LETTERS
LETTERS Public TV timidity I did not tell Variety that "A , Walk Through the Twentieth Century" was less than it should have been. Nor did I say in regard to the series that "I should...
...Captain (then Commander) Hank Kleeman was flying one of the F-14s...
...I disagree...
...Before I got my.current job in a publicly owned Fortune 100 company in the computer industry, I worked for three small family-owned companies in the trade magazine publishing industry...
...NW., Washington, D.C...
...Victims" is the best send-up of the contemporary novel of malaise since Jonathan Yardley's review, in mock-Didion prose, of her godawful Democracy...
...At least 20 years ago it was in common use at the Pentagon, HEW, and the Transportation Department, which typically used values around $300,000 in 1965 dollars...
...New subscriptions only: 1-800-341-1522...
...We take the time to write carefully about our advisees because we believe that our observations will be taken seriously...
...The new private owners' equity is negligible...
...Waldron and N. R. Kleinfield of the Times: Mr...
...20009 (202).462-0128...
...PEDRO L. ARANGO Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan Hicks nix As a security analyst, .I read with much interest the excerpts quoted ["Tilting at Windmills] from the December 1 New York Times Magazine in reference to Hicks Waldron, the CEO of Avon...
...I'm not trying to "snooker" anyone...
...But since OMB presumably expressed the value of a human life in constant (1985) dollars, they should have used the constantdollar real interest rate of 3 to 4 percent...
...And I mentioned some of them, from "National Geographic" to "Mystery" to "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century...
...20009 The Washington Monthly is indexed in the Book .Review Index, Political Science Abstracts, Public Affairs Information Service, the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, the Social Science Index, and Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, and may be obtained on microfilm from University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48106...
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...three years, $77...
...The long-term real interest rate has been 3 to 4 percent, not 10 percent...
...other, $25 air mail, $3 surface mail...
...Waldman confined himself to the available facts rather than idle rumors and gossip...
...The driving mechanism of that occupation is, instead, I think, the conflict of the Eastern European bureaucracy—the bureaucracy of Franz Kafka—versus the traditional patron-client system of the Levant...
...To the contrary, I was given total freedom to exercise my own professional judgment...
...Tokenism is insulting, but at least it represents the admission that a problem exists...
...In addition to...
...Later in the conversation we did talk about one series that I produced several years ago from which a corporate underwriter pulled out after several controversial programs were aired...
...I spent about a month in the West Bank and Gaza last summer meeting with quite a number of Palestinian media, educational, and political leaders...
...Waldron's incredible response was, "Do everything is an understatement...
...Design and Layout Kitry Krause...
...Kinsley, Nicholas Lemann, Suzannah Lessard, Arthur Levine, Joseph Nocera, Leonard Reed, Jonathan Rowe, Walter Shapiro...
...Servicemen aren't the same as postal clerks...
...Back issues, $3...
...Although I was not a member of the family in any of the three companies, I was expected to work as hard as the family members...
...Cost-benefit analysis in the federal government may well have begun when Secretary McNamara or his "best and brightest" assistants tried to use a quantitative procedure to assign priorities to military programs...
...OMB seems to have taken to heart the old maxim: figures don't lie but liars figure...
...Such bonds bear very high interest rates...
...Nor did I say in regard to the series that "I should •have been able to air controversial views...
...1986 by The Washington Monthly Co...
...Circulation Joan Dillard...
...The present rash of buyouts by managements to avoid takeover bids, however, is by means of massive debt...
...We talked a long time, and our discussion of both "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century" and "Creativity with Bill Moyers," also sponsored by Chevron, was entirely positive...
...I stand behind the students I recommend...
...Moreover, in the Variety article he did go on to say that a "corporate underwriter pulled out after several controversial programs," but does not go on to reveal who that underwriter was...
...November], in which I am quoted as having said that the writing of recommendations is a "game!' The author of the piece, Paul Barrett, has implied that my Christmas will be spent in the creation of an artifice by which to "snooker" a college admissions officer...
...Kleinfield asked Waldron if it is fair to say that he does everything he can to avoid releasing numbers that are below plan...
...PHILIP A. SCHRODT' Evanston, Illinois Learning about AIDS There is much to commend Steven Waldman's article, "The Other AIDS Crisis" [January...
...Then, literally overnight in 1967, the familiar system was replaced by one with totally alien norms, alien (and inaccessible) political structures, and alien laws...
...It is not an easy thing to present an objective picture of a 17-year-old in the midst of reinventing himself daily...
...Don't grind on me I am sitting in my office on Christmas day crafting what I hope will be effective letters of recommendation...
...PETER S. ARNO San Francisco, California The author replies: The full quote was: "Ed Koch didn't want to be associated with the gay plague...
...I've got a data point for him: In 1981, two Navy F-14s smoked a pair of Libyan aircraft in self-defense...
...Not only was this topic not discussed with me but its inclusion in the article is irrelevant and sensationalistic...
...I did not mean to imply that Arno believes the rumors are true, only that Koch's sensitivity to them may explain the city's slow response to the AIDS problem...
...This was an injustice, one of many injustices of a cruel world, and an injustice that many Palestinians are now prepared to forgive (forgive, not seek the reversal of) if the Israelis will finally allow them a similar country of refuge...
...Waldron that you included, your readers may be interested in the following dialogues between Mr...
...Jim Sibbison criticizes OMB's use of "cost-benefit analysis" for asbestos industry regulation...
...Interns Matt Day, Elizabeth Harman, Vance McMahan, Susan Stevens...
...And I do not question the statistics affirming that small companies create most of the jobs in our society...
...in severe jeopardy...
...When the reporter stated his premise to me at the beginning of the telephone interview—that corporations were dictating the content of public television—I immediately said, "Wait a minute...
...It's good the companies are out there creating the jobs...
...The emphasis is on "family...
...Public Health Service AIDS funds was appropriated for this purpose...
...NW., Washington, D.C...
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...I am sure I am not alone among your readers in wishing that The Washington Monthly was equally aware of its own deficits in this regard...
...What is ironic is that the Palestinians and the Israelis each hold what the other desires, and I came away with the distinct impression that neither side quite realizes what it holds...
...Contributing Editors Jonathan Alter, Thomas N. Bethell, Tom Bethell, Taylor Branch, Gregg Easterbrook, James Fallows, Mickey Kaus, Phillip Keisling, Michael...
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...Proofreaders and Volunteers Jane Beachner, Kathleen David, Michael Davis, Zachary Ellis, Deena Flinchum, Dana Frix, Kelly Gordon, Robert Griffen, W. Vann Hall, Quinith Janssen, Terri Maciocha, David W. Stowe, Mark Sullivan, Kara Swisher...
...The method itself is not wrong...
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...You have to have the killer instinct for the bottom line...
...It does, however, gloss over the paucity of federal funds that have been allocated to public health education...
...The root of those laws was in the northern Europe of the industrial revolution, suddenly imposed on the largely agrarian, villageoriented society of the West Bank and Gaza...
...But at the same time it is only the Palestinians that can give Israel the legitimacy that, ultimately, Israel must have to survive as 2.5 million Jews surrounded by 80 million Arab Moslems and Christians and amid a Western civilization that still harbors apallingly much anti-Jewish sentiment in high places...
...Your readers would certainly be better served had Mr...
...According to Sibbison, OMB assigned an arbitrary $1 million value for a human life, determined that the deaths in question were 40 years in the future, and discounted the $1 million at 10 percent for those 40 years, "leaving a human life worth a grand total of $22,094.93 ." Sibbison's point is that cost-benefit analysis should not have been used...
...A 3.5 percent discount rate would have resulted in a present value of $252,572-11 times the value Sibbison reports was actually used...
...We showed one of the sponsors of the "Stress Break" as the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association...
...Additional charges per year, foreign subscriptions: . Canada, $3...
...The Washington monthly Editor in Chief Charles Peters...
...No one even squawked when twice I dealt with the infamous Ludlow Massacre involving Chevron's predecessors...
...Pricing life In his December article on how OMB runs EPA ["Who's Agency Is It Anyway...
...The only—note "only," not "overriding"--concern was to make as much money as possible for the family...
...Kafka in the Levant I have been meaning to write to lend my support for Charles Peters's comments regarding the Palestinian issue in the December "Tilting at Windmills...
...The only way to get such programs funded, I said, is through CPB or an independent program fund, as we proposed long ago at the White House when we established public television...
...For example, one of the companies provided no health insurance for the employees...
...Hank's not going to draw any retirement pay...
...I said something to the effect that "they didn't want me to be controversial, but I was ." I can only assume that the reporter—this was very late in a lengthy interview—transposed that comment to the very early discussion of "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century" and Chevron...
...Business Manager Tim Ruder...
...It was in fact the...
...Sibbison also says the value of a human life "had never been used by government before Reagan's arrival in the White House...
...Moyers has yet to contact Variety to deny the quote...
...There just is not any room for "snookering" in the process...
...Victims" in your October issue is a brilliant, on-target statement of the sorry state of modern "literature In recent years I've been amazed and dismayed over the nihilist, pointless trash that passes for serious fiction...
...Second class postage paid at Washington, D.C...
...I am trying to present some sense of the individuality of the students I advise, many of whom are applying to highly competitive colleges...
...JOHN L. BYRON Arlington, Virginia See "Tilting at Windmills...
...Tokenism is better than nothing Your January "Tidbits and Outrages" column reports under the sardonic headline "Reagan Closes the Gender Gap" the newly exalted titles of two female members of the White House staff...
...An associate recently mailed me a copy of the article, "The Recommendation Racket: Who Do We Think We're Kidding...
...Editorial Advisory Board Graham Allison, James David Barber, Edgar Cahn, David Halberstam, Murray Kempton, Richard Reeves, Hugh Sidey...
...BILL MOYERS New York, New York The author replies: Mr...
...This may be true for the company built up from nothing by plowing back profits and with minimum debt...
...The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is not the conflict of the Jew versus the Arab, and certainly not the Jew versus the Moslem (a large number of Palestinians, particularly on the West Bank, are Christian, as was the murdererd ADC leader Alex Odeh...
...I am trying to give my colleagues in admissions more to consider than grades and scores...
...Now you've really hit the bull's-eye in another field: fiction...
...On a more personal level, I take offense at the remarks attributed to me regarding the mayor of New York's sexual preference...
...two years, $56...
...In 1948 a million Palestinians were driven from their homes, their villages, their fields and orchards to provide the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust a refuge...
...Greg Tally, Bill Wheatley...
...Durding fiscal years 1984 and 1985, less than four percent of all U.S...
...West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association...
...The pressure on management to maximize profits will be increased, not diminished...
...It looks to me as if a woman stands a better chance of getting on the White House staff than into the pages of The Washington Monthly...
...Since the departure of the Crusaders—with the temporary exception of the bumbling inefficiency and noblesse oblige of the British mandate—Palestine had been ruled to Arab standards...
...Because of their emphasis on keeping payroll costs down, they are willing to take a chance on promising but untrained workers who will work for low pay...
...The Palestinians want, of course, land and self-determination, and in the near term only Israel could give that, and certainly it is Israel that must relinquish Gaza, Ramalla, Nablus, Hebron, East Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bethlehem—towns as purely Palestinian today as they were a generation ago when Israeli tanks first rolled into them...
...Sometimes I have to laugh out loud when reading reviews of new novels in The New York Times Book Review...
...Some of "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century" and "Creativity" dealt with potentially controversial subjects and people, yet I never heard a peep from any of my contacts at Chevron...
...Reproduction by any method whatsoever without permission is prohibited...
...There is skill in writing evocatively and effectively and some competition among college guidance people in the placement of graduates...
...ISSN 0043-0633...
...I was also expected to accept an absurdly low salary in each of the three companies...
...Correction In the January "Tidbits and Outrages" we featured a brochure on a Hawaii "Stress Break" for lawyers...
...This training is invaluable in giving many people a start in a career...
...Kill' is the word...
...In the same issue, all 13 bylines are male...
...and possessions: one year, $30...
...Your masthead does suggest, however, that you rely heavily on women for lesser, unpaid editorial chores...
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...CHARLES CERF Washington, D.C...
...I'm just glad I don't have to work for them anymore...
...Small family companies do provide a service for our economy, however...
...GEORGE GIBSON Upper Montclair, New Jersey See "Tilting at Windmills...
...THORNTON L. O`GLOVE Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Risk and retirement Charles Peters frequently inveighs against the military retirement system...
...None of the companies,had any interest in publishing high-quality magazines...
...OMB may have confused real with nominal rates, which allow for inflation...
...Thus in one of the greater ironies of world history, the Palestinians were made to pay the debt of the Nazis...
...I wasn't ." [Prime Time Pablum," S. L. Harrison, January] I don't know how the reporter garbled the conversation, but he did...
...The problem, I said, is not what gets on PBS but what doesn't, as corporations are reluctant to underwrite controversial programs, especially journalism, for reasons which are obvious...
...That bureaucracy was the unintentional gift of Zionism to Palestine, and whether it is the relatively benign socialism of Labor or the Prussian authoritarianism of Menachim Begin and Likud, it is bureaucratic without reprieve...
...My experience with Chevron, in fact, was so totally opposite to what the quote suggests that I am utterly flabbergasted by it...
...Barrett had an axe to grind...
...STEVE HOFFMAN Washington, D.C...
...All rights reserved...
...I even told him that not once had anyone from Chevron intervened in any way with my work on those two series...
...Arno was referring to a smear campaign against Koch during two prior campaigns...
...He was killed in an F/A-18 crash in California last November...
...But I want to emphasize again for the sake of fairness that I did not say what I am quoted as saying...
...Waldron is serious, because for a number of years Avon has been paying out most of its share earnings in the form of the company's $2 per share annual dividend...
...Mom and Pop capitalism In "Tilting at Windmills" in December Charles Peters was much too enthusiastic about the benefits of working in a privately held company...
...Assistants to - the Editor Andrea Posner, Carol Trueblood...
...VICKI MEAGHER Mission Viejo, California You say that by going private companies will improve our capitalist system in profound ways: "A privately held company is not subject to the same pressures to emphasize short-term gain and maximize profits that a publicly held company is...
...There was nothing in my experience with Chevron to justify my having done so...
...It focuses attention on the inadequacies in our health care system, specifically in response to the AIDS epidemic...
...the problem here is the discount rate...
...I did that also...
...RACHEL DOWNS Washington, D.C...
...Advertising and Promotion Jennifer Barrett...
...the capital for the private buy-outs is provided by banks that issue so-called junk bonds secured only by the assets of the purchased company...
...He was eligible for retirement under the system you say should be scaled back...
...I suspect this would have made a considerable difference in the cost-benefit calculation...
...he believes that recommendations are fraudulent, evasive, useless...
...My school's credibility and reputation with an admissions office are on the line every time I sign a letter of recommendation...
...You first have .to acknowledge that corporations are responsible for some of the best programs on the air...
...the priceless quotations from Mr...
...The case against fiction I've frequently enjoyed and appreciated your insights, and those of your contributors, on matters of politics and public affairs...
...Just one of the 28 editors, contributing editors, and editorial advisory board members listed on your masthead is a woman...
...Any falloff in present numbers would place Avon's dividend, which I deem to be an outrageous payout...
...In lieu of a vaccine that may be years away, public education is probably the most effective means to slow the spread of the epidemic...
...For good reproduction, we reset some of the type, and we made an error...
...Editors Daniel Benjamin, Timothy Noah, Steven Waldman...
Vol. 18 • March 1986 • No. 2
