Watching and Weeping Along

To the Editors:

Happy day! We can finally come out of the closet. Your acknowledgment of the value and enjoyment found in soap operas [Jan. 12] enables us Big Mac lovers to admit that we watch and weep along with Julie and Doug.

Jo Lahman

Surfside, Fla.

Soap operas are for people who have nothing better to do. Reporting on soap operas is for magazines with nothing better to do.

Arthur Preston

Oxnard, Calif.

Daytime drama might paraphrase a slogan: "Just sit back and leave the suffering to us."

Geri Sawicki

Mequon, Wis.

The soaps--fitting nomenclature: they have the capability of inducing immediate nausea and vomiting.

Margo de Simon

Silver Spring, Md.

You neglected a big segment of the daytime soap-opera audience: those lonely people, both young and old, who find in the characters the family, friends, continuity and roots they are denied by contemporary society.

Nancy Breckenridge

Lake Park, Fla.

"As the world turns," I have faith that there will be a "guiding light" in my "search for tomorrow." Unfortunately, "all my children" ("the young and the restless") are in "another world" and facing the "edge of night." Hooray for the soaps!

Barbara L. Lesonsky

Canoga Park, Calif.

I'm sure you inadvertently omitted Dr. Steven Aldridge (David O'Brien) of The Doctors. He has done more for the middle-aged woman than any hormone possibly could.

Naomi Detty

Hazleton, Pa.

Your speculation that the soaps might be regarded as heirs to the 18th century picaresque romantic novel or to Defoe's Moll Flanders defies belief. Samuel Richardson--author of Pamela and Clarissa--has an ironclad patent on the myths and psychological devices of today's soaps.

Paul Crabtree

Buffalo

The thing that drove me batty about Another World was that I couldn't sit down with Rachel and talk sense into her head. So I stopped watching.

Patrick C. Baker

Elmhurst, N. Y.

The soaps glorify, romanticize and legitimize all that can be ugly, perverse, convoluted and painful in interpersonal relationships. I think they are a menace to public mental health.

(The Rev.) Alan Steinke

Panama City, Fla.

GASP, S.H.A.M.E.!

Re your essay on smoking [Jan. 12], my answer to GASP, NSP and S.H.A.M.E.! is: Smoking Helps Inhibit Tension.

Mark Anthony

Lubbock, Texas

Smoke? Then don't exhale. If you enjoy it so much, keep it all to yourself.

Mrs. Ken Kallestad

Bismarck, N. Dak.

No one who routinely travels in an internal-combustion vehicle has the right to tell me that my cigarette is polluting his air.

Steve Hoffmann

Hermosa Beach, Calif.

For any antismoker who doesn't barbecue in his backyard I shall, upon request, stub my cigarette.

Jean R. Hoppin

Columbus

You say that most smokers "can generally be persuaded to douse the weed with a mild adjuration." My four-year experience as a nonsmoker making such requests on the Boston MBTA includes two actual physical assaults.

Peter Kirby

Cambridge, Mass.

Leave the cigarette smokers in peace--but hang the cigar smokers.

Sue Grain Belmont, Calif.

Seems to me that you might have covered the topic more succinctly using this verse learned in a Bible School class of 50 years past:

Tobacco is a filthy weed, And from the Devil doth proceed; Robs your pockets, burns your clothes, And makes a chimney out of your nose.

Barbara Madill

Horsham, Pa.

I have spent many years reflecting on the problem of smoking, while breathing other people's smoke. I've concluded that the only fair way to handle it is to allow smoking only in private homes when no nonsmokers are present, and certainly not in Wyoming at all.

Sarah Doll

Lander, Wyo.

I am sorry I smoke. I realize it is bad for me, fear it may eventually kill me and have unsuccessfully tried to give it up many times. But while fully realizing that the aim of the zealots may be well intended, I warn them that anyone who snatches a butt out of my mouth had better be prepared to get my fist in his or hers.

Pete S. Conover

Venice, Fla.

Yank and Pluck

Because I am squeamish, I cannot worm a fishhook or kill an animal, but when it comes to the La Guardia massacre [Jan. 12], I say the murderers should be disemboweled, their fingernails yanked and their eyes plucked out.

Mrs. John F. Rakszawaski

St. Marys, Pa.

We need less federal bureaucratic surveillance and more first-class law enforcement and prosecution. If the bombers are caught, convicted, then given a dose of punishment based on the "eye for eye" doctrine, this foolishness will end.

Carl E. Hyden

Columbus, Ind.

Loebotomy

Many of us in New Hampshire feel that William Loeb [Jan. 12] should apply his paper's slogan ("There is nothing so powerful as truth") to the Manchester Union Leader, reasoning that it does not represent Manchester, preach unity or exert true leadership. When Loeb was in a Boston hospital recently, some fantasized that instead, the whole state should be in--for a Loebotomy.

James H. Kennedy, Editor and Publisher

Consultants News

Fitzwilliam, N.H.

Loeb may have been responsible for having the slogan "Live free or die" put on New Hampshire license plates, but just for the record, it happens to be the motto of the state of New Hampshire.

One of my mottoes is "Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."

(Mrs.) Jane J. Hanson

North Hampton, N.H.

Medijargon

When my laughter subsided after reading your story on doctors' jargon [Jan. 12], I found I had experienced "a series of spasmodic and partly involuntary expirations, with inarticulate vocalization, normally indicative of merriment," as defined in Borland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary.

John C. Patterson Jr.

Sarasota, Fla.

Medal Mania

The article on France's current medal mania [Jan. 12] reminded me of Andre Gide's observation that by middle age all Frenchmen acquire two things: gonorrhea and the Legion d'Honneur.

Gavin P. Murphy

New York City

Still Home

In the story "A Troubling Reverse Exodus" [Jan. 12], your readers are erroneously informed that I have emigrated from Israel.

My family and I have never contemplated leaving Israel, and my home remains in Tel Aviv, where I continue to be active as the artistic adviser of the Israel Festival and as a professor at Tel Aviv University. It is always from Israel that I travel abroad for my conducting activities in Europe and in the United States.

Gary Bertini

Tel Aviv

"I Plan to Appeal"

I wish to point out a discrepancy in your article about my court case [Jan. 12]. My older son Jimmy went to live with his father in September 1975, not 1974, as stated.

I also wish to assure you that the "legal setback" is only temporary. With the help of friends, both homosexual and heterosexual, I plan to appeal the decision. I am secure in the belief that I am a good mother, despite the verdict of ten Dallasites who are uptight about homosexuality.

Mary Jo Risher

Garland, Texas

Not Intrigued

You state [Jan. 19] that I made voluntary social security an issue in '64. Governor Rockefeller's organization picked this out of my book, Conscience of a Conservative, where it was merely discussed, and they made it the issue it became. For your information, if that suggestion were voted on by the people today, it would be accepted, as the majority of young people are not intrigued with the system on an involuntary basis or even the system at all.

Barry Goldwater

U.S. Senator, Arizona

Woman-a-Month Plan

With your choice for Man of the Year [Jan. 5], it now appears that instead of a man for all seasons we have a woman for every month!

Patricia Thompson

Newark Valley, N. Y.

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