(2 of 3)
Most of us Tennesseans sho' docs rend with avenged pride in TIME, May 21, that Leas to jail go. Yahsuh, good reason had the prison-bound Lea party to be guarded by machine guns and avoid our city where blasphemy and threats concerning the Leas are as spontaneous as Southern hospitality despite our characteristic calmness, gentlemaness, and recent blessful TV A prosperity.
It took more than the dramatic Dudley Field Malone or Clarence Darrow to keep creaking justice from recognizing that Leas' motto:
"We Bank on the South" truly deserved to be satirized:
"We Sank on the South."
MORRIS BART JR.
Knoxville, Tenn.
Leucemia Sensation
Sirs:
... Is it necessary for TIME to attract its readers through sensationalism or should this cheap instrument be left to those publications which have nothing else to justify their existence? I speak with reference to your recent article concerning the various publicized cases of leucemias [TIME, May 21].
Should a magazine consider the mental health of its readers? I wonder how many readers of TIME worried (needlessly and uselessly) about contracting leucemia and how many actually found "symptoms" of the disease in themselves. This is no reflection upon the intelligence or other mental qualities of the reader, for such phobias are found even among students of medicine themselves.
Can any possible benefit accrue to the reader who learns that there is such a malignant, treatment-defying disease as leucemia? Medicine has made so many brilliant advances in the past and promises even more brilliant ones in the future. Surely [TIME] ought to serve more honorably than as a mere source of morbid sensationalism.
ALBERT T. GOLDBERG
School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pa.
TIME wishes its readers mental health, coddles no hypochondriac, deplores Reader Goldberg's professional attitude that medicine's facts are a mumbo-jumbo mystery unsuited to lay newsreporting. The only reader-benefit that concerns TIME is to give him news, good or bad. Medicine's failures, struggles, progress against disease are just as newsworthy as medicine's triumphs.—ED.
Critic of Critic
Sirs:
I have been a subscriber to TIME for a number of years and ... I have found no reason to criticize it adversely until the article on Thomas Craven's book Modern Art appeared [TIME, May 14].
The fact that you published the notice of it was perfectly in order,, excepting that it certainly does not warrant the prominence that you gave it. ... Modern art will live long a Her Craven and his books have disappeared and been forgotten. . . .
Such a book as Craven's does a certain amount of harm among the readers who have as little true conception of art as himself, but your approval of such a book with your larger circulation does more harm. . . .
SAMUEL S. WHITE 3RD
S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Co. Philadelphia, Pa.