LETTERS

...It will require close monitoring of the family's progress for years, and aside from psychotherapeutic intervention, the provision of basic supports, such as making sure that Dad goes to A.A...

...Jackson is not really a child of the underclass...

...Treasury is marred in two respects: First, the article leaves the misleading impression that the big winners and behind-the-scenes manipulators were national corporations like Pillsbury, Quaker Oats, Drexel Burnham, and others...

...Of course, the U.S...

...Most of us cannot comprehend the intensity with which the mistreated child will cling to his abusive parent...

...but "original sin"—doesn't Babbitt know this?—is a sectarian religious doctrine...

...Then you called for more regulation, lest the poor dears (who may be overage and overweight) hurt themselves or each other...

...Unfortunately, the facts make the original headline the accurate part of the piece...

...Peters...

...They are rather like stunt men who have leading roles...

...These include professional wrestling on cable TV and The Washington Monthly...

...had joined the fight against the Axis powers...

...Yard, in her intrusion into this affair, was not more interested in promoting the agenda of peripheral groups such as the "Campaign to End Homophobia" than the provision of prenatal and delivery care for low-income women...

...What is needed is not orphanages or foster homes but an all-out effort to salvage what one can of the child's opportunity to live with those who brought him into this world...

...Second, the Alaska Native corporations were not intended to protect lands traditionally used for Native hunting, fishing, trapping, and berry-picking...

...Actually, as the article also somewhat contrarily shows, the biggest gainers were the most successful of the Alaska Native corporations...

...THOMAS A. MOREHOUSE Anchorage, Alaska Right place, wrong time A quibble with Matthew Cooper's otherwise enlightening piece on Philip Longman ["The Saturday Night Massacre," June...

...As The Washington Post, but not the Times, published in a follow-up story, the Lebanese gunmen, described as a "private security firm," were the ones who fired first...

...Yard never consulted with those who actually provide services in our clinic...

...corporations ["Ice Fishing," July-August] at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the U.S...

...Still, I don't think the picture of women in power is quite as grim as you paint it...

...Corporate land comprises only a very small portion of such traditional lands, and the corporations have mixed goals of preservation and development...

...SIGNE WILKINSON Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Whose dough boy...

...As an example of NOW's propensity to alienate the public, I cite the following example...

...You comment that the Lebanese involved, presumably innocent bystanders, had reason to be agitated...

...You correctly point out that this sport is a series of exhibitions, with the result determined before the exhibitors enter the ring...

...The Alaska Native people still depend much more on the land, and on their traditional hunting and fishing cultures, than on the corporations that Congress created...

...was at war with the Central powers, and neither imperial Russia nor the Soviet Union was at any time during the First World War allied with Germany...

...But that is, of course, not the point at all...

...Jackson's half-truths I admire your healthy skepticism of bureaucracy, administrators, teachers, etc...

...NOAH FINKEL Bloomfield Hills, Michigan NOW and then Molly Yard states that your description of the "worst" public interest groups is utterly untrue of NOW ["Letters," July-August], but I believe that in some respects the description is apt...

...Does TWM believe that stunt men and women should be given medical examinations before going about their work...

...Save the children I heartily agree with Judge Lois Forer's statement ["Bring Back the Orphanage," April] that the one thing abused children have in common is that "they desperately need a safe, permanent home...

...neither belongs in the schools as a teacher of values...

...Clearly, this will not always be possible, or even desirable, but in the majority of cases it is...

...And the key manipulators were lawyers and politicians acting on their behalf...

...He must have deserved it all...

...so much so that I, for example, regard one as a genuine Prophet and the other as a false Messiah...

...Polly Toynbee, May] was a great case study in the dilemma facing feminists in the United States...

...We think not...

...The doctors providing services fought a losing battle against a rigid federal bureaucracy without any support from such organizations as NOW...

...Judaism, which gave the world the textual basis of "original sin," utterly rejects this belief, and it's incoherent by the standards of some Eastern religions...

...Every child seeks from the beginning to establish a special bond with the one or two principal adults in his life and will seek to maintain that bond even in the face of the most severe abuse or neglect...

...DAVID HUDSON, BENJAMIN MILLER Hilo, Hawaii Lebanon or liberty In "Tilting at Windmills" [May], Charles Peters says that the religious composition of the 220 marines killed in the Beirut barracks bombing is "further proof that the affluent are not doing their part in the defense of their country...

...LLEWELLYN H. ROCKWELL JR...

...ROBERT L. COHEN Brooklyn, New York Someone should acquaint Bruce Babbitt with the difference between St...

...Professional wrestlers are actor/athletes who, we believe, put on a very good show...

...We need no draft to defend West Virginia, Mr...

...In describing the 1919 Abrams case ["Political Booknotes," May], Jonathan Rosenblum states that "the U.S...

...John's University of New York City and St...

...Had she consulted with them she might have discovered that her claimed "broad participation by parents" in preparing the above-mentioned manual was a myth...

...Kosterlitz is a staff correspondent for the National Journal...

...Only to protect Chevron's oil in Kuwaiti tankers...

...Eleanor Smeal is urging not women but "feminists" to run for office...

...She characterized the commissioners as "victims of homophobia," with the implication that only such "victims" might oppose the use of public funds, in the age of AIDS, to sanction a homosexual lifestyle for adolescents...

...MARIANNE GOLDSMITH Providence, Rhode Island Dr...

...The National Journal item cited actually ran in October 1987—nearly six months after Longman had reportedly quit, according to his colleagues, "out of frustration with the mounting political pressure" emanating from AGE's congressional sponsors...

...If only he weren't so bad, he reasons, his parents wouldn't have abused him, and he would still be home where he belongs...

...It is hard to believe that Ms...

...Jackson far too much praise...

...He approvingly quotes Robert Coles on the desirable "hard thoughts of Jeremiah and Jesus"—but these are, precisely, religious teachers...

...Should they be checked by their government nannies before each performance...

...This spring it was discovered that our county prenatal and family planning clinic had produced a manual on sex education, funded by the federal government, which stated that homosexual relations were "natural and healthy...

...His poetry may be pretty, but the message cited is full of half-truths...

...In "Tilting at Windmills" in June I think you give the Rev...

...Palo Alto, California The editor replies: The fact that it was criminally stupid to station the marines in that Beirut barracks does not alter the criminal selfishness of the rich who don't serve in the armed forces...

...There will always be a shortage of people willing to die for the American empire...

...A little less John Dewey and a little more original sin" is Babbitt's desideratum—but this stands his complaint about Bennett on its head...

...or finds employment...

...There will never be a lack of men and women willing to risk their lives for American liberty...

...Yard's attitude is at best statist and elitist, at worst condescending...

...Yes, Jackson has a gift for "communicat[ing] on a direct human level :' But we've been burned once, actually twice, this decade by the claims of a "Great Communicator...

...Bob Ortega's otherwise excellent reporting on the sales by Alaska Native corporations of their tax losses to major U.S...

...Where was NOW several years ago when HEW threatened to cut off the clinic's funds because it wished to continue to provide services for low-income women across our state border...

...The reason for this paradox is grounded in the fundamental nature of human attachment...

...But how does intervening on the side of an authoritarian and unrepresentative religious-minority government in Lebanon equate with defending America...

...John Dewey certainly belongs in schools...

...Why can't Babbitt distinguish the teaching of values from the teaching of religion...

...Goldsmith is the attending child psychiatrist at the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital...

...JULIE KOSTERLITZ Washington, D.C...

...Unfortunately, there is no magic solution, and to think that orphanages would provide the answer is both simplistic and naive...

...I'm puzzled by the line, `After two years at AGE and with reports continuing to circulate in the National Journal that Longman's views were an embarrassment, he quit...

...Babbitt seems unable to make the necessary distinctions himself...

...I only wish that skepticism could be extended to the often-exaggerated claims of politicians such as Jesse Jackson...

...The pleasure of having a go at both The New York Times and an ambassador whose guards recklessly clear traffic by shooting must be irresistible...

...Yard lost little time in seeking to gain publicity for NOW and to further exploit an issue dividing our cornmunity...

...In the wake of public response to these statements (the manual was written by Cooper Thompson, a member of the "Campaign to End Homophobia"), Strafford County commissioners sought to cut off funds to the clinic...

...World War which...

...You noted that women workers in general feel they must take care of their children because if they don't no one else will...

...PATRICIA K. CUSACK Dover, New Hampshire You'd be agitated too Your lead item in the July-August "Tilting at Windmills" notes a discrepancy between a New York Times headline, which said our ambassador in Lebanon came under fire, and the last sentence in the story, which said the ambassador's guard fired in the air to clear traffic...

...John's College of Annapolis, Maryland...

...JEFF SCHNEIDER, Urbana, Illinois The editors reply: The first error escaped the editors' attention, the second was of their own creation...

...JAMES A. KELLY Arlington, Virginia Women in power Your article on Margaret Thatcher (with the irresistible headline) ["Is Margaret Thatcher a Woman...

...We were disappointed that, in your June issue, your article on professional wrestling ["The (THWAK) Deregulation of (THUMP) Pro Wrestling," Irvin Muchnick] departed from the True Faith of less needless government regulation...

...It is emphatically the latter, not the former, whose entire fouryear, mandatory, no-electives curriculum comprises the so-called "Great Books ." RORY FORAN Glen Burnie, Maryland Hulk Hogan's nanny We are a stepfather (David) and stepson (Benjamin), age 46 and age 10, who share an interest in the finer things of life...

...Though I agree that class, race, and education are often greater motivators than gender, it may be true that women in power respond better to women's issues...

...If the Republicans put up a woman for vice president, will women support the symbol or oppose the substance...

...When such a child is removed from his home, he feels rejected and abandoned, and fully responsible for his own misfortune...

...the Russians had allied themselves with Germany...

...It will be difficult and costly but so are the years spent in foster care or institutional settings...