unless all the people affected agree to carry them through...
...The vision presented in Walsh's article neglects this consideration and seems bent on exacerbating an already self-separated, alienating condition...
...The industry that has persuaded us to take tranquilizers for anxiety, pain killers for discomfort, and a multitude of other drugs of questionable value should share some responsibility for transforming today's well-adjusted citizen into tomorrow's street junkie...
...It is nonsense to depict those of us who choose to stay home and care for our children as dimwitted housewives with our hair in curlers, having our tiny brains befuddled by television ads...
...The prohibited plants-hemp, poppies, and coca-have been the premier medicinal herbs since before the beginning of recorded history...
...What they are doing, intentionally or not, is dividing women...
...As you suggested, recently adopted private and public drug-detection and enforcement policies violate due process, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy...
...I make no bones about telling you I am offended...
...In Hewlett's case, she has either fallen into the same trap or deliberately jumped...
...The movement needs wives and mothers, but it needs us, too...
...What we are calling for is a panel discussion after each episode of the miniseries which will analyze the various right-wing themes in "Amerika...
...However, every Russian school child knows...
...You do a disservice to the reputation of The Progressive when you support license in our overpermissive society...
...No doubt this is a hard gospel, but I see no other truly effective remedy for our sad and troubled times...
...Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) insists that these panels be weighted towards experts unafraid to ridicule the substance of the "Amerika" program...
...This would be in keeping with the precedent set by ABC when it placated conservative critics of "The Day After" by airing a follow-up panel dominated by hawks who mostly pooh-poohed the program and the threat posed by the nuclear arms race...
...I doubt that the tobacco industry is attempting to publicize a genuine scientific debate...
...Conversion organizing needs to be a cooperative process...
...Now I no longer choose to be employed outside my home...
...after all, we have fewer conflicts and demands on our time...
...We've never done anything to them...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
Vol. 50 • November 1986 • No. 11
