Tom Tom Tom Tom Sirs:
"The TOM of the tom-tom" (TIME, current issue). The scrivener runs riot, tom-tomming all over his paragraph. Let a protest be noted. Peeping TOMS, TOMboys, Blind TOMS, TOM-tits, TOMcats, TOMcods, TOM turkeys, Long TOMS, the TOM of the tom-toms as words, should be axed. Why should a noble name be subject to veiled insult and subtle abuse? Sir, in the game of Gleek the knave of trumps is called TOM! An oyster's liver is sneeringly called a TOMalley! Why not Peter for the Peepers, Terry for the little girls who break windows and thumb their noses, Bert for the blind musicians of Dixie, Ted for the titmice, Timothy for the cats, Tobias for the Turkeys, Louis or Louie for the long guns? And doesn't everyone who has heard of tom-tom know that it doesn't TOM at all, but wum-wum-wums? TIME is too kindly, too wise, not sufficiently Jimmy Wal-kerish, to head this TOMfoolery. Give TOM a break, along with Richard and Henry!
TOM LENNON Oakland, Calif.
Horrified, Disgusted Sirs:
If you of TIME'S press ever laid a claim to that virtue called completeness, relinquish it immediately! I was shocked, horrified, nauseated, disgusted, not to say alarmed and surprised at a certain small but ever so noticeable "faux pas" in your issue of July 16, where, on page 9, col. i, under the heading "Bandwagon" (O how it pains me to set this down!) you committed the horrible blunder of referring to Senator James Thomas (Tom Tom) Heflin -without (terribly so) the usual and customary appositional phrase which begins, "who mortally hates—etc."
Please wake up! That's all I can say.
DAVID MCDONELL
Washington, D. C.
Subscriber McDonell proves that TIME readers have learned to supply the appositional phrase for themselves—hence it will in future be omitted.—ED.
Jumper Hoyt
Sirs:
In your issue of July 16 under the department caption PEOPLE—"Names make news" there is a paragraph headed Tallulah Bankhead, followed by an account of a man's jumping from the liner Rochambeau into the Atlantic Ocean. In view of your avowed passion for accuracy may I point out the following errors in the account.
Miss Bankhead was not in any way connected with the story, nor was she mentioned at all in the United States by A. P., Universal or United Press; she is not red-headed but blonde; she is not the daughter but granddaughter of the late U. S. Senator Bankhead (Ala. D.). Whether she "was robbed for a moment of her gay and civilized exuberance" is problematical but doubtful.
The man did not jump at night but in broad daylight or he wouldn't be writing this; the liner did not put out a lifeboat until the man had been sighted, nor would there, under any circumstances, be any point in so doing. The man -is not now married; his former wife's name is not Jeanne but Eugenia. Perhaps as you say "no one could guess why Morgan (wrong again) Hoyt should have wished to leave J:he bright (?) ship," etc., but some of them seem to have made a pretty good job of trying.
MORTON HOYT Washington, D. C.