CORRESPONDENCE

...TIMOTHY N. HUNTER PALMETTO BEACH, FL FEMINISM, FAMILY STYLE I am pleased that in her review of my book Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, Danielle Crittenden commends me for using data accurately, viewing women as "equal participants in a free, democratic society," and making no special pleas for women ("The Cultural Contradictions of Feminism," July 19...

...But Congress placed the space shuttle under a shoestring budget...

...by a bipartisan congressional staff delegation preparing to draft U.N...

...Grassley used in referring to Linda Shenwick's experiences...

...Civil Rights Commission...

...These words sound much like the ones Sen...

...Since this occurred on Bill Richardson's first day as the new ambassador to the U.N., one can only assume Gnehm was carrying out marching orders from his previous boss, received either before or after her ascent to the top position at State...

...While NASA did not have a blank check during Apollo, they had enough funding to do the job...

...I also began to meet other abused employees, including four Foreign Service officers and one other U.S...

...Most baffling, Crittenden contends that the question, "Can we hammer out a contract that respects physical differences but doesn't victimize men or women...

...As a foreign policy aide to U.S...

...What could a person do...

...employee, all whistleblowers from the same overseas post (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), whose careers had been abruptly terminated...

...But Robert G. Oler, Richard Kolker, and Mark Whittington would have your readers believe that NASA has accomplished little over the last 30 years, and that the blame rests solely with the space agency...

...It's refreshing to read a person's tortured but honest admission to having lusted after and purchased a sensuous material object...

...Along with the space shuttle's success, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's robotic exploration of the solar system have yielded great scientific results...

...Problems do occur, and the constant budget constraints placed upon NASA produced a shuttle that was much more expensive and less capable than originally planned...

...As Gavin muscled various Austins, Vauxhalls, and Ford Zephyrs onto the verge, he said, "Never forget that rank has its privilege...

...While Congress might have thought it was doing taxpayers a favor, this type of funding failed to recognize the difficulty of developing new technologies such as the space shuttle...

...Shareholders, on the other hand, demand a return on their investment...

...Regarding my lockout in 1995, Idaho senator Larry Craig referred to it in October 1998 as "persecution" and "unconscionable...

...What I ask is, "Can a culture torn between traditional chivalry, neofeminist paternalism, and equality hammer out a social contract that respects physical differences between the sexes without victimizing men or infantilizing women...

...The space shuttle program offered a new beginning: Design a reusable spacecraft that would reduce the costs of placing payloads into orbit...

...It appears Secretary Albright has come up with a solution: Cut the most dedicated and responsible employees first...

...employed mothers also tend to be more involved in their children's schools...

...The true legacy of the incumbent administration may be its record of savagery towards professional civil servants...

...senator Rod Grams from 19951997, I worked closely with Shenwick, who was simply the most professional and capable Clinton administration employee I met during six years in Washington...

...If Crittenden nonetheless finds my belief that men and women should be able to choose any mix of traditional and egalitarian family roles to be as "utopian" as Germaine Greer's gender separatism, that's a matter of opinion...

...This contrasts sharply with an ancient column written by that professional commoner Mary McGrory when she bought her first $70,000 Mercedes...

...In my case, I was serving as a career Foreign Service officer in Saudi Arabia, when I became aware of a gamut of institutional financial, fiscal, and human rights violations in the U.S...

...BROCK YATES ANN ARBOR, MI Bravo to Joseph Epstein...

...However, space travel remains a difficult and expensive proposition...

...They also failed to describe the history of the space shuttle's development, and did not place NASA in the context of how federal agencies operate under Congress...

...How reassuring it is to learn that in the middle of this year's Kosovo crisis and the scandal of China stealing our nuclear secrets, the secretary of state found time to dictate to the secretary of energy that a top priority was the removal of an outstanding civil servant...

...So too should Epstein be reminded of Zero Mostel's wisdom in the epic Mel Brooks film The Producers, when he yelled to the driver of a white Rolls Royce limo, "If you've got it baby, flaunt it...

...In cars as in life, there is no substitute for cubic inches...

...BURTON DICHT DANBURY, CT CRAVING TORQUE Regarding Joseph Epstein's observations on his new Jaguar S-Type ("Confessions of a Craven Materialist," August 2), I am reminded of slashing through an English roundabout aboard an Aston Martin with a wild New Zealander named Bill Gavin...

...NASA critics have been vocal in the past, but I have never read a more harsh and one-sided attack...

...MORGAN BROWN EDINA, MN The sort of orchestrated attacks made against career civil servant Linda Shenwick have become increasingly common in the State Department of the 1990s...

...The dubious logic of this interpretation aside, there is no such line in Ceasefire...

...I reported my findings (I am a trained auditor and investigator) to the Inspector General's office, which indicated it could not accept reports of waste, fraud, and abuse of authority involving "political issues...

...She came close to saying the Mercedes followed her home, so she just had to buy it...

...She neglects to mention that I give examples focused on children's well-being: For instance, dual-income parents spend as much time interacting with school-age kids as do parents in one-earner families (partly because of greater father involvement), and may spend more time helping them with homework...

...Then, on April 21, 1995, I was locked out of my State Department office in Washington, D.C...

...This passage has nothing to do with marriage or motherhood...

...But it would be nice, at least, to be criticized for things I actually said...

...It is strange that Crittenden should criticize me for slighting children, since I have a chapter on work-family conflicts and another on parenthood and divorce...

...Was the initial operating capability oversold...

...Soon, many of the talented Americans who worked for NASA and helped achieve President Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon were confronted with their agency's lack of a clear mission...

...I also review extensive evidence that maternal employment generally does not hurt preschool children...

...As for the future, I agree with the authors that the real promise of space lies with private enterprise...

...exposes my "deep-down belief that marriage and motherhood do victimize women...

...Mission's offices...

...But to call the agency "inept" disregards history and is devoid of reality...

...The definition of "political" in the State Department is infinitely elastic and its employment is a sure sign of obfuscation...

...it addresses the need to recognize that women sometimes require the protection of men's greater strength, without insisting that women's lives be always saved at men's expense or relegating women to passive dependence...

...Correspondence MADELEINE'S MALEVOLENCE My compliments to Matthew Rees for his excellent investigative piece on the State Department's illegal retaliation against Linda Shenwick ("Madeleine Albright's Vendetta," August 2...

...We must define clear goals in space and have the commitment to achieve them...

...And NASA must shoulder some of the responsibility for this...

...Far from suggesting that kids can be left in day care ten or twelve hours a day, I stress that "people who allow their children to be shortchanged by their career ambitions should be censured," and that most employed mothers (and many fathers) make plenty of compromises...

...No doubt a thorough investigation would reveal scores of similar cases in other State Department posts around the world...

...Unfortunately, the development of the International Space Station has mirrored the development of the shuttle...

...Crittenden undoubtedly regards my concerns about victimizing men and infantilizing women as amusingly wrongheaded...

...Faced with Republican initiatives to "shrink the bureaucracy," the State Department has long complained about personnel shortages...

...reform legislation, Albright's former deputy at the U.S...

...After waiting nearly two years, I had received no response from the State Department...

...I only wish Epstein had gone for the four-liter engine with 41 more horsepower...

...During a 1997 trip to the U.N...

...The problem, I argue, is with the false dichotomy between staying home and working twelve-hour days...

...The authors conveniently omitted NASA's many successes...

...CATHY YOUNG MLDDLETOWN, NJ LOST IN SPACE Thirty years after the achievement and promise of the Apollo program, it would be hard to argue that we have met in space the lofty expectations that the moon landings raised ("Thirty Years of Ineptitude," July 26...

...But regrettably, her antipathy toward my insufficiently traditionalist views has led her in some instances to misrepresent my arguments...

...Constant budget constraints and yearly battles to justify its existence have forced changes in scope and design that have produced a more expensive and less capable product than expected...

...Mission, Ambassador Edward "Skip" Gnehm, led a ridiculous effort to prevent us from even speaking to Shenwick...

...As taxpayers, we can justify the expense of space in terms of national prestige and technological and scientific advancement...

...I don't have the column for reference, but it went something like this: She needed a new car and one car is just like another and she didn't know anything about them and she had heard Mercedes were good cars and she just happened to be in the neighborhood of a Mercedes dealership and what the heck she didn't have time to look elsewhere and it was getting late and gee it's worth $55,000 not to have to spend time shopping...

...Crittenden mocks my claim that "two careers need not spell the death of healthy family life," suggesting that what's healthy for the adults may not be so for the children...

...While I witnessed a number of hostile actions against Shenwick by State Department officials, one is particularly memorable...

...But that does not diminish the fact that the shuttle is a remarkable technological achievement which has carried out many successful missions...

...JOHN H. FOX TULLAHOMA, TN...

...So if we are to remain a space-faring people, NASA and the government must, for the time being, remain a partner...

...Here is where NASA's success with Apollo worked against them...

...So I took my reports to the FBI and the U.S...

...Then he'd be a real player in the spotlight Grand Prix...

...Following the last moon landing, NASA faced reduced budgets and an increasingly hostile Congress...