Cavett's Better Half Sir: Dick Cavett [June 7] is witty, intelligent and often humorous.

Unfortunately, he has spent more and more time directing these talents against anyone who is a member of the right half of the political spectrum.

Thus the audience is being deprived of half of his potential wit because of political bias and expediency.

JOHN W. DANA Hamden, Conn.

Sir: TIME writers brought forth only half of Cavett's appeal. The other half is sex appeal.

The other talk-show hosts are nowhere near the complete man that Cavett is. As to their sex appeal--Griffin is a Boy Scout leader, Frost an ulcer-ridden, sweatless advertising executive, and Carson a dissipated shoe salesman.

HOPE S. PARKER Altadena, Calif.

Sir: That was a most uninteresting story about a most uninteresting person. Dick Cavett--why him?

MATTHEW F. MANZARI Tampa, Fla.

Sir: As a fiercely loyal Cavett fan from the time of Dick's TV talk debut, I applaud your recognition of his efforts to elevate the ubiquitous gabfests to some sort of urbanity.

But enough is enough. You yourselves were among the first to speculate that praise may ruin Dick Cavett. Why contribute to some rah-rah press campaign that just may cheer Dick off the air? You have brought him to the apex; is it downhill from here?

LESLIE A. PETERS Cohoes, N.Y.

Sir: The Dick Cavett Show should be required to carry the label "May be habit forming."

PATRICIA TAYLOR Canoga Park, Calif.

Sir: Who's Dick Cavett? Those of us in his home town are hardly in a position to know since our local ABC affiliate delays broadcast of his show until after its late movie.

JUDITH KIRSCH Lincoln, Neb.

A Reasonable Supply

Sir: TIME'S report on health care [June 7] cites the Nixon Administration's bill as consistent with the philosophy of free enterprise. True free enterprise requires 1) a reasonable supply of the commodity to meet consumer needs and 2) ability of consumers to estimate value received. Since neither requirement is usually met, the philosophy argument seems fatuous. I wish the Administration were as compulsive about producing doctors as they are about making SSTs.

RICHARD H. RECH, Ph.D. Hanover, N.H.

Sir: The grossly overpaid U.S. medical service, unlike any other profession, has the power to demand "Your money or your life." At least the roadside bandit has the honesty to admit he is a bandit!

The Administration's proposal as a cure for this is financially to subsidize the victims to enable them to pay the bandit's demands. The Kennedy proposals are aimed at stamping out the banditry.

R. ROLLESTON WEST Carmel, Calif.

Sir: Doctors are not trained to consider costs because they must protect themselves and the hospitals against ruinous malpractice suits. Therefore they order many more tests than needed for diagnosis. If awards were paid by the state after hearings by an appointed board, the savings from irrelevant tests, useless records, costly litigation and insurer overhead would be enormous. There might then be more money for the real victims of avoidable mistakes, and surely less cost for the average patient.

THOMAS D. CABOT Boston

Sir: If our wonderful governmental enterprises cannot effectively deliver the mail, how can we entrust to them the delivery of our health care? There are no automated vending machines to dispense appendectomies after 5 p.m.

KENNETH G. DAVIS Galveston, Texas

Historic Moment

Sir: Stop bleeding over the suppression of (very limited) freedom in Czechoslovakia in 1968 [June 7]. The Czech army of 135,000 might well have fought a temporary delaying action before Prague. It is virtually certain that even a limited Czech armed resistance would have triggered off a general insurrection all over the captive area of Eastern Europe. Russian occupation and dominance would then have become logistically, psychologically and economically insupportable. The Czech (or Dubcek) failure to seize the historic moment has doomed all East Europe to continued tyranny. Those who will not fight for land and freedom abdicate their right to either, and to the world's sympathy.

PETER H. PEEL Los Angeles

The Regular Route

Sir: Mayor Richard J. Daley has once again proved that the hand is quicker than the eye [June 7]. Eager Chicago cyclists read of his new "Bicycle Route System" with delight, until they realized that it consisted of signs picturing bicycles posted along regular city streets, with no special lane designation for cyclists.

In the tradition of Chicago, however, Daley's Bicycle Route System probably created a number of patronage jobs for skilled sign hangers.

(MRS.) SUSAN WEININGER Chicago

Useful Semantics

Sir: Your semantically perceptive Essay [June 7] suggests that one media and one data, as well as one criteria, two pair and two aspirin, serve the useful purpose of establishing their users' ignorance quotients. TJ. DYLEWSKI Saratoga, Calif.

Sir: TIME'S Essay "Down with Media" is a cute example of the deviousness of rationalization in defense of confusing but doubtless profitable communications overkill! There is (are?) a liberal communications medium (media?) with the sticky, cohesive, emotion-affecting, mind-warping pervasiveness of a Los Angeles temperature inversion!

BOB HENDERSON Bainbridge Island, Wash.

Sir: Hurts, doesn't it? It is unfair for those meanies to categorize you and hold all responsible for the sins of a few. Let's do index and insist that medium1, medium2, medium3 hereafter refer to us as the South1, the South2 and the South3. MRS. J.L. HUNT Brunswick, Ga.

Sir: TIME'S Essay is, once one has circumnavigated the semantics, a somewhat querulous defense against attacks upon your medium by the rudely righteous right (known to themselves as the practically perfect patriots). Don't panic, TIME. Your magazine will still be on the newsstands when people again say: "Spiro T. who?" In the meantime, you should adopt the attitude of the Geological Journal, which doesn't become the least bit upset when someone says it is a Commie rag because it maintains that the world is round.

PAUL BURLEIGH Yorba Linda, Calif.

Sir: If the media are, then they surely are alike in their views.

RICHARD SMITH Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Sir: Thank you for the excellent Essay. The way words are used does shape the way we think and feel. Now could we work on the usage of the word race!

Race (when used accurately) refers to "the human race." Since all people belong to this one race (human), how can we refer to separate groups of people (e.g., ethnic groups, cultural groups, religious groups, etc.) as different or separate races?

I wonder if the media (plural) could use the word race (singular) accurately?

NORMA COBB

Houston

Sir: Semantic shock indeed! Your essayist writes that "to speak of the media in the singular tends to obliterate the differences between them." Then he goes on to enumerate eight different types. Differences may exist between two things but among more than two.

B.J. GRUSKIN, M.D. New York City

Sons of Distinguished People

Sir: Contrary to popular belief, Krishnamurti was not "sent ... to Oxford for his education [June 7]." Annie Besant took him there, and as to what happened, I quote from Sir Herbert--an Oxford Snob by Ferrier Elvin: "She naturally went straight to Magdalen and interviewed the President. When Sir Herbert showed some reluctance to accept her candidate, Mrs. Besant explained, 'But my ward is a very special person! I don't want to stress it, but he does happen to be the Son of God.' Sir Herbert replied, 'Madam, we have the sons of many distinguished people in this college.' "

N.Y. SASTRY Madras, India

Sir: Ever since the Beatles' Maharishi toured the U.S. with the Beach Boys in concert, it is perhaps with good reason that Americans are skeptical of all gurus. It would be a sad mistake, however, to include Krishnamurti in this company. With both simplicity and eloquence, he addresses himself to the timeless topics of freedom and revolution, life and death, love and hate. I hope that your article on Krishnamurti will contribute to the understanding that not all gurus need be fakirs.

DONALD J. ROGERS Elmwood Park, Ill.

Honking in the Jazz Joint

Sir: Your piece about jazz going to college [June 7] is only part of the answer for aspiring jazz musicians. It's true that aspiring jazzmen can benefit from some formal polishing of technique. But such polishing comes, not from educational institutions, but from honking in the environment that engendered the art form in the first place: the smoky jazz joint.

If good stuff comes out of a horn, it's only because the paying customers and the jazzmen are together. You can't get this in a stuffy classroom, no matter who the instructor. Louis is right, and don't you forget it.

ALFRED WILSON San Diego

Sir: I am an instructor in music at Hampton Institute. The music department here offers a course titled African-American Music, which deals with the in-depth study of jazz from the musical, historical and social points of view; a course is being instituted this fall in jazz improvisation.

It is true that black colleges have neglected jazz, which is a black music. I feel this is because 1) many black colleges have had their music departments dominated by white professors who did not recognize jazz as an art form; 2) the black academic musician--though he may play jazz--has been taught to feel that the epitome of good music is European art music.

Though the predominantly white colleges seem to have taken over the teaching of jazz, I believe that future jazz musicians will come from such colleges as Hampton or Fisk.

CONSUELA LEE MOOREHEAD Hampton, Va.

Secession for New York City?

Sir: Has Mayor John Lindsay considered the next logical step if New York City becomes the 51st state [June 7]? Secede from the U.S., then apply for foreign aid. STAN HOVDE San Francisco

Sir: Mayor Lindsay proposes "national cities" to meet urban problems. We already have one federal city: Washington, D.C. How many such problems has it solved?

SIMEON H.F. GOLDSTEIN New York City

Sir: The worst mistake in our history has been to give women the privilege of voting. Women vote for the handsome face of Mayor Lindsay. This inept mayor and worst administrator in our history has the nerve to think of running for presidential office.

New York City is in complete ruin physically, morally and financially because of this ambitious political leader.

PETER GARAND New York City

Big Burly Bogeyman

Sir: A letter from a reader [May 31] commented on the fact that your article on Haiti [May 3] had mistakenly defined the Tontons Macoutes as "bogeymen." She was wrong, and your writer was completely correct.

Anyone residing in Haiti for any length of time knows that the "macoute" is the fiber bag, often gaily decorated and of various sizes, that was originally carried by the male peasants living in the hills.

The Haitian bogeyman was called "Tonton Macoute" because he carried a large bag into which he popped naughty children and carried them away. He was represented in earlier and more authentic sculpture and pictures as a huge burly man with an oversized "macoute."

HOMER GAYNE Kingston, Jamaica

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