LETTERS
Letters Life Insurance Your series on the “Screwing of the Average Man” has become a journalistic classic, and certainly Chapter 5 on Life Insurance, by Urban Lehner, [“The Case for the...
...And while we’re dreaming we might hook them up to lie detectors during press conferences...
...Zelnick‘s serve the public by making the military budget understandable...
...Based on a readability quotient developed by Rudolph Flesch, we are now rejecting policies, some of which are less readable than Einstein’s basic work on relativity...
...How are those figures determined, and by whom...
...But within that general context, there is room-in fact, there is a great need-for discussion of some specific questions...
...No one would argue with the concept that America needs a strong system of defense...
...The debate over military spending is more than a debate over funds...
...Department of Defense officials have too long shrouded the military budget in secrecy or presented it with patriotic phrases, hinting that those who oppose excessive military spending are somehow “unpatriotic...
...WILLIAM RODGERS Centreville, Md...
...The United States went, sequence by sequence, into the war in Vietnam in the face of a clear exposition of the facts and realities in pretty much the same manner that the American electorate, clearly exposed to the Nixon character and duplicity, chose him for the presidency in contradiction to preferable alternatives...
...The reforms proposed for life insurance have implications for many other areas of consumer concern...
...For example, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department is beginning to propose readability standards for life insurance, as well as other kinds of policies...
...In any case, Fairlie’s architectural reconstruction of the information barrage laid down at the time is one of the more notable accomplishments of journalistic analysis I have seen in years...
...Disarmament - -~ “Waiting for Disarmament,” by C. Robert Zelnick [May], makes one very essential point: the military budget, like all other government budgets, should be subject to public scrutiny and debate...
...It is really a debate over priorities and over the direction in which the country should be moving...
...The ultimate, perhaps, will be to subject politician’s statements to readability standards...
...That debate is one in which the Congress and the public should be encouraged to take part freely...
...Vietnam Henry Fairlie’s retrospective study of the press in the early nineteen-sixties [“We Knew What We Were Doing When We Went Into Vietnam,” May] when the ovenvhelming volume of informed opinion clearly supported the irrevocable U. S. commitment to take possession of the war in South Vietnam, is a masterpiece of fact and reason...
...How many missiles or how many bombers are the “right” number...
...Articles like Mr...
...Why shouldn’t readability standards apply to other documents faced by the consumer-leases, warranties, lending agreements, releases, and all the rest...
...Popular understanding of the issues involved is our strongest weapon against excessive military spending...
...How many are too many...
...Letters Life Insurance Your series on the “Screwing of the Average Man” has become a journalistic classic, and certainly Chapter 5 on Life Insurance, by Urban Lehner, [“The Case for the Extended Family: Life Insurance,” April] , continues that tradition...
...HERBERT S. DENENBERG Harrisburg, Pa...
...A technology that puts a man on the moon ought to be able to produce consumer documents that can be read by the average man-who now gets screwed by a profusion of polysyllabic legalese...
...The conviction and certainty with which these same communications resources denounced the outcome of their previous positions, deceived me...
...Herbert Denenbere is Commissioner of Insurance for the state of Pennsylvania...
...What I had not recently recalled until Fairlie did it for me was the conviction and certainty with which “the brightest and best” of our newspapers, journalists, and national spokesmen articulated at the time the position that the U. S. had no choice except the one it exercised: to escalate the war time and time again in order to win it...
...But to discuss the issue thoughtfully, we need statistics and facts that are presented clearly and forthrightly...
...Or perhaps a faltering memory did...
...MICHAEL J. HARRINGTON Washington, D. C. Michael Harrington is a U. S. Representative from Massachusetts...
Vol. 5 • June 1973 • No. 4
