Letters

MONICA UP CLOSE

"It is apparent that Monica Lewinsky is a very immodest young woman who has a great deal to be modest about." KEN HIGSON Kelowna, B.C.

Much like a soap-opera character, Monica Lewinsky is someone we all love to hate [NATION, March 15]. When I read your article, however, my disdain was tempered by an unexpected admiration. She has lived out a fear most of us only dream about--suddenly finding oneself naked in public. What struck me was how Monica was able to defend herself without seeming defensive. This ability allowed her to appear poised, intelligent and charming--so much so that many people commented they could finally understand what the President saw in her. While I do not admire Monica for her self-centered, narrow view of the world, I do respect her courage to stand her own ground. SARA E. MELZER Los Angeles

Clinton couldn't resist the temptation to exploit Lewinsky, and neither could TIME. TIM ANSTEAD Hoffman Estates, Ill.

If society ordered Monica Lewinsky to wear a scarlet letter A, she would giggle, convinced that it stood for Awesome! DEBORAH BUCKNER Overland Park, Kans.

What's sad is the report from a friend of mine who is teaching high school English. The Monica tell-all was the talk of the 10th grade. The reaction? It was "cool." MARY L. LOCKHART West Branch, Mich.

It is disgraceful that individuals on both sides of the impeachment debate ruined the life of Monica Lewinsky, a decent if politically unsophisticated young woman. She is not one of the people who hurt the country. Her only real "crime" was to insist on controlling her own sex life. Ordinarily, I would be critical of a newsmagazine's neglecting major news issues to spotlight a minor celebrity. But I am happy you gave Monica a chance to defend herself. Perhaps her book profits will compensate in part for all the harm the government has unjustly caused her. DOMINICK FALZONE Los Angeles

We hope Monica will share her royalties with the President to help him pay his legal bills. After all, she couldn't have got to where she is without him. ANDREW BORACCI Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Monica may have earned her place on your cover, but what did we do to deserve all the cutesy-poo glamour pics? SHARON SENESE Chicago

What impresses me most about Monica is her candidness, composure, honesty and personal strength. I am amazed at her ability to articulate her thoughts and feelings in these interviews. Although the affair was a mistake, I have great empathy for her and her family. She has paid her price, and now we must look at ourselves. It's time we just left her alone. PAUL M. NEWITT El Macero, Calif.

Henry Luce has to be in China by now, so sonic has been his grave-spin at the fawning, serious-faced, totally preposterous Monica Lewinsky issue. You give truth to the notion that everything is for sale in America. BOB INGRAM Narberth, Pa.

Monica was aptly portrayed on TIME's cover: a pretty face with a beguiling smile, which proved to be flimsy and have little of substance behind it and, above all, has come too close for comfort. ILANA KEILSON New York City

If Bill Clinton, Kenneth Starr, Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky all worked on car lots, I would buy my auto from Monica. BRIAN CLARKE Nassau, Bahamas

After watching the interview on 20/20 and reading your article, I believe that Monica is a very hurt, very confused woman who made a mistake--a mistake that many women have made before her. And though we shun such women and call them vixens, I believe this case is a perfect opportunity to look at how these women actually feel: alone and unloved. TIFFANI NYE Seminary, Miss.

Please, please for the love of god, no more Monica Lewinsky. KALYN WARD Missoula, Mont.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF BLACKS

Jack E. White's review of my new book Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class [BOOKS, March 15] was the most anti-intellectual and bizarre personal attack on my character and physical appearance that I have ever read in a news publication. My book is based on discussions with more than 300 accomplished blacks from all fields and 100 important black institutions and organizations; therefore I find it odd that your review focused instead on my physical features. Your piece reflects the level of discomfort that many whites and some blacks feel when they discover that well-educated and well-to-do blacks have existed in the U.S. since the late 1800s. Your approach to black history (cover stories on hip-hop ghetto culture and attacks on me) perpetuates the notion that black people are nothing more than 1970s TV-sitcom stereotypes. LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM Chappaqua, N.Y.

WHERE'S THAT HAND?

In "Blessed is the Purell in hand" [NOTEBOOK, March 15], Joel Stein writes, "A woman who must have been a model removed a bottle from her purse. She raised it high and squirted a long stream down onto her cupped hands." The woman must have been very nimble, three-armed or a magician. CHRISTOPHER FEY Los Angeles

CORRECTION

Our story "Tae-Bo Or Not Tae-bo," about the trendy new exercise routine Tae-Bo [FITNESS, March 15], stated that Petra Robinson is "a vice president at the American Fitness Association." Robinson is vice president of the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (A.F.A.A.), a different organization.

GAMES VIDEOS PLAY

Your article "Video Games Get Trashed" [TECHNOLOGY, March 15] creates the false impression that Connectix Virtual Games Station exacerbates piracy problems in the video-game-console market. CVGS contains technology that is designed to discriminate between legitimate PlayStation CDs and illegal copies. Your article also overlooked the compelling legitimate consumer benefit of our product: CVGS enables you to play many popular PlayStation games on a Macintosh computer. Now PlayStation owners have new choices of where they can play their games, and Macintosh owners have more games to choose from. This increased consumer choice is a far more important social effect than the negative aspects you emphasized in your article. ROY MCDONALD, PRESIDENT Connectix Corp. San Mateo, Calif.

ANOTHER BUSH IN BLOSSOM

George W. Bush looks like the most promising reason in decades for the majority of people to say yes [NATION, March 15]. Serious grumblers and potential voters across the political spectrum may begin to overlook party affiliation and fine points on issues and instead look for the candidate with other salient qualities. Governor Bush appears presidential! After a little time with Bush in the White House, people might again start hoping their own child would grow up to be President! MERL KUHLMAN Goshen, Ky.

Before any of you jumps on the George Bush bandwagon, you would do well to look at the Governor's policy of benign neglect of teachers' concerns, which has made him less of a shining star in his home state than might be imagined. Is it time to read the lips of another Bush? SUE HEIGLE Duncanville, Texas

WOMEN AND THEIR BODIES

That skinny, broad-shouldered, androgynous specimen on your cover--do you call that a woman [THE SEXES, March 8]? She obviously lacks subcutaneous fat, resulting in protruding neck tendons, bulging veins on forearms and wrists, and mammary glands, if any, that are all too easy to hide. Is that the truth about a woman's body? What an anatomical heresy! The only feminine detail I could discover, as a gynecologist, was the makeup on the eyelashes. PETER J. CARPENTIER, M.D. Antwerp, Belgium

"Women are tougher, stronger and lustier than anyone ever thought." Anyone? My wife has been telling me this for years. ERIC HALKEMA Selborne, South Africa

I suggest overhauling Shakespeare's work to rid it of statements like Hamlet's "Frailty, thy name is woman" or his responding to Ophelia's "Tis brief, my lord" with "As woman's love." After all, to err is human. GEORG SCHWARZMANN Augsburg, Germany

I am a healthy heterosexual businesswoman. I can be as feminine as Marilyn Monroe, and I can be as energized as Jackie Chan. I am blessed with lots of estrogen and testosterone! I think of myself as a modern-day warrior. YVONNE SIET Hong Kong

The basic assumption of Barbara Ehrenreich seems to be that the female is determined entirely by genetics. Therefore, studies of the habits of prehistoric females help us see what roles are suitable for modern females. But my question is, Why would any intelligent person with freedom of choice, living at the very end of the 20th century, want to base her actions, roles and self-concept on those of cavewomen? It would make about as much sense to base her actions on those of chimpanzees. ROBERT REESE Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

I could sense Ehrenreich's motivation but no dent in sociobiology. She overlooks the most striking evidence ("normal frequency" of intercourse: daily to weekly), which shows that the human sexual impulse is coupled to pleasure. It appears reproductively senseless only at the individual level but is probably the ace that ensured Homo sapiens' domination of the planet. (Hinduism recognizes this connection as one of the prime goals in life.) Familyists should welcome it as a great elixir for the daily tussle and tumble inevitable in marital life. This synergy between reproduction and pleasure explains the huge social benefit a family offers. SHARADCHANDRA D. JOG Bombay

Your report on females amazed me. I climbed Mont Blanc around my 49th birthday; it was a truly wonderful experience. Until I read your article, I had no idea that the desire to do this had been brought on by menopause. I wonder how many other fiftyish women have done the same? I had in my youth done a bit of climbing, but never before (or since) have I managed such a summit. SUSAN JAIS Carqueiranne, France

Re your cover story on new research about women: we men always knew that women are tougher, stronger and lustier than we are. Your story just confirmed it. N. LEO FERNANDO Chennai, India

The starting point for any evolutionary view of sex differences is David Buss's 1994 book, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, in which he presents the findings of his 37-culture study of male and female mate preferences and discusses the evolutionary origins and behavioral consequences of what he finds. A section titled "The Hidden Side of Women's Short-Term Sexuality," which elaborates on such topics as what women stand to gain from "casual sex as one strategy within a flexible sexual repertoire," gives the lie to Ehrenreich's claim that evolutionary psychologists have been "fooled" into believing myths of female chastity. Ehrenreich might be more comfortable in a debate between polarized caricatures of actual positions, but surely this is the kind of simplistic thinking that she wants to take issue with. OLIVER CURRY, SERIES EDITOR Darwinism Today London School of Economics London

MILITARY JUSTICE AT THE GONDOLA

No pilot will be fooled by the acquittal of the captain of the Prowler aircraft that caused the Italian cable-car tragedy [JUSTICE, March 15]. Some of us know the huge adrenaline rush of low flying. It is addictive, and the faster and lower the better. Sensations are heightened in valleys, with mountainsides just off the wing tips. It is a visual flying process and certainly no place for inept pilots. This is no place for ad hoc or reckless flying. There can be no excuses: there is no escape from this ultimate responsibility. There is no air-traffic controller, no guardian angel. Low-flying accidents are usually fatal and are always traumatic. In any pilot-error accidents that are survived, powerful, protective psychological forces are at work on the subconscious. Even before landing, the truth can be distorted in the minds of the flight crew. In the case of the Italian accident, this self-denial was taken all the way from the bloodied ski slopes of Cavalese to the court-martial room in North Carolina. A.J. CRAIG Mold, Wales

As a man who has worked for many years in a key position with a major U.S. airline in Europe, as someone who knows air regulations--where the creed was always "air safety"--and as a man who has always been a sincere friend of the American people, I must admit that the trial result of Marine pilot Richard Ashby hit me like a punch in the stomach. WERNER ROMANELLO Rome

SHAKESPEAREAN CRYPTOGRAM?

I thoroughly enjoyed your article on "The Bard's Beard?" and the nagging question of the possible authorship of the various William Shakespeare plays [HISTORY, Feb. 15]. There is also another fascinating question regarding Shakespeare and writing.

Interestingly, it has been suggested that Shakespeare may have been one of the translators of the King James authorized version of Scripture, which was published in 1611; the translators remain anonymous to history. What is known is that it was translated at Hampton Court in 1610, a year when Shakespeare appears to have been in retirement. Shakespeare was 46 years of age that year, and if you go to Psalm 46 and count in 46 words, you will come to the word shake. Go to the end of the psalm and count back 46 words, and the next word is spear. Perhaps it is a clever Shakespearean cryptogram. JOHN J. BEECING Bangkok