Pausing to Catch Up on Our Correspondence

It’s been a long time between mail calls.

This batch of letters responds to columns about a white supremacist radio program in Salt Lake City, the debut of a new CBS morning show, a documentary about Peter, Paul and Mary in Central America and teen-ager Jenifer Graham’s animal rights convictions:

I really do not understand why you and the liberal Establishment are so intolerant of dissent. Your overreaction to the use of a Utah radio station by extreme rightists is a case in point.

Shouldn’t you welcome people who are willing to question what we are told about equality? Shouldn’t we welcome a young people’s working-class movement like the Skinheads as a sign that youth is no longer apathetic? Or is it because they are fighting for the right instead of the left that they have to be crushed by the power of the state?

If the Reich Skins were to change their name to the Sandinista Skins, spray communist propaganda around the city and vandalize the South African Consulate, you would no doubt be singing their praises.

JOSEPH MIRANDA

North Hollywood

Why does Aryan Nations get so much attention for buying air time to broadcast their offensive racist propaganda? When it comes to gays and lesbians, many self-styled “religious” broadcasters spew equally ugly, pernicious, hate-filled, violence-provoking lies. They’ve been doing it for years, and they make money at it, partly from tax exemptions we all pay for!

RODNEY HOFFMAN

Los Angeles

I consider your article deceptive dribble and I think that you owe your readers a clear and forthright explanation of the First Amendment’s role in society. Is it proud protection of us all, or is it a useless ornament to be dusted off for occasional national masturbation?

T. WADE RANDLETT

Oakland

I’ve never been able to figure out what it is about Jews that arouses such antagonisms from people like the Aryan Show Host Dwight McCarthy, or for that matter the Nazis. The good news is, of course, that McCarthy and others with the same message are viewed as deranged idiots by virtually everyone else in America. The bad news is that such crazies fan the fires of Jewish paranoia, and make Jews cling even more tightly to their Israeli security blanket.

JOHN MARTIN

Adelanto

Your criticism of the FCC’s policy toward obscenity is well aimed. It is, of course, as obscene to fling racial slurs as to use sexual expletives. However, in saying “sex is natural, racism is not,” you are resorting to a reducto ad absurdum. There is no question about sex being natural; what I find unnatural, and offensive, are sexual terms being used as obscenities. And why isn’t it possible to write a play about homosexuality without using these terms?

TONY THOMAS

Burbank

Your criticism of the new morning show on CBS saddens me. Why should they try to be different? Why not just better? They have a class show as opposed to the gaudiness of the other two. I like the show and I like the people as they came through to me. I liked Kuralt, Sawyer, Kurtis and, yes, Phyllis George. Poor Mariette Hartley screwed up royally trying to be “different.”

ALEXANDER M. LOGAN

South Pasadena

You stated, “What’s saddest about ‘Heartstrings’ is that Peter, Paul and Mary, through their own ineptitude, almost make a mockery of the anti-Contra position held by many intelligent Americans.” If these intelligent Americans are anti-Contra, they must be pro-Sandinista. If they are pro-Sandinista, they must be pro-Communist. If they are pro-Communist, I don’t think they are very intelligent. They are dumb.

FREDERICK D. MULLEN

Upland

You are showing signs of developing a brain, and this bodes ill for your future in the liberal-dominated media. With criticism of the pro-Marxist, anti-American propaganda of Peter, Paul and Mary’s documentary and with a few other recent reviews, you demonstrated open-minded, honest thought. I was shocked.

Your liberal reflexes remain, however. Your Peter, Paul and Mary review credited PBS with airing it to “redress the imbalance” from its airing last year of a documentary critical of the Sandinistas. You can count the number of anti-leftist PBS documentaries during the past 20 years on the fingers of one hand; PBS is overwhelmingly left of center in its programming. If you were a genuine liberal, you would demand a genuine variety of different views on PBS, not the relentless tilt in favor of socialism.

LOWELL PONTE

Carlsbad

Vivisection, which is the “cutting alive,” scalding, burning, freezing, mutilating, suffocating, drowning, poisoning or injecting of deadly diseases into live animals, is a huge business. There is a vested interest in not utilizing alternatives, such as the Apple computer noted in your article. To me, it is moral evil, and I applaud Jenifer Graham for her courageous stand.

ELAINE LIVESEY-FASSEL

Los Angeles

The brouhaha over Jenifer Graham’s animal rights crusade brings questions to mind. One, of course, is whether courts should involve themselves in assigning grades in school courses. Two relates to the course material in the Apple computer. Obviously, to get the workings of the “innards” of a frog, someone had to dissect the amphibian. Jenifer, therefore, would be supporting a practice she supposedly abhors.

RAY BRACY

Tustin