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TIME'S Nov. 12 piece on the Winchell-Baker-Stork-Club fiasco rates three loud cheers. Your treatment of racial-prejudice incidents has always been excellent. Also nice blow for the misused word "discrimination." It used to be a handy one. And may Sugar Ray Robinson's "Daddy-O, ungather my dry goods, or I'll have to let you have it," be remembered favorably with Joe Jacobs' candid "I shoulda stood in bed."
STAN WALKER Austin, Texas
Sir:
Winchell is a member of a minority group, and therefore shouldn't sound off about being the "foremost champion of human rights," when it's his duty to stand up for the minorities. La Baker's persistent invasions of plush society spots smack of a trite proverb: give her enough rope and she'll hang herself! Sugar Ray's threat to withdraw from the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund (unless the situation is cleared up) is detrimental to his reputation as a champion. Is the fund a project for saving thousands of cancer victims, or a measuring stick for popularity and good fellowship? Come on, folks, let's be grown up and give this thing time!
FRED W. HOSBACH Huntington, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . I hope that Miss Baker and Mr. Robinson are not trying to buy their way into the Stork Club by giving to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. The $80,000 which they recently gave to the fund could have been contributed to Negro organizations . . .
STEPHEN MERMIGIS Kansas City, Kans.
Sir:
Of course it's a pity Miss Josephine Baker did not get her filet mignon at the Stork Club just when she ordered it, but I don't think the incident is enough to send half the nation rushing about bellowing self-righteously in all directions as if the steak had been cut from their own hindquarters. Am I morally obtuse, or is there really a menace to the American Constitution entrenched on 53rd Street? . . .
JETHRO HATCH Kent, Conn.
The Protestant Idea
Sir:
We of the Protestant faith certainly appreciated your fine Nov. 5 analysis of Clarence Hall's and Desier Holisher's U.S. Protestant Panorama. I would, though, like to take issue with the implication that "there are at least signs that—faced with the growth of the Roman Catholic Church . . ." It is, to be sure, a distinct challenge to be "faced" with the growth of any religious body. Even though quantity does not prove the point, the Protestant faith is not only outstripping the population growth by a great deal, but growing more rapidly than our brethren of the Roman Church—and we do not bring members into our fellowship (or count them) until they are approximately twelve years of age.
Congratulations on your forthright statement that Protestantism is the big threat to Communism . . .
(REV.) PHILIP H. OXNAM The Methodist Church Pleasantville, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . As a Roman Catholic, I have been more than disturbed at the large amount of literature attacking, directly or indirectly, the church of which I am a member. But the statement that Russia's real enemy is the "freedom-loving Protestants" is too much. Certainly there is enough evidence in Europe to show the Soviet's feelings toward Catholics . . .
EDWARD E. FORD Youngstown, Ohio
Sir: