LETTERS
LETTERS Class dismissed What particularly irks about Patricia Cohen's review of my book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS ["Sex, Lies, and the Underclass," November] was her continual...
...My goodness: The entire thesis of my book is that the threat to the white, heterosexual middle-class is grossly overstated, thus understating the homosexual and minority underclass problem...
...It's that simple...
...I suspect this error got into print because the editors and/or writer were either greenhorns (1965 being ancient history) or grey-beards (1965 being so far past their or their kids' kindergarten years that no alarm bell sounded...
...I'd rather put up with George Bush in a world safe for Tom Clancy than live in Mr...
...The author replies: Mr...
...Actually, I cited no fewer than 12 different sets of statistics in this chapter showing how great the minority AIDS problem is compared to that of whites...
...MICHAEL L. MILLENSON Chicago, Illinios The editor replies: This grey-beard is embarrassed...
...Directly across from the National Child Day Care Association—which sponsors the Head Start program I discussed—stands a large, abandoned, boarded-up house...
...It's also the one place where he mentions the crack-AIDS nexus in the body of the book...
...Why is it a myth if there is an epidemic among poor urban blacks and Hispanics...
...Shuger's view of what the world should be like, lest voters and policymakers become infected by bad ideas...
...Shuger's paradise of controlled thinking...
...The neighborhood that I'm familiar with, near the intersection of Florida Avenue and Benning Road in northeast Washington, doesn't resemble the neighborhood described by Mundy...
...Understandably, though, he has mistaken the neighborhood I was referring to: a stretch of blocks just south of Benning Road and east of 15th Street that does not include his address...
...When you don't tell the people the truth and the whole truth, you're lying...
...Indeed, the title says it all...
...In doing so, however, she badly mischaracterizes a fine, predominantly middle class, northeast Washington neighborhood...
...It's a good chapter, but it's still only one—out of 23...
...FRED FACHET Warrenville, Illinois...
...the other references are confined to the appendix...
...Now comes Scott Shuger ["Paperback Fighter," November] to join the line of "wanna be" book burners to decry Tom Clancy as the latest threat to the safety or morality or character of the nation...
...Fumento now claims that the book's "entire thesis" is how the focus on white, heterosexual middle-class cases of AIDS hurts minorities...
...That's not what he wrote in the book's introduction and first chapter...
...Mr...
...I smiled when I read Liza Mundy's article about Project Head Start, in which she blandly stated that January 1965, when Sargent Shriver conceived the plan for Head Start, was a time when "public kindergarten was virtually nonexistent and preschool unheard-of outside of a few experimental programs...
...Why can't we discuss need-based programs without reference to erroneous negative stereotypes and generalizations...
...WILLIAM A. DAVIS Washington, D.C...
...Can any person honestly paint that as ignoring the minority problem or being insensitive to it...
...No wonder then that Fumento thinks we are devoting too many resources to AIDS...
...Taking Shuger's argument to its logical conclusion, we should be proscribing any book that violates Mr...
...Really...
...I didn't go to preschool, I admit: we called it nursery school then...
...I know because I was a pupil for a few days before I discovered that school attendance was not compulsory in West Virginia until the first grade...
...Liza Mundy and your editors reveal their personal biases and limited frame of reference by writing that "it's hard to imagine a barbecue in this neighborhood...
...Cohen grants that I spent an entire chapter on the special problems of the minority underclass...
...Of course, many of us enjoy having a barbecue with family and friends, and it is silly to assume otherwise...
...Contrary to the ghetto-like description of my neighborhood provided by Mundy, the neighborhood that I see is constantly improving...
...suburbs (maybe with Sargent Shriver's kids) in the late 1950s, and my mother went to public kindergarten in New York City in the 1920s...
...It's true that there are renovated homes there as well, so while this still looks like a tough place to grow up, his points are well-taken...
...Presumably, because white, middle-class people don't have it...
...Appalling...
...There was a kindergarten in 1932 at Mercer School in Charleston, West Virginia...
...Is it because the predominantly white middle class will only fund need-based programs if motivated by guilt...
...Few houses are boarded up, and many are in the process of renovation and restoration...
...The already successful Hechinger Mall, located at the intersection of Benning and Florida, is planning to expand...
...That Cohen would in order to discredit my book is consistent with her apparent belief—and that of the mainstream American media in general—that when it comes to AIDS, deception of the public is justifiable...
...H Street is in the midst of dramatic improvement...
...LETTERS Class dismissed What particularly irks about Patricia Cohen's review of my book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS ["Sex, Lies, and the Underclass," November] was her continual assertion that, as she put it, "he's most certainly wrong to insist that heterosexual AIDS doesn't exist as long as white, middleclass suburbia is free from it" and "he seriously underplays the heterosexual epidemic that continues to devastate Hispanic and black America...
...The spectacle of Jesse Helms climbing in bed with Andrea Dworkin to save us from dirty books, of teetotaling fundamentalists and Mothers Against Drunk Driving saving us from demon rum, of Tipper Gore and the religious Right saving us from the devil's music (rock and roll), of blacks wanting to burn "Huck Finn" joining with whites who want to burn Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, is just grotesque...
...There he states his purpose is to explore the intrusion of politics into science and how it caused the American public to panic over an epidemic that never existed...
...There is no neighborhood "near the intersection of Florida Avenue and Benning Road, in southeast Washington...
...Our experiences ' were hardly vanguard...
...South by southwest Liza Mundy properly notes the importance of the Head Start preschool program ["The Success Story of the War on Poverty," December...
...MICHAEL FUMENTO Denver, Colorado The author replies: As I wrote, Fumento does focus on the problems of Hispanics and blacks in one chapter...
...I went to public kindergarten in the D.C...
...All that was...
...Further, the special problems of minorities are mentioned throughout the book...
...Maybe the Monthly needs more middle-aged manpower...
...Trashed novels One of the most lamentable trends of the last decade has been the unholy alliance between the "we know what's good for you and we'll make you do it" liberals and the "we know what's right and we'll make you do it" conservatives...
...The only time he mentions Hispanics or blacks in these opening pages is to say "The deaths of homosexuals and drug users were supposed to be a mere portent of things to come...
...Even so, his comments prompted me to revisit the area and see whether I mischaracterized it...
...I live there, as do many other middleclass Washingtonians...
...Davis is right to point out that the intersection of Florida Avenue and Benning Road lies in northeast Washington, not southeast as I indicated...
...One suspects that when it came to the secret bombing of Cambodia or the secret funding of the contras, Cohen's attitude was different...
...The problem with crack is mentioned not once in the book, but three times, which happens to be three more times than any other book I have seen on AIDS...
...what would she have the reader think I was writing about...
...There are more than a few deserted buildings in the nearby area, and others with yards full of debris...
...instead, they would, for the most part, be all that was...
Vol. 22 • February 1990 • No. 1
