Letters: May 14, 1984

Mining Harbors

To the Editors:

The mining of Nicaraguan ports [NATION, April 23] is just another example of the Reagan Administration’s selective morality. We must think twice before we support the Nicaraguan contras and condemn the Salvadoran rebels. Both groups are fighting for representation in the governments of their respective countries. The difference is that one wears the mask of Communism, and the other wears the mask of democracy.

Daniel Bouvier

Chestnut Hill, Mass.

The primary goal of the Nicaraguan government is to secure freedom for its people after centuries of domination and exploitation. Why not tell about the good things happening in that country under the Sandinistas, such as increased literacy, improved health care, and housing and land redistribution?

Louisa C. Whitlock

Bernardsville, N.J.

The fact that the wounds of the ten sailors who were “seriously injured” by the mines laid inside Nicaragua’s harbors would “hardly be noticed in a declared war” does little to alleviate their suffering. Mines maim and kill in wars, declared or undeclared, whether used by peace-seeking or warmongering nations.

Stanley A. Werner Jr.

Glens Falls, N.Y.

Only an outlaw government would mine the harbors of a foreign nation.

Norman Lewis

Lake George, N.Y.

The Reagan Administration’s refusal to accept international legal jurisdiction over U.S. actions in Central America is an outrageous act that strongly contradicts the President’s ethic of law-and-order.

Bill Wickersham, Executive Director

World Federalist Association

Washington, D.C.

The Nicaraguan contras are hardly idealists to be admired. Most seek only to regain the power they wielded during the Somoza dictatorship. That regime masqueraded as a democracy just to retain U.S. support, while suppressing the very freedoms we now demand that the Sandinistas introduce.

Richard A. Buffum

Arlington, Va.

Child Abuse

I have never been so angered as I was after reading your report of the sadistic and abominable treatment inflicted upon the youngsters who attended the McMartin School in California [BEHAVIOR, April 23]. Although I am not in favor of the death penalty, I think death must be the only acceptable punishment for so heinous a crime.

Ilene A. Kasson

Danbury, Conn.

Your writer John Leo says that “in the incestuous family the mother has often deserted the father sexually and the child emotionally.” Again the woman is to blame. Leo suggests that a man “sexually deserted” by his wife automatically turns to child molestation. Horsefeathers! No man would become a child molester if he was not already sexually perverted. No doubt there was a good reason why the mother deserted the father sexually.

Peggy Soric

Springfield, Mo.

I fear that the alarming rise in cases of sexual abuse of children will continue as more and more parents relegate the care of their youngsters to institutions and strangers in order to pursue their personal and professional goals. It is time for many couples to question whether they should bring children into an increasingly predatory world. Contemporary life-styles and careers often do not afford parents the time or energy to give basic care to the very young or to monitor it carefully.

May C. Greineder

Wellesley, Mass.

Oversensitivity

Your penetrating article about society’s touchiness [ESSAY, April 23] pinpoints how lobbyists attempt to substitute unrealistic, idealized images of their clients, whether they be the elderly, ethnics, gays or whatever. To the list you cited you might have added two more: the use of the word “special” to describe children with mental or emotional problems. What does that make the rest of the world’s youth? Ordinary? The other is the reference to the physically handicapped as the “physically challenged.” Are we to believe that the physically able never have to overcome obstacles in their lives?

Joann Blair

Tallmadge, Ohio

Your writer is the touchiest of all. His smug world of preppie crudities has been challenged, and he is annoyed that its victims are no longer “good sports.” Nobody likes to be put down.

Robert Sealy

New York City

All of us at the Media Institute really enjoyed your Essay. We would have enjoyed it even more if your reference to us had been accurate. We think it will probably come as a surprise to Robert and Linda Lichter to hear that they are anybody’s “hired guns,” let alone ours. And of course the Media Institute is most assuredly not a lobby of any kind. As for our being a “conservative, pro-business lobby,” well, we do not know what that means, but then you do not either.

Patrick D. Maines, President

The Media Institute

Washington, D.C.

Merry Easter!

Your article on the improved mail delivery we now get [ECONOMY & BUSINESS, April 2] states that the Postal Service can handle 400 million pieces each day and that employee productivity has risen 43% since 1971. After I read those statistics, I decided maybe the post office is doing a good job. A week later, I received five Christmas cards and my 1983 year-end edition of TIME.

Irv Bernheim

Champaign, Ill.

Lamm Baste

Even TIME’s very thoughtful coverage of the “duty to die” controversy [MEDICINE, April 9] locks me into a statement I never made. I never said the elderly have a duty to die. I said,” We all have a duty to die.” It was the Denver Post that changed the “we” to “you” and added the elderly and terminally ill, to whom I had not referred in my speech. The Post ran a -correction later, after being confronted with its own transcript, but the damage had already been done, and the national news services (and TIME) carried the misquote. Is it possible for politicians to discuss serious subjects without risking even more serious misunderstandings?

Richard D. Lamm, Governor

State of Colorado

Denver

Physicians are being asked to walk a precarious tightrope as they attempt to meet the health-care needs of the elderly. Older people are justifiably frightened about modern medicine’s ability to prolong life artificially. Considering the current medico-legal climate, there is frequently no alternative but to use such machines and devices even when it is against the physician’s better judgment. Workable guidelines are needed to aid doctors as they try to achieve a balance between the concepts of death with dignity and the prolongation of meaningful life. Colorado’s Governor Lamm is to be commended for starting a dialogue on this important and sensitive issue.

John G. West, M.D.

Orange, Calif.

Governor Lamm is being unduly castigated for a perfectly reasonable remark. If we do not begin soon to make sense out of this problem, we will eventually come to a brave new world, where those who are 65 are put into a crematorium. And I speak as someone who is 70 years old with a husband who is 82. When I am called back to God, I do not want any bleeding heart saying I have to linger in the valley of the shadow of death for days or possibly months.

Eva M. Hays

Bozeman, Mont.

Praising Lamm for raising the issue of health care among the elderly is like congratulating Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) for recognizing the problem of nutrition among the poor. Lamm has, however, made us aware of a grotesque public attitude, which turns children against aging parents, mothers and fathers against handicapped infants, and expectant mothers against unborn babies.

Gregg L. Cunningham

Christian Research Associates

Denver

Good for Governor Lamm. We must come to terms with the fact that there is a difference between prolonging life and prolonging dying.

Elizabeth Holland, R.N.

Sacramento

Mellowed Greer

I met Germaine Greer [BEHAVIOR, April 16] more than a decade ago, in her lustier days, at a women’s conference in Brussels. She talked about phallic architecture and admired the young bellhops. “You know,” she said, “when there are dirty old women just as there are dirty old men, we will have achieved liberation.” I am sorry that she has cleaned up her act. Perhaps that comes with age, even to liberated women. But I hope that still more advanced age will give Greer some compassion for the elderly and will erase her romantic notions of the Third World. A woman who wears a chador or has undergone a clitoridectomy is no more liberated than her Western sister who acts in porn films or sells toothpaste on television.

Joan Z. Shore

Paris