LETTERS
LETTERS The schnook of the North You are so right about college tuition! At the University of Southern Maine, while student numbers went up about 25 percent and full-time faculty less than 20...
...The Steadmans have to be more resourceful with their excuses...
...Perhaps they deserve some criticism, but they are in a difficult position...
...FDR, Ike, and JFK cheated on their wives...
...Little was said and the stories have been forgotten...
...Why it hasn't happened already is a mystery...
...The failure of learning in the United States is making this a nation of rabble...
...The culprit responsible for the last 140 percent of that— enough new bureaucrats that the cost of the increase in any single year could have doubled the library acquisitions budget, funded a postponed honors program, funded a scholarly journal, doubled the faculty travel budget, and doubled reduced loads for scholarship—thereupon became system chancellor at a salary increase that year greater than my salary as a professor with 30 years of experience and numerous merit raises...
...Kaplan's remarks seem very far off the mark when he attempts to explain the lack of coverage of the Ethiopian atrocities compared to the more thorough coverage given South Africa's supposedly lesser misdeeds...
...In fact, America has given arms or moral support to governments committing enormous atrocities in Indonesia, Bangladesh, East Timor, and Guatemala without arousing the press to any serious extent...
...It is the role of journalists and human rights groups to tell us what is going on...
...I'll keep you posted...
...When the ignorant go out to vote, the nation will go down the tubes...
...Kaplan seems to think that if Ethiopia could be blamed on American foreign policy or President Reagan, our ferocious press corps would be all over the story...
...Warts-and-all biography has depressed the traditional hero supply: Washington owned slaves...
...DONALD JOHNSON Sioux Falls, South Dakota Read my lips I find the ad by General Dynamics on the inside front cover of your latest issue [September] to be offensive...
...To that should be added a lack of history, or perhaps cynicism about it...
...In "Tilting at Windmills" [September], he suspects snobbery is the culprit in the replacing of John, William, Mary, Susan, Carol, and other meat-and-potatoes names with the likes of Jason and Tiffany...
...In fact, it is probably a sign of democratization that traditional Anglo-American names are regarded less and less as "true American" names...
...that was their justification for selling out...
...They-knew-what-it-was-like-to-grow-up-hungry...
...Thomas Jefferson was deathly afraid of the rabble...
...I've often worried that baby names reflected sexism: boys were named after people, giving them a rote model and a sense of history, while girls were named to be cute...
...Ethiopian truth I found Robert Kaplan's article on Ethiopia ["The African Killing Fields," September] rather odd on some points...
...They retain their hippie rhetoric, as you say, to prove their sensitivity...
...PHILLIP KEISLING Portland, Oregon The case for Tiffany Charles Peters was right to be concerned about the proliferation of fad names for children, but I think for the wrong reason...
...However, your editors were asleep at the switch when a clinker chugged on through: The malapropism flaunted for flouted...
...MICHAEL POLLAK Teaneck, New Jersey Kiddie cop-out I enjoyed your essay "The Case Against Kids," [Jason DeParle, July/August...
...Now, it seems, babies of both sexes are tagged according to the stars of whatever soap opera is on the hospital TV...
...Getting people out to vote is a popular idea, but a mistaken one...
...JOHN F. COLLINS San Francisco, California...
...The idea that you don't have to be literate to vote intelligently is a convenient fiction...
...Many of these would-be voters are illiterate: a popular figure is that there are two million illiterates in the U.S...
...Perhaps his forthcoming book will change this...
...JAMES C. ROGERS Washington, DC Clink Lee Judge and Richard Samuel West wrote a good analysis ["Why Political Cartoonists Sell Out," September...
...In realizing the limitations of their youthful idealism, the Steadmans have completely rejected it...
...For instance, my foreign policy views are leftist, and I don't believe anything on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, yet, with all of my ideological prejudices, I have known for years that Ethiopia was ruled by a bloodthirsty, Stalinist regime...
...They were raised during the Depression...
...That rhetoric is all that sets them apart from members of my father's generation, who were more forthright about pursuing material gains...
...WILLIAM H. SLAVICK Portland, Maine Phil's friends In your warm tribute to the many friends who have supported my campaign for the Oregon legislature ["Tilting at Windmills," October], you omitted the names Nicholas Lemann, Joseph Nocera, Walter Shapiro, Robert Doar, Gregg Easterbrook, and a frequent Monthly contributor, Tom Peters...
...thirtysomething" is based on a premise that bothers me, and you nailed it: the show justifies selling out...
...Returning to Ethiopia, Kaplan is obviously right in saying that we should be screaming over it...
...There's nothing more noble than "sacrificing" for your child...
...The kid" is a reliable standby...
...At the University of Southern Maine, while student numbers went up about 25 percent and full-time faculty less than 20 percent, the administration grew 240 percent...
...Jonathan Kozol (in Illiterate America) says 60 million, about one-fourth of our population...
...Still, having said this, the relief organizations should not actively lie on behalf of the Ethiopian government...
...I knew the government had murdered thousands and had contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of famine victims...
...CATHY McCARTHY Washington, D.C...
...Unfortunately, a major reason for the trend is probably the weakening of the extended family: the high divorce rate, the diminishing contact between grown children and their parents, and the resulting lack of interest in naming children after an ancestor...
...Stop that...
...Kaplan's article seemed a little unfair to the relief organizations...
...Like my other comrades from the Monthly, I'm sure they are as intrigued as I am to see how well their many good ideas will fare in the trenches...
...The Red Cross is able to help people in war-torn areas because it keeps its mouth shut...
Vol. 20 • November 1988 • No. 10
