Raising Goose-Pimples
Sir / Every hair on my body stood on end and I broke out with a rash of goose-pimples as I read "How John Dean Came Center Stage" [June 25]. How this inept−"low B average" and "gentlemanly Cs"−second-marriage man was able to snuggle up beneath the armpits of the highest office in the land is beyond comprehension.
To understand that he was in on monumental decisions that affect more than 200 million people of this land scares the living bejeebers out of me. May the saints preserve us from such muckleheaded youth.
EARLE R. HOLLAND
Atlanta
Sir / John Dean said, "My dad once told me that when you're cornered, there's only one thing to do−tell the truth."
On the other hand, my dear old dad raised me with this thought: "If you always tell the truth, you'll never have to worry about being cornered."
DIANE S. SODER Lafayette, Calif.
Best of Friends
Sir / Leonid Brezhnev and President Nixon seemed to be the best of friends in Washington [June 25]. Brezhnev was smiling broadly, cracking jokes, drinking champagne and even embracing Nixon. But behind that facade of cordiality he could be scheming to stab the U.S. in the back when the time is ripe. His smiling face reminds me of the smiling faces of the Japanese diplomats assuring Cordell Hull of Japanese friendship only days before Pearl Harbor.
HAROLD B. JAFFE Baltimore
Sir / I admire President Nixon for having opened the door to Communist China and the Soviet Union. We have no business to "make the world safe for democracy," nor should it be made safe for Communism or dictatorships. Since we all have to live together on this planet, coexistence should be our policy and we must have no more shooting wars.
GEORG PETERS St. Petersburg, Fla.
Sir / Reading Brezhnev's remarks on Soviet Jewry has infuriated me. For him to say that there is no Jewish problem in Russia is a lie. And then to add insult to injury, Brezhnev actually has the audacity to make the traditionally obnoxious remark that "some of my closest friends have been Jews." Anti-Semites have been saying that for centuries.
ABBY FAY FINE Richmond
Hunters v. Farmers
Sir / Although I concur−at least emotionally with many of the statements on hunting in Paul Shepard's The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game [June 25], his vilification of the farmer is singularly obtuse and naive.
These followers of "the dullest life man has ever lived" are more often avid hunters than are the urbane contemporaries of Dr. Shepard's academic community. It is quite true that they "do not make war," have a longer life expectancy than their city cousins, have no "squeamishness about taking creatures apart," are not vegetarians, and are far from a "fellowship of slaves" since they represent the last individualistic, relatively independent minority in this country. In short, they seem to meet most criteria for classification as "fully human."
JOSEPH R. LEGENDRE Chicago
Sir / Who will write the farmer's eulogy once you have strangled him to death?
TERESA QUIGGLE Wray, Colo.
A Lovely Life