Dear Editor

...Dear Editor Hostages Raymond H Anderson closes his discussion of two recent books on Iran ("Before and After the Shah," NL, December 14, 1981) by saying that "a reader cannot help wondering how Kennedy would have handled the detention of Americans by a hostile government " We'll never know about JFK, but it is worth noting that this very situation confronted his successor when the North Koreans seized the crew of the Pueblo According to Lyndon Johnson's account, military options were considered, and all were rejected as threatening the lives of the captives The Pueblo crew members were held for 11 months before being released, and North Korea exacted a formal apology from the United States—something the Iranians did not demand or receive Bethesda, Md DAVID C. WILLIAMS Defense Here...

...Economists and the Environment Seidman takes the position diametrically opposed to Brockway's, declaring that he "remains convinced that pollution charges are better than quotas "I happen to agree with Brockway and Kelman's disapproval of conflating public and private goods Economists are all loo ready to assume lhat everything is a matter of dollars and cents It appears, though, that you really are senous about the legend under the table of contents in the front of the magazine which says, "We welcome a variety of opinions consistent with our democratic policy " Boston NORMAN FREDERICKS Political Consultants In faulting Larry J Sabato's The Rise of Political Consultants ("Playing to the Electorate," NL, December 14,1981), Steven Kelman claims, pace Saba-to, that consultants are more an effect than the cause of the transformation of politics in America today "It is important to remember that consultants have at most exacerbated tendencies already present in the American political system," he says I think Kelman is guilty of a fallacy all too widespread among social scientists—namely, making too hard and fast a distinction between cause and effect If consultants are aggravating structural flaws in our political system, Kelman should be reminded, it in no way minimizes the evil done by their influence to simply say, "Oh, but they aren't a.cause " The subtleties of the interaction between two factors can be of far greater consequence than the issue of what caused what Kelman's reductionism mars an otherwise fine review Washington, D C HENRY BECKER Dear Editor Japanese Bribes Donald Kirk hit the nail on the head in his amusing, indignant comparison of former National Security Adviser Richard Allen's fate with that of Kakuei Tanaka, Japan's rather tarnished former Prime Minister ("Japanese Money Politics," NL, December 28, 1981) Tanaka took bribes from Lockheed officials while furthering his nation's interests, whereas Allen's ambiguous gifts and his chumminess with Japanese industrialists is in no one's interest save his own t do think Kirk goes too far in attributing treasonous motives to Allen, however Even looked at in the most suspicious light, Allen does not seem to have been "spying" for the Japanese, as Kirk intemperate-ly suggests Kirk's point about the bad odor of the Allen affair is valid enough without making such extreme allegations New York City ANDREW BLUM Reds Robert Asahina gets my vote for the critic least susceptible to logrolling on the strength of his panning of Reds ("Eleven Reels That Bored the World," NL, December 28, 1981) As far as I can tell, Warren Beatty must have bribed every other film critic in the country to puff his latest effort Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman turned in the only truly fine performance in the film (although Jevzy Kozinski came close as Gregory Zinoviev) The rest of the cast, exactly as Asahina warned, were dull indeed New York City DEAN TURPIN Kitman The first issue of THE NEW LEADER I have ever seen recently came to my desk by accident Since it was backside up, the first article I came upon was Marvin Kitman's "The Soap Sickness" (NL, November 30, 1981), and I read it Besides having an ovenntense hatred of Elizabeth Taylor, Kitman tiptoes along the border of sexism with nary a self-conscious balancing remark Dinners are delayed for husbands arriving home from work, according to him, children get hooked on soaps on their mothers' knees, brain surgeons' wives watch soaps (I actually know of a female brain surgeon'), and only famous men—or so one gathers from Kit-man's examples—are not be criticized for watching soaps Kitman himself is also above reproach because he just happened to be home ironing rus shirts, he brags/apologizes' Apparently he thinks that non-famous men need an excuse When I finished the article, I turned to the front to see what kind of magazine I had in hand I read that THE NEW LEADER was launching a project intended "to stimulate serious thinking and discussion about setting a new course for the country " The only serious thinking I could muster after Kitman's harangue, however, was to ponder whether I should track down Elizabeth Taylor's address and send her the issue West Somerville, Mass GAYLE MCCARGAR Having recently been outraged by a visit to my son's university, where during what should have been prime studying time I saw an entire student lounge filled with soap-opera addicts, I heartily concur with Marvin Kitman's condemnation of "The Soap Sickness " I agree even more strongly that an institution unable to coax kids away from the tube ought to pay tuition rebates to parents, as Kitman suggests Cleveland, Ohio Arnold Bajnbridge Emerson It irked me to see Phoebe Pettingell praising Ralph Waldo Emerson's prose style, claiming that "the power of Emerson's pen lies m the strength of his metaphors, rather than m the consistency of his philosophy" ("Emerson's True Self Revealed," NL, December 28, 1981) Once again we hear Emerson's tiresome bromide about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds At the risk of sounding like one of those petty intellects, allow me to contradict Pettingell and say that Emerson's writing is plain awful—repetitious, tuU of vacuous transcendental bolderol, and so burdened with extravagant metaphors that the sentences in his paragraphs tend to bear little relation to each other I second Herman Melville's exasperated comment, scribbled in the margin of his copy of Emerson's Etsavs "What a lot ot Stuft this is'" Los Angeles MARK TACKWOOD...

...for Joseph M Diamond's thoughtful letter to the editor on our national defense ("Conventional Arms," NL, November 2, 1981) I don't want to scant all the clear thinking expressed in your pages, but your letters space has become the heir to Lord Thompson's London Times in these Rupert Murdoch days I'll make Diamond my Minister of War and together we'll insure the peace by building up conventional forces Discussions of unilateralists without differentiating between the nuclear unilateralists and those who would have us cut conventional forces as well, as Norman Gelb failed to do in his article on "Europe's New Anu-Amencanism" (NL, November 16, 1981), only blur and (intentionally, I think) obfuscate the debate Diamond and I know that the war to be won is m the minds of men Hiroshima and Nagasaki have put us in a no first strike position, even if we have to take one on the chin, and so building up conventional forces to counter the Soviets makes far more sense than building more missiles, as Diamond points out As for the 50,000 Soviet tanks Diamond alludes to, I say to hell with the "military technicians" and their way of handling this threat No one has explained to me why 5,000 helicopters armed with 10 missiles each and adequately supported by jets could not easily prevail (I'm starting helicopter flight training early next year) As a committed ironist with a Scotch appreciation of economizing, it tears at my heart to see Warbucks Weinberger simultaneously blow the peace and my government's bank account Austin, Texas GARY L. JORDAN Norman Gelb wrongly claims that "the 'better-Red-than-dead' argument is being put forward again with the same naivete and relentlessness that marked its use over 20 years ago " The disarmament movement is definitely tinged with anti-Americanism, but Gelb is clouding issues by bringing up that hoary Cold War slogan The fact ts that the United States has missed many opportunities to curb the present arms race, a failure that has soured its reputation abroad no end President Reagan's preliminary sketch of an arms control plan last November 18 seems to be a step in a direction quite different from the one that has galled many Europeans into their anti-nuclear activities, and it is to be hoped that the new proposal will repair some of the bad press Certainly it now puts the burden where it should be—on the Soviets' shoulders Meanwhile, writers anxious to lump all those in favor of a "nuclear-free Europe" with the unilateralists ought to be reminded that an awareness of the uniquely horrifying aspects of nuclear war does not automatically make one a Communist, or even a fellow traveler Consider the recent words of George F Kennan, the architect of America's containment policy in the postwar world "There is no issue at stake in our political relations with the Soviet Union—no hope, no fear, nothing we would like to avoid?which could conceivably be worth a nuclear war " Boston John Goodman Pollution A recent issue of THE NEW LEADER contained a curious juxtaposition George P Brockway's attack on Lester C Thurow's The Zero-Sum Society ("Zeroing in on Thurow," NL, December 28, 1981) ridiculed the notion of pollution charges Brockway accuses Thurow of maintaining that, "Rather than prevent pollution, we should charge for it by a system of 'effluent charges' The confusion here is between public and private good, and the unstated assumption is that since there is no absolute line between them, they are really the same The point is that although all costs are stated in dollars, they cannot all be compared " Imagine my surprise, then, when I turned to Laurence S Seidman's review of Steven Kelman's What Price Incentives...

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