Man of the Year

Sir / Richard Milhous Nixon is the Man of the Year for us--and the rest of the world.

J. WILLIAM BACK Los Angeles

Sir / I am convinced that your Man of the Year should be the one man who has not only demonstrated that he understands the Russians but trounced them at their own game. Bobby Fischer!

WALTER B. KROPF Sandusky, Ohio

Sir / I nominate Martha Mitchell as Woman of the Year.

If we had more women like her instead of so many wishy-washy "me-tooers," our country would not be in the mess it is today.

ELIZABETH R. STOCKWELL Caldwell, Idaho

Sir / In your deliberations of candidates for the TIME Man of the Year, do not forget the Viet Cong. For years they have fought for their independence. In 1972 they won.

ROBERT W. NEWMAN Springdale, Conn.

Moral Superiority

Sir / In the People section of TIME [Nov. 6] the following item appeared. "While Mailer waxed outrageous and his audience enthusiastically heckled. . . he dropped such nuggets as. . . 'Most women have just started to think in the last two or three years,' (and) 'McGovern is the only man who is morally superior to me.' Finally Mailer invited 'all the feminists in the audience to please hiss.' When a satisfying number obliged, he commented: 'Obedient little bitches.' "

The one place where I was not fatally misquoted still suggests I said "Obedient little bitches" at the end of the evening, when in fact I said it at the beginning. How ever, let me not pick TIME's nits. One correction may serve as a key to the general accuracy of your reporting: I did not say "McGovern is the only man who is morally superior to me." Rather I said some thing more like this: "We live among our family and acquaintances in a kind of moral economy. Perhaps we look upon half our friends as morally superior to us, and the other half as moral inferiors. With politicians, however, it is different. Politicians may be more splendid than us in many ways: often as studs, generally as charlatans, frequently as possessors of charisma. They may even show superior intelligence upon occasion. But we never have to worry about a politician's morals. We are fond of them because we know they are our moral inferiors. May I say that George McGovern left me in a state of confusion because he was the only major politician I ever met who felt like my moral superior."

Let those who do not find this use of quotation offensive recognize that they are fit subscribers to the mag.

In no great cheer.

NORMAN MAILER New York City

Against the Olympics

Sir / It might be assumed that all Coloradans voted against holding the Olympics [Nov. 20] here for financial or ecological reasons. I would like to offer two other reasons for the negative Olympic vote.

Many people felt that we the residents of Colorado should have been asked whether or not we wanted the Olympics before Mayor McNichols and company requested them from the I.O.C. This request was, in effect, taxation without representation.

Others, like myself, voted against the Olympics for moral reasons. I didn't want to see another Rick Dumont case, nor did I want to witness further blatant biased judging here in Denver or anyplace else in the world. The issue for me was "Olympics, shape up or ship out," and the possibility of them shaping up looks very dim from here.

MRS. ROBERT ZEHNLE Littleton, Colo.

Popular Midwives

Sir / Re your article on the return of the midwife [Nov. 20], I lived for the past two years in The Netherlands, where a majority of births occur at home with a midwife. After seeing several of our friends go through pregnancy and delivery in the care of midwives, I was convinced of the success and popularity of these methods over hospital deliveries for uncomplicated births. The intimacy shared by the whole family, the comfort of mother never having to leave home, the luxury of a practical nurse to attend mother and child for a week--all are preferable to the normal impersonality of maternity wards.

There is also the security that if any complications arise, the midwife says only a word, and mother and child are off to the hospital.

(MRS.) NANCY H. WYNEN Hackensack, N.J.

Sir / The success of the midwifery program in Bethel, Alaska, was as dramatic as you said; however, it is interesting to note that the midwife position there has been vacant for more than a year, and there have been no applicants. I hope that the new midwives will feel the responsibility of their profession and go where they are most needed.

D.T. MOORHEAD II, M.D. Clinical Director Alaska Native Hospital Bethel, Alaska

Sir / Re your article "Return of the Midwife," you say that midwifery is described in the New Testament. That may be. However, it appears even earlier, namely in the Old Testament; Exodus 1: 15-22 describes how the midwives saved the male children in spite of the order of the Pharaoh.

GERRY SAMUEL Bergenfield, N.J.

Sir / There are references to midwives much earlier than the New Testament. Genesis 35: 17 mentions the midwife who attended Rachel when she gave birth to Benjamin.

JOSEPH BACHRACH Chicago

Tarzan's Yell

Sir / Buster Crabbe may have relied on a recorded hog caller for his Tarzan yell [Nov. 13], but I have heard Johnny Weissmuller give the call.

In Mexico, I assisted in the production of Tarzan and the Mermaids, featuring Johnny Weissmuller. One holiday evening an incredible banshee wail burst into the courtyard of our hotel, culminating in a shrieking, howling scream. Jet planes were not in use then, so this jetlike roar was unearthly. Windows flew open and heads popped out in curiosity and fear.

All the guests at the hotel that night--perhaps much of Mexico City--will confirm that the yell is the genuine voice of Weissmuller, who had serenaded us that night on a dare.

JULIAN LESSER Hollywood

Sir / Johnny Weissmuller, on a national sports program, said the yell was definitely his own--and proceeded to prove it to the whole country right there on the spot.

MRS. H.B. SWIM Lockport, Nova Scotia

sbAccording to Johnny Weissmuller, the Tarzan calls are his own. His yells were recorded and used in some of his later movies in order to save his voice.

Ring-Around-a-Rosy

Sir / I cannot believe that the John F. Kennedy doodle you pictured [Nov. 20] is genuine. As a lifelong neighbor of J.F.K.'s at Hyannis Port, I can guarantee that he would never have drawn a harbor like that. Any fool who lives by the sea knows that sail boats head into the wind at all times and never go ring-around-a-rosy at their moorings.

BARBARA CHILDS Ligonier, Pa.

Devious Means?

Sir / Your report that "the mildly liberal majority" of the members of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. favors union with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. [Nov. 13] is inaccurate. The truth is that a vast majority of the P.C.U.S. members are conservative, and they oppose the union.

Liberals have infiltrated the seminaries, and it may be that as a result there is a "mildly liberal majority" among the clergy who, through unbelievable tactics, attempt to prevent the election of conservative laymen to the church courts. Such conservatives would call a halt to all the devious means being employed to try to bring about the union against the will of the vast majority of the members.

You are correct, however, when you say that the hottest issue is likely to be property. The liberals don't care if the conservatives all leave, as long as the liberals can hang on to all the church properties and foundation funds.

JONATHAN H. ALLEN Dallas

Doughnuts, Fritters and Dumplings

Sir / Reader A.R. Heldt astonishes me when he says in his letter [Nov. 13] that all members of Jim Thorpe's generation were raised on "organic" foods. Was the widespread use of white sugar and bleached white flour organic? And did the people of Jim Thorpe's time have year-round access to fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and fruit juices?

Does Mr. Heldt remember the days (not too long ago) when the bulk of our population lived on farms and in rural areas? At the end of the long winter our systems were so loaded with the effects of white sugar, starch and saturated fat that a spring tonic of sulfur and molasses was considered advisable, if not mandatory. The all-out consumption of doughnuts, fritters, dumplings, cake, pie and white-sugar candy, was that organic?

OWEN H. BOOTH Tucson

Sir / Re A.R. Heldt's criticism in your Letters column of "organic" foods as insufficient to make Jim Thorpe able to compete with athletes of today: Mr. Heldt, as is usual with the non-Indian, has treed the wrong bark. While everyone knows of the wonderful increase in health, height, weight, etc., of the average "white" because of his "chemically raised foodstuffs," little mention is made of the fact that the Anishinabe (Chippewa) was 6 ft. tall in 1700. The French called us "Sauters" among other names, meaning "Jumpers," for our ancestors went "bounding" through the forest and the short Frenchmen could not keep up.

Manomin (wild rice) is the answer and will continue to be, as long as we can keep it relatively unpolluted. I stand about 6 ft. 7 in. in boots and Stetson, and my children are growing. Our Red Lake reservation is still populated with "Shinabe" averaging more than 6 ft. Care to wrestle?

REY MICKINOCK Belgrade, Minn.

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