LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Racism in Cap and Gown When I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, the interracial climate on campus was certainly different from that...
...Marshall E. Deutsch Sudbury, Massachusetts Jumper Cable To refer to "the cable industry" ("Jumper Cable," Comment, March issue) is to lose the battle over terms of discourse by concession...
...LETTERS to the Editor Racism in Cap and Gown When I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, the interracial climate on campus was certainly different from that reported in your June issue ("Racism in Cap and Gown," Comment...
...I am willing to accept the author's premise that tear gas (made in the United States or elsewhere) can, if misused, cause deaths and miscarriages...
...I wish that Kathleen Hart had done the same without injecting her obvious bias, and that the Editor had exercised similar restraint in accepting this article for publication...
...My subscriptions go from far Left to far Right, and some in between...
...Mae Margan Bellaire, Texas Coming Up Roses Molly Ivins hit the nail on the head with her Small Favors column about Texas politicians ("Coming Up Roses," May issue...
...What a distorted view of the world he must have...
...From Sam Rayburn to Governor Bill Clements, the issue would resemble War and Peace...
...Even as Herman and Chomsky point out the shortcomings of the American mass media, they advance no ideas for breaking this Establishment hammer-lock...
...Thanks for yours, too, though...
...Matthew Lee Inner City Press New York, New York The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...Your failure to do so can only make me wonder what else you are missing...
...We're always looking for ways to get ideas to other places...
...Perhaps the only objective paragraph in the entire article was the statement of David Aasen, a member of Amnesty International's Washington staff, that "we have received a great deal of information about the use of tear gas by Israeli troops and are seriously studying the documentation...
...Most Americans have been trained to discount Arab people as credible sources, but certainly four U.S...
...The article makes it seem that vaccinations are desirable and states, as if it were fact, that "immunization rates of 80 to 90 per cent are needed to prevent epidemics...
...Their hegemony over the American public's mind will be very difficult—perhaps impossible—to break...
...Everything else is secondary...
...I wish you had given her article the same treatment...
...Robert Sommer New York, New York Action at the Homestead Thanks a lot, from all of us up here in the Bronx, for Holly Metz's article about Inner City Press homesteading ("Action at the Homestead," Datelines, June issue...
...I admire the work you do, and I tend to believe the distressing picture you give of welfare medicine, but such statements about vaccination and epidemic shake my faith...
...Why this should be Federally regulated at all is beyond me...
...Any of your readers who want more information about Inner City Press can write to us at P.O...
...I was stirred to pity for the poor soul who requires that all printed matter that enters his home must conform to his opinions...
...Lilias Jones Kent, Minnesota Room for Many Views Aletter in your May issue requested cancellation of a subscription because the reader did not like the point of view expressed in an article you had published...
...Considering that one of the first rules of business is not to piss off your best customers, it's not surprising that they filter the news according to tastes of the ruling class...
...Polsgrove scripts the scene well...
...Ed Doerr Americans for Religious Liberty Silver Spring, Maryland The Vaccination Needle As a mother of young children, I was disheartened to read in The Progressive the complaint that children of welfare mothers in Ohio are not being immunized against such diseases as polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, and measles ("Poor Health," by Gary S. Webb, May issue...
...Such media "stars" have acquired an almost god-like status, and they have a mystical hold on many of our fellow citizens...
...During fifteen years as a grass-roots political activist, I'd been through many harrowing experiences and had come out of them variously nicknamed "the Iron Woman" and "the Human Computer," neither a tribute to traditional feminine traits...
...That's undoubtedly why, by the time I was a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati in the early 1980s, Trash Martin Luther King parties were held at fraternity houses...
...indeed, it may be a blessing for those children that they can avoid the medical establishment's needle...
...If a woman is compelled against her will to continue an unwanted or problem pregnancy, she is condemned to involuntary servitude for months or years, and to the violation of her freedom of conscience...
...Also, the paper is funded entirely by contributions and, without being crass, we could really use some...
...Blacks, whites, and foreign students mingled in open camaraderie and even sought out each other's company...
...Strange as it might seem, millions of Americans truly believe that whatever Dan Rather or George F. Will or William Safire says about the issues of the day must be correct...
...physicians, the UNRWA director of health, and a Harvard professor qualify as non-self-serving sources...
...The only unfortunate thing is the number of pages it would take The Progressive to explain the pure insanity of our beloved state's political history...
...It may be that they don't really know how it can be done...
...But the major lesson in "femininity and toughness" was probably learned by my husband, who said, "Anyone who thinks women aren't tough enough for politics should see them go through labor...
...But my son staunchly refused to do what I wanted him to do and merrily went about being a child...
...An allegedly scientific article should be just that, not one so interlaced with questionable sources and arguable conclusions as to discredit whatever solid data the article might contain...
...Wouldn't you hate to live in a place where all you got to read was the same stuff over and over...
...Hyman Richman Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania The author replies: I share Hyman Richman's concern over the difficulty of obtaining reliable statistics on deaths and miscarriages resulting from Israel's misuse of tear gas against Palestinian civilians...
...Stephen Hirsch Pompey, New York Seamless Garment Signers of the Seamless Garment Network advertisement (April issue) have the right to express their opposition to abortion, but they seem to overlook the fact that imposition of that view on women, either by law or by social pressure, would do serious violence to women...
...Mary Hessel Cincinnati, Ohio Ruling-Class Propaganda The success of American ruling-class propaganda is directly related to its ability to avoid obvious heavy-handedness while pandering to its audience's preconceived notions ("Propaganda Mill," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, June issue...
...He laughed at my threats...
...I realize you won't present my views on every issue, but I hope that you will, at least, recognize an issue when it appears...
...He defied the logic that had overcome multinational corporations...
...Because Israel has closed the West Bank and Gaza to journalists, we must glean information from first-hand accounts of travelers to the regions, as well as from physicians who live and work there...
...To equate fetuses, merely incipient persons, with adult or nearly adult female persons is to reduce women to the status of property...
...Christopher Cannon Austin, Texas I usually enjoy Molly Ivins's columns, but I wonder what made her harp on the small stature of Senator John Tower ("Soap Opera," June issue).What's wrong with being short...
...Their primary function is simply to make money...
...I suspect that the present campus atmosphere of hostility toward minorities and foreign students is due primarily to increasing competitiveness for the limited job opportunities available to college graduates...
...Box 416, HUB Station, Bronx, NY 10455...
...news media not to investigate or report Israeli misuse of tear gas in homes and places of worship—where it acts as a lethal chemical weapon—provides yet another illustration of the media's role in "mobilizing public support" for Government interests, as described by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their article, "Propaganda Mill...
...Since then, that has been my chosen last word on the subject...
...Kate Walter LaFarge, Wisconsin Israel's Tear-Gas Offensive It is ironic that Kathleen Hart's article, "Israel's Tear-Gas Offensive" (June issue), appeared in the same issue that contained a critical analysis of the propaganda turned out by the Administration...
...But I cannot accept statistics and conclusions based on sources, Palestinian or Israeli, which have an interest in inflating or deflating the information they provide...
...There are many unanswered questions surrounding the vaccination issue...
...They have been astonishingly successful over the course of many years in de-legitimizing truly different points of view...
...I learned a couple of things that helped me grow up with my children—how to play, that I couldn't control the world, and so on...
...He shrugged off the angry glare that had frozen hardened, gun-toting men...
...Kathleen Hart Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Feminine and Tough Carol Polsgrove's "Feminine and Tough" (The Last Word, March issue) got me going...
...It is astonishing that women would sign an ad attacking their own freedom and that of their sisters...
...Frank W. Goheen Camas, Washington It seems to me that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky have the primary function of the mass media wrong...
...And then, of course, there would still be LBJ...
...The deliberate decision of the mainstream U.S...
...The proper name is "community antenna television...
...Now that the job market has become permanently constricted, optimism about ultimately obtaining a well-paying, challenging job has been squashed...
...The cable system to which I have subscribed for almost twenty years originates no programming and merely relays the product of others (and, on public access, of the local folks...
...That situation also prevailed in 1975 when I obtained my degree-it took me more than a year to obtain a full-time job—but most of us believed then that the shortage of good jobs was merely temporary...
...Those who would indoctrinate us with their biases make certain that their party line is delivered with a pleasant sugar coating...
Vol. 52 • July 1988 • No. 7
