Dear Editor
Dear Editor Stoppard Tom Stoppard would certainly not accept Barry Gewen's characterization of him as an emigre writer ("Eastern Lights," NL, October 15). He left Czechoslovakia when he was only a...
...As I wrote, it was Wallace who described the comments of the American Jewish Congress as "snide allusions to our moral defects as Jews...
...But if they do not want to leave, why does their government forbid them to do so...
...Actually, it merely confirms the impression that the first one was biased...
...I attributed the inadequacies of the first segment on Syria to Wallace's incompetence...
...New York City Richard H. Shulman Herbert Dorfman replies: Richard H. Shulman is confusing Mike Wallace's opinions with mine...
...That is going one better than the anti-Semite who claims his best friends are Jews...
...Wallace's notorious 1975 report on Syrian Jews portrayed the country's President Hafez al-Assad as benignly disposed toward them, despite the beatings, property confiscations and restrictions inflicted on the community over the years...
...But much as I earlier felt it necessary to send George Brockway off to read John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding to learn the origins of Thomas Jefferson's use of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence, I am now impelled to urge Herbert Parmet to read an equally lively volume: The Journal of the United States Senate...
...These CBS Jews curry favor with gentiles at the expense of their own people...
...And while it is true that even Jewish CBS officials could be anti-Jewish, there was certainly no indication that they were...
...If he is in any sense an emigre writer, it is totally unconscious...
...The masochists among them could, in effect, become regular participants in the labors of the wisest council in the Free World...
...New York City Richard H. Hoenig Assistant Vice President Federal Reserve Bank of New York The politics of Il Messaggero, an Italian newspaper mentioned in the same article, should have been labeled as pro-Socialist and favorable to the government of Prime Minister Bettino Craxi...
...Too bad they abuse their freedom...
...They might also see in his work something of the tradition of East European writers like Kafka...
...So it is particularly unfortunate that Herbert Dorfman should have used his review of Mike Wallace's book, Close Encounters ("The Method Journalist," NL, October 15), to laud the well-known investigative reporter's Middle East coverage...
...In a program note for Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, I myself once suggested that his concern about the lack of freedom in Eastern Europe might have been at least partially stimulated by his origins, and he denied that notion most indignantly...
...TV journalism needs a watchdog with The New Leader's broad perspective...
...The networks proclaim the superiority of a free press...
...Medford, Massachusetts John P. Roche Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Tufts University Italian Errata Silvio F. Senigallia's "The Andreotti Case" (NL, October 15) incorrectly identified the bank involved in the Sindona affair...
...The point of my comments on the Syrian Jewish story was Mike Wallace's extraordinary sensitivity to criticisms of it, possibly a result of his ambivalence about his own Jewishness...
...Similarly, some people might be tempted to relate Stoppard's recurring interest in problems of identity with his possible uncertainty respecting his own, or his obsessively precise use of the English language with the fact that it was not his parents' tongue...
...He does not, however, give readers a basis for judging, and that seems to me snide on his part...
...Now Wallace (with Dorfman's concurrence) boasts that the second report confirms the first...
...Moreover, several of Stoppard's recent plays have dealt with human rights behind the Iron Curtain, so he can no longer be accused of taking "refuge in art for art's sake...
...New York City Oleg Kerensky Wallace and the Jews During Israel's war in Lebanon, the three television networks, intimidated by Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, were anti-Zionist, uninformed and sensational...
...Ex-Presidents I hate to sound like a scholarly scold...
...Had these people spoken their minds at all frankly they could have been executed...
...Dorfman describes the American Jewish Congress' rebuke of Wallace as "snide...
...There he will discover certain matters germane to his proposal that ex-Presidents be made ex officio members of the U.S...
...In general, the program features many more interviews with Arabs than with Israelis, and the Arabs have the benefit of milder questions and follow-ups...
...By a resolution enacted October 1, 1963 (Rule 19, para 8), former Presidents are accorded the right to address the Senate, though not to vote...
...It was Franklin National Bank, of course, and not Franklin Savings...
...Jewish settlers, when they do appear, get few chances to rebut Arab claims...
...Notwithstanding criticism, he repeated the hoax in 1976...
...Senate ("Rebuilding the Great Engineer's Reputation," NL, August 20...
...On that subject, Wallace and 60 Minutes are thoroughly biased and unprofessional...
...But Stoppard himself will have none of all that...
...Wallace interviewed no escapees from Syria, merely asking Jews inside it their feelings about emigration and about the nation's dictator—in front of his agents, of course...
...He left Czechoslovakia when he was only a year old, was brought up in India and England, and regards himself as completely British...
...The review also defends Wallace by claiming that since he and other CBS officials are Jewish, they cannot be anti-Jewish...
Vol. 67 • November 1984 • No. 20
