Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR PETTINGELL I must admit that, along with S. G. F. Brandon. I am somewhat mystified by Phoebe PettingeM's objections to the historicity of Jesus Christ ("Dear Editor," NL, December 30)....
...Therefore, any resolution of the conflict must account for these elements, and proliferating groups, plots and factions only makes for confusion...
...Granted the dubious nature of the reference in Josephus, and the possible irrelevance of the reference in Tacitus, one obviously cannot write a book about anyone without assuming that he existed...
...What makes them so, with the exception of puns, is that they are made at someone else's expense...
...Rich\RD Zuckfrman TIME INC...
...pla\s such a key role in the plans of the colonial complex in Southern Africa, there is the possibility that its wtihdrawal from the region might lead to a softening of the white supremacist positions ot Rhodesia and South Africa...
...press...
...New York City Louis J. Si ovinsky PEACE Richard Critchfield's article in the December 30 Ni-.w Lladfr, "Hanoi's Peace Plan," is one of several peace scenarios which have recently appeared in the U.S...
...And Djilas was eager to make certain of his claim to fame by association with Stalin...
...I'm probably too slow-witted to stay with his analysis, but it seems to me that the situation in Vietnam is somewhat simpler...
...If the nlf has conquered we can look for somebody like Dzu to head a so-called "coalition," which will be nothing more than a term covering Hanoi's eventual elimination of its opponents...
...To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead...
...and only then, can he own up to feeling sad...
...Although actual governmental change since Antonio Salazar's incapacitation has been slight, it appears that at least a new atmosphere exists where protest is possible...
...Negro against Jew...
...No one likes Hitler and his friends, but Beethoven...
...A few years ago...
...The objections of Miss Pettingell simply do not make good scholarship or clear thinking...
...For in that same television interview...
...Furthermore, there is no real reason why we should expect to find contemporary references to someone who lived 2.000 years ago in a society that was predominantly illiterate ?especially when the man in question is said to have scorned the educated and deliberately associated with the lowborn...
...If this is what is necessary for Tur Ni w Lf \om and Djilas' publishers to bring him before the American public, then your motives and tactics are showing alarmingly...
...Indeed, to have been in Stalin's company, one gathered, was the ultimate in magnitudinous experience...
...There is nothing in the basic story of Christ—minus the miracles and claims of divinity—that is particularly implausible...
...For even among whiles, the support for apartheid is not unanimous...
...1923-1941...
...Undoubtedly, you are no longer Tin: New Leader that published "The Crimes of the Stalin Era" (July 16...
...It is a bore to have to go through this for the umpteenth time, but I think somebody must ask Richler (for perhaps Wiesel is quoted out of context) just who the German is and just what what he personifies...
...The chance is slim, but there is reason to hope that expediency will cause cooperation, and not bloodshed, to prevail...
...Consequently, the war will go on until a military solution is reached...
...Djilas emphasized that we must learn not to be angry, not to hate Communism, but try to "understand" it...
...New York City Li.oyd C. Tudor DJ1LAS Reading your editorial comment and Thomas J. Butler's "A Literary Conversation with Milovan Djilas" (NL...
...RictivRD Im-nko...
...I am sorry to say that in part of his most recent and otherwise entertainine television column (NL...
...One does not have to believe that Jesus was the son of God to appreciate that it is difficult to explain the early development of Christianity if Jesus is considered a wholly mythical figure...
...While Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda has just been elected to a new term?an expression of his people's determination to withstand and triumph over the threat of white supremacy in their homeland ?Rhodesia, South Africa and Portugal bullishly continue in their unjustified racism...
...I think Kitman should have been at least more discreet, if not discerning...
...Saint Paul, and other Christian prose-lytizers...
...It is the sign of a truly funny man that he perceives the often amorphous boundry between good and bad taste, between causing pleasure and causing pain...
...There were many would-be Messiahs and saviors about the turn of the millenium...
...The nlf will win or Saigon will win...
...There could, of course, be a coup against the Thieu government, but it would have to come from the Army...
...against Portugal's eight-year-old colonial war in Africa was held...
...a kind person, concerned about other individuals...
...Mozart...
...1956...
...He described Stalin as really a very sensitive guy...
...Richler quotes Wiesel: "Every Jew...
...It may have been small?only 150 people participated—hut so were the beginnings of our own anti-Vietnam dissent...
...If Richler means something was very wrong with German society at a particular period, I a<;ree...
...Surely, if this had been the case there would have been persons capable of pointing it out to Saint Peter...
...Brooklyn, N. Y. Arnold Petarcho ROBERTSON The specter of the '"prolonged and bloody racial warfare" raised by Ian Robertson ("Black Challenge to South Africa" NL, December 30) is reinforced with each passing week...
...At the end of the fighting there will be some kind of paper agreement...
...I can think of nicer and more complicated ways for the war to end, but they seem fanciful...
...It would be too unrealistic to expect that the former British domains will initiate modifications of their policies, let alone reversal...
...There has been too much blood for either side to ever trust the other...
...In the television interview, among many, many other things...
...To rework an old folksaying: "If you can't say nothin' funny, don't say nothin' at all...
...Brecht...
...the miracle, however, loses its impact after you've seen it once...
...And there is no reason lo believe that the Portuguese are more immune to the debilitating domestic effects of a prolonged and distant guerrilla war than the much more powerful United States...
...Suggesting, as Critchfield does, that Truong Dinh Dzu...
...Mary Moi i k RICHLER One quotation in Mordecai Richler's review of Elie Wiesel's Legends of Our Time (NL...
...So if Critchfield really had the interview with the nlf representative, and if what he said represented Hanoi's policy, and if Hanoi still follows the same line, then maybe Critchfield has something—provided that the recent events he cites arc part of a design...
...If such a coup took place, the next government would probably take an even more intransigent position than Thieu...
...It is very difficult to discuss these prognostications in detail, since they build elaborate structures on a number of interlocked suppositions...
...Instead, Kitman digs up several thigh-slappers...
...yet there are signs that Portugal may not share this same resolve...
...Prejudice is prejudice is prejudice...
...As reported in the New York Times, on January I in Lisbon the first demonstration The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...But Kitman's basic confusion shows its-elf most clearly when he says that he "did not watch the entire thrilling sequence of the death of Albro Pearsall, the terminal cancer patient...
...December 30) disturbed me...
...it depressed the hell out of m.\" First he is compelled to make his little joke?here at the dying man's expense—and then...
...December 16), and watching Djilas* television interview—described by Butler as "excellent'"—make one wonder who is the real Milovan Djilas...
...The only people possessing any power there are the present government, the Army and the nlf...
...Akihur M. Vogei...
...I suppose the definite article—saying "the German" instead of "Germans"—is supposed to take the curse off this, but it still bothers me...
...were all Germans and ihev did not personify the same things...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...Newsmen often have time on their hands and dream up truly fascinating concoctions, mixing fact and speculation, to make an interesting story: reality, however, is grimmer and easier to understand...
...KITJVIAN There are several kinds of bad jokes...
...San Francisco, Calif...
...If he means that only the Germans suffered from this disease, it isn't true...
...But even Thieu is not able to agree on a genuine compromise with the nlf...
...Boston, Mass...
...for example, there was a rash of "sick" jokes whose humorous focal points were the inabilities of the crippled or palsied to deal with everyday situations...
...Then there are ethnic jokes—lately about Poles and fighting Jews and conquered Arabs—and "'dirty" stories about adultery and sexual hysteria...
...Minneapolis, Minn...
...Since Portugal, as Robertson indicates...
...who didn't even have the muscle needed to stay out of jail, is a factor in any substantive peace negotiations, seems mildly screwy...
...And if he means (and this is what he says) that all Jews must go on hatint* all Germans forever, then 1 think he is really misguided...
...Director Eugene Mar-ner's exceptionally well-executed cinema veritc technique he dismisses as "what we used to call a slice of real life...
...About childbirth, for example, he says: "This is one of nature's oldest shows...
...But I do think you are obliged to properly identify it at some point for your readership...
...Saying this in these hard times sounds like only another liberal incantation, but not saying anything at all sometimes leads to nasty places like Dachau...
...Moreover, his critique (if that's the proper word to use) of the pbi documentary "Birth and Death" fails to recognize the effective poignancy in the intimate juxtaposition of life and death...
...If Saigon comes out on top, there will be a few former nlf people involved in the political process, but again this will be a formal arrangement, and the generals will not relinquish any of their hard-won power...
...There is no reason to assume that Josephus was familiar with them all...
...December 16...
...Failure to mention the correct title of Robert T. Elson's book in either the headline ("What Luce Wrought") or the review of it ("Time Remembered") in the December 2 Nlw Leadlr, does not detract from David Bernstein's thoughtful commentary on Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise...
...somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate?healthy, virile hate—for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German...
...The circumstantial evidence for the actual existence of Christ—and in the study of antiquity circumstantial evidence is important?is on the other hand quite strong...
...Jew against German...
...American against "gooks"—it's all bad...
...Marvin Kitman falls short of his humorous intention and usual high standard...
...Djilas said that although Stalin was the cruelest ruler of modern history, perhaps of all history, and murderer of millions of people, he was not a criminal...
Vol. 52 • January 1969 • No. 1
